Get started with Google Plus before its too late

Alright, so Google+ is now here and has already become the prime challenger to Facebook’s might in the Social media arena; something that was hard to comprehend just a couple years back when Facebook seemed to be an unstoppable force. Now, don’t get me wrong. Facebook still remains the most powerful Social Media platform as of now, just that it has found a really serious threat in the form of Google Plus as a competitor. Google+ has already started offering most of the services that Facebook was- from networking to dating, to business opportunities, games, news, chatting, media sharing, business promotions and so on. In other words Google+ is daring to turn into (if not already one) a massive, somewhat untapped and unexploited TRAFFIC GENERATING SOURCE.

Now, there’s a reason I called it an unexploited TRAFFIC SOURCE (yet!). Mind you, its still very early days for Google Plus. And if history is any evidence, things are just about to explode and the strategies are about to get innovative very fast. In other words, things are already beginning to get rough and will get even more so as more and more people start latching on to the opportunities presented by the big G. The faster you learn to exploit this social network, the better.

I remember there were times when I used to wonder if only I knew Facebook would become what it is today and had latched on to it when it was still in its infancy. I often rued missing out on several opportunities that could have resulted in better results for my businesses and endeavors. Now, Google Plus brings you that second chance. The opportunity to set things right. There aren’t many Internet Marketers out there trying to encash this opportunity yet, but pretty soon the Gold Rush will begin. And you better be prepared.

So here’s a basic guideline on what needs to be done so you get an early mover’s advantage:

Google Plus Marketing Strategies

1. OK, so first things first. Pick up a niche where you have had some success in. Something that has worked for you in the past and has a potential of doing good in the future as well. If you happen to be a body building expert, choose this niche and start selling your body-building skills. If you happen to be offering some offline services to local clients, you might consider an expansion and build an online store to sell your products/services globally! If you are a trainer, go ahead and build an interactive training website for people who are interested in learning this trade. If you happen to like a sport, think about building a business sports website where you offer coaching services and sports equipments. If you happen to be smooth with women and have had a good experience experience dating them, start a services that gives other people tips on how to do it through your own personal space on the web. Hell, if you are a poker expert, share your gambling experiences with others! You see, the possibilities here are endless.

2. Once you have decided on the niche, its time to get a domain name for your business. Choosing the right domain name for your business is extremely important. And irrespective of some contradictory reports out there, MAKE SURE that your that domain name has at least one KEYWORD that best defines your niche. Its vital, and gives your business an undue advantage and a head-start.

TIP: When choosing a domain name, always try to get hold of a .com, .net, or a .org domain, in that order. Stay clear of .info domain names.

3. Next, get your website done. Have it designed by an expert, or do it yourself, as long as you ensure that it looks professional. You may even want to buy ready made websites (corresponding to your niche) from websites like Flippa.

4. Now its time for the real deal: CONTENT. Go ahead and start adding VALUABLE and ORIGINAL content to your website. Always keep in mind that that whatever you advertise, or even sell, is for your clients eventually and as such should not confuse or mislead them. Always try and indulge in best customer services practices and not only are you going to see return customers but your business expand via word of mouth publicity. If that means giving away extra freebies to them, do it!

TIP: If you thinking of creating a REAL, LONG TERM business, forget about creating Adsense websites where you start a blog, add hundreds of spun articles, place an ad inside the body of the text, and hope to start getting visitors and make some big bucks! Surely you are not hoping to post a bunch of unreadable articles with irrelevant, gibberish content, and hope to generate money on auto-pilot!

You need to understand that if you are to have a continuous flow of natural organic traffic to your websites, you have to provide good quality services in return. That’s what your visitor’s want.

Alright, continuing along, you have by now a great looking and professionally done website, quality content and a profitable niche. It’s time now, to get our Google Plus dice rolling. To get started, you need to get yourself a properly done Google+ profile and add as many followers (targeted to your niche) as you possibly can.

This can be automated somewhat by using the Google Plus Socializer tool. Ever since Google+ came up, people have been asking for a good automation tool that could help get this done faster. Unfortunately, there aren’t many very functional ones yet, apart from the one I mentioned above. This should change soon though.

Anyways, continue building your profile and keep on adding as many targeted followers as you can. Build targeted circles of friends depending on their occupation, interest, geographical location and Google+ reputation as well. Always remain focused on your objective of building an attractive profile with tons of targeted followers, that are/might be interested in whatever services or products that you have on offer.

An interesting feature about Google Plus, not unlike Facebook, is that once you start adding friends to your circles, Google+ will start to  suggest you more new friends, based on your current preferences and kind of friends. So if your friends are targeted, so will those suggestions as well.

Take a look at the following image for an idea of how I build my networks. This is how it works:

Level 1 – build a Google+ complete profile and choose the right followers for your circles, depending on your business niche

Level 2 – Use Google Plus Socializer (or similar) to build your targeted followers

Level 3 – use your targeted followers and Google+ business pages to promote:

• Your Personal Website (directly)
• Your Personal Website using YouTube Advertising (people respond better to promotional videos)
• Affiliate products using YouTube Advertising (people respond better to promotional videos)
• Other clients’ business

What I also like to do is:

- Use Fiverr to sell a lot of related services
- Sell traffic to clients that use a similar business niche, using my Google+ profile, thus leveraging my followers

So, by now, as you can hopefully see, there are endless possibilities wherein you can make some profits with Google+ with a little hard work and some perseverance.

If you have any queries or suggestions, feel free to contact me.

Twitter Search Screen

If you are looking to get Twitter traffic to generate exposure for your business, here’s a trick that may serve you well. Right now, is just about the perfect time to get started with Twitter to ramp up your online web traffic. Recently, Twitter has undergone a massive popularity revival and you do not want to miss the ride on the site’s popularity to get Twitter traffic to your business as well. Let me show you a simple, yet often overlooked, method of getting through to all of the actualy “human” conversations on twitter (and not some bots/marketers posting mindlessly trying to sell their products). Here is a great little trick:

1. Figure out some questions that you think people might be asking about making money online. For example: “How do I lose weight fast?” or “Natural weight loss remedies” or “I am looking promote my business online”. You don’t necessarily have to ask a question, you could just type in main keywords/phrases related to making money on the internet.

2. Now, hop over to search.twitter.com

3. Now type your question or your search query into the search box. This could be something related to your products/services that you think your fellow tweeters may be tweeting/asking about.

4. Ok, so here is the important part… In the search box, before your question, type -http or -www, or -com in front of your search query. This will ensure that you filter out all of the marketers that spam their affiliate links in their twitter tweets. Here is an example, type the red letters below into the search box, make note that there is a space after the -http.

[-http How do I lose weight fast?]

You can also repeat the search using exact phrase matches for even precise targeting using:

[-http "How do I lose weight fast?"]

5. Now the tweets that you are left with are only people who genuinely want to know about text message marketing and you can respond to them with your help with their question, and direct them to Fast Cash Commissions through your affiliate link!

6. You do not necessarily have to ask a question, you could just type in keywords related to making money online or internet marketing and try to find potential customers that way as well.

7. This is a laser targeted way to find people that are already interested in learning more about making money online!

Well, that’s it. Simple but effective.

Twitter Advanced Search parameters

Tip: If you are selling a local product or service and need to target only local clients, click on the “advanced search” option after going to search.twitter.com. Note that the advanced feature will be enabled only if you have logged in to your Twitter account. Then, in the advanced search preferences, type in the location and a general radius within which you wish to target your clients! Finally, before I sign off, remember, Twitter still happens to be one of the most visited sites on the Internet (currently the 9th most visited website, as of this writing on the Internet according to Alexa). Make sure you exploit Twitter Marketing for maximum benefits. Keep an eye out on the Indus SEO blogs here for more tips and tutorials coming out soon.

Monitoring your buzz via social media can be a real time sucker. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it’s a great tool to use for automatically managing your social media and finding out what people are saying about you. There are a lot of ways you can use RSS to your benefit when it comes to social media and creating automation to avoid time wasters.

Here are the step by step instructions to setting up your RSS reader to monitor your social media buzz.

Set up Google Reader Account –  Google Reader is free and enables you to keep up with any website that has an RSS feed. You simply set up your account and then add in the feeds.  You’ll need a Google account. Even if you already have one you might want to set up one specifically for monitoring your buzz. One account for each niche you’re involved in is usually easier to keep track of.

Set up Google Alerts – Using relevant keywords for your niche and set the delivery option to feed instead of by email, then click create!  You may  have to “edit” the created feed in order to set it up to Feed instead of email. Do one for each keyword, keyword phrase, your business name and any unique phrasing that you use on your websites and blogs.

By setting up RSS feeds to monitor the social buzz about you, your niche and business you can then check it all on one page in one glance a couple of times a day. Better you can have your virtual assistant to set it up, and check it once a day and send you a report if something exciting happens, or is  otherwise important that needs to be dealt with.

You can take this a step further by adding a Twitter Feed to your Google Reader account by using Twitter Search. Simply enter your keywords, click search, then click “Feed for this query”. Then you’ll also have anything important being said about you, or your niche on Twitter on the same page as the rest of the feeds.

The good thing is that creating a social media editorial calendar is simple. You can use either excel or word to create it. First you have to have a publication calendar to flesh out the topics that you want to blog about and write about that have to do with your niche for each month of the year. You can go even deeper and come up with about 20 titles to blog about for the month along with about 10 articles to write for article marketing based on your main feature and keywords. You’ll have more keywords than the example because you will have a list of about 100 keywords from doing keyword research. Try to create blogs and articles based on these keywords for each month.

After you’ve created your content calendar, next you want to create a plan for your social media. Obviously you should automate sharing your blog posts and articles with an application that will update all your social media channels as soon as your scheduled blog posts are live on your blog. If you post regularly at the same time each day you’ll find that your readers will come to expect your blog posts and will email you if you miss a day!

Now, all you really need to schedule is the time you will spend on discussing your blog posts, or answering questions across all your social media networks. You can use a color code on a monthly calendar or a weekly calendar broken down into times during the day. Monday you could spend 1 hour in the morning while you drink your coffee answering questions on LinkedIn. Monday afternoon you could spend time answering and responding to blog post comments on all your blogs, and so on. Schedule the time in to do each task that needs to be done.

The great thing about working at home is that you can change your schedule if you need to, but if you find yourself changing your schedule every single day you might want to reconsider if you have a hobby or a business. If you want a real business as an Internet marketer working from home you will have to spend time working instead of waiting time. Time wasters include playing games or chit chatting about things outside your niche when you have scheduled to do something more productive.

Did you know that you can use one site to update all your social media? You can sign up for a free ping.fm account combined with a Social Oomph account, and easily update all your networks in one fell swoop.  You need to get the upgraded professional Social Oomph account to fully take advantage of all these two programs have to offer. You can do it “in the cloud” using a PC and a browser or you can do it from your mobile device. You can update to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more social networks.

Another program that lets you update all your social media networks at once is called yoono. This is a program that can be added to your Firefox browser as an add-on tool. You can automatically view and update your social networks with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo and others. It does not have as many networks available as Social Oomph and ping.fm but it looks promising as they plan to add more social media networks eventually.

Gizapage is another promising aggregator. It says it’s an integrated social hub bringing together your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and more so that you can share with all networks at the same time, and you can pick and choose which networks too. It also lets you view your full profile from one spot. The problem with it is that you have to ask for a quote. It looks really great but that automatically makes me think it will be expensive. I put in for a quote but haven’t heard anything yet.

Social aggregators aren’t new, they’ve been around as long as social media has been around. If you do a Google search on social media aggregators you’re likely to find a lot of them both working and defunct. You’ll find free aggregators, and premium fee based services. They come and go so choose a popular one that is widely used so that you don’t have to start over. Part of using an aggregator is to save time. Setting one up takes some time and work but is worth it in the end so no matter which one you choose definitely make sure you do choose one in order to stop wasting time duplicating tasks.

Automation is great for ending time wasting tasks of posting new blog posts, new articles, and outside information. It frees up your time so that you can have a real conversation with potential clients in all of your social networks whether it is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a forum you enjoy. Spending time having real conversations and answering questions will establish you as an expert, bring traffic to your blog, and provide you with valuable information and connection to your target market.

If you want to make social media truly useful so that it provides a return on investment (ROI) then you have to join in the conversation. If everyone automates everything and only applications and Virtual Assistants are participating in the media then it loses the social aspects and eventually the value will plummet. No one who can make decisions or offer value will be watching if it’s all automated.

The best person to communicate your vision to the world is you. The myth of the four hour work week is that you don’t have to participate at all. It’s true you probably can outsource your entire life, but where is the joy in that? You might save time, but ultimately you lose connection to the people you wanted to connect with in the first place when you started your business. Certainly you had a goal that involved connecting with someone or helping someone. Never forget why you started your business in the first place.

Plan for Success – If you have no road map to your destination you’re not likely to make it. Sure, sometimes people accidentally hit the lottery, but most of the time success comes from careful and thoughtful planning. Don’t set out blindly for a hit or miss effort. Instead, make a plan and stick to it, adjusting as necessary.

 Implement Automation – Social media automation is a great way to save time. There is no good reason why you should not schedule automatically new posts, new articles and new information across all your social media. There are many tools available that do a great job. This will enable you to use your social media time more wisely in conversation with your potential clients rather than just pushing information to them.

 Schedule your time  – If you set up automation you can then carefully schedule your time for using social media for being, social. Imagine that! The automation of updating friends and followers of blog posts will create time for you to actually read other people’s tweets, re-tweet good information, and to actually participate. The trick is to schedule the time, and stick to the schedule.

 Outsource – Yes, you can outsource a lot of aspects of social media. A virtual assistant can set up all your automation. She can also keep track of your metrics, and alert you to important tweets or buzz that you need to address in a blog post or in a direct message to someone. A good long term virtual assistant can even answer your direct messages for you when needed.

 Turn it off – You read that right. When you’re off work, turn off your business social media. When you are doing other work, turn off your social media completely. There is no reason to have it on 24/7 because that will only serve to distract you from money making tasks. There are better ways to monitor social media with automation and RSS feeds.

With proper planning, implementation and perseverance your social media efforts can and will pay off to bring you more traffic, more business, and more success than you ever thought possible. The important thing to learn is to control your time since that is your most important asset. If you can do something else that earns you more money, do that instead, while using tools that let you continue with using social media strategically.