The Secret To Building Your Business With Google Plus Circles

Have you discovered the power of building your

business with Google Plus circles?

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Google Plus is not just “another social media platform”

It’s the “new Google” and the glue that ties social search together

Google have done an amazing job of bringing all their free tools and services under one umbrella so your Gmail address is the central connection to your Google Plus account, Google calendar, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Local, YouTube, and much more!

Google Plus is not just “another social media platform”

With Circles you can effectively build your business by using Google Plus for targeted promotions and tailoring the information you share, and receive

Unlike the other social media platforms where everything is posted to everyone (although only a small percentage of your friends and fans see your posts), with Google Plus you use circles to segment your contacts, and the information you share

Getting Started With Circles

When you’re just starting out, you will have 4 pre-created circles that you can edit or delete

Google will also suggest people to add to your circles based on the contact lists from your Gmail, Android and other Google services and products that you’re a part of

You may want to edit the titles of your existing circles before adding people, so you can easily categorize your contacts

To edit one of Google plus’s default circles, double-click on it to open its panel

A pop up window will appear that contains the circle’s name, a brief description, and a snapshot of who you’ve added to the circle

Getting Started With Circles

You can also add people based on your education (school, college, university) and employment (company, business)

When you’re building your business with Google plus circles you need to keep your ideal clients, and potential partners, in mind

Creating Circles

Click on the + to create a new circle or click on a circle to see who’s in it

Then you can drag and drop into other circles, edit the circle name, remove people from circles or delete the circle

Your circle strategy will evolve as you get familiar with Google Plus but it’s totally flexible and easily updated

Once you’ve started engaging on Google Plus, you can build your circles using the “People” tab to find contacts and drag and drop them into your circles

You can have as many circles as you like and it’s a good idea to organise your circles based on the information you want to share

Think about how you might want to segment your contactsPerhaps based on where they’re located, so you would invite local

contacts to live workshops or 1-2-1 sessions; or customers (share special offers and members’ content), prospects (share your best blog posts and e-zine updates), or friends and family

And a great tip is to create a circle of influencers If you’re working your circles strategically to build your business you

should focus on circling the people you want to learn from

The Secret To Building Circles

The key to building circles is not to focus on the numbers but on the relationships you have with the people you circle

Actively engage with people you want to learn from by circling them, engaging them in conversation, sharing their relevant posts with your communities and circles, leaving thoughtful comments, +1 their content

By engaging, and sharing relevant, helpful content you’ll get yourself noticed, and build great relationships

Unlike Twitter where you follow as many people as possible in the hope that a certain percentage of them will follow you back, with Google Plus, it’s about quality rather than quantity

So only circle people you look up to, and want to learn fromThen you can share their updates and cutting-edge content with

your followers (who hopefully will be circling you because you’re sharing such good stuff!)

Growing Your Circle Following

Focus on providing value and building strong relationships and your circles will grow as people get to know you and like what you share and how you add value

And focus on long-term, quality, relationships, rather than for lead generation or just to promote a product

Spam and promotional posts do not go down well on Google PlusPeople are there to connect, build relationships and grow their

businesses, not to make a quick buckOne thing I love about Google Plus is the community’s intolerance of

junk, which keeps the calibre of content and interactions high

Another Handy Way To Add People To Circles

Simply hover over someone’s name and your list of circles pops up

Click on the circle(s) to add your new contact

This applies whether you’re in a community, your home stream or receiving notifications

Talking of hovering…For more on Google Plus Hover Cards (your online business card),

read the article I wrote recently for Women Unlimited

Womenunlimitedworldwide.com/how-to-use-google-hover-cards

Decide Who Sees What You Share

What’s exciting about circles is that they determine the updates you see in your newsfeed

As you can see from the screen below, I have streams for each of my circles and can choose which stream I want to receive information from (you can also change your notifications to control how much content you receive from each stream)

Similar to Feedly I can choose to receive updates from specific people or groups

For example, if I want to see what my Women Unlimited contacts are sharing (or check when my article is being promoted!) I would click on the Women Unlimited circle

(see below)

Circles make sharing easy When you’re sharing content you can

choose whether to share with the public or just to specific circles or communities

This is VERY powerful, because instead of posting an update as you would on Facebook or Twitter to your entire following, you can create content around specific audiences, which gives you the opportunity to connect in a very different, and far more personalized way

It’s social segmenting at its best!

Google plus is not a replacement for an email list like Aweber or Mail chimp, but it does have its benefits and can be used for

very targeted and effective communications

It’s a great business tool

Your action assignment from this article is to begin creating a handful of circles

And don’t forget to “circle me” – connect with me (Cassie Hicks Kerr) directly or through the rapidly growing MM Spark

communityPlus.google.com/u/0/communities/116157915149834695825

I’ll see you on G+!

MMSpark.com Resources….Freebies & Guides

12 Top Social Media TipsMmspark.com/mmfreebie

Information packed webinarshttp://mmspark.com/webinars/