Up until now you’ve probably been investing most of your resort’s social media energy and resources into building your fan base on Facebook. Now, with Google+ getting bigger and more important by the day, it’s time to do the same on Google’s own social network.
Ready to get going? Here are 3 ways to start growing your Google+ membership today.
Follow Others
On Google+ every fan counts, whether it’s another business or a ‘real’ person. Want to get more followers? Then get following. Just like in life, you have to be a friend to make a friend on social media.
There are several ways to find people to follow:
- Let Google+ recommend people. The platform will serve up recommendations of other pages and people to follow that may be of interest to you.
- Check out other brand’s followers. By accessing the About section of another business’s page, you can view a list of their followers and begin following that list.
- Identify the people that have engaged with a popular post. Next time you come across a post that has attracted lots of +1’s, you will notice that you can click for a breakdown of the users that have engaged with that post. These people are likely to be interested in similar content. Add them to your Circles.
As you follow more people, you’ll notice more and more new content popping up in your home feed. Don’t forget to engage with this content as much as you can – there are few better ways to drive a follow-back than by leaving a positive comment, +1ing, or sharing someone’s newly published content.
Start Segmenting Straight Away
Segmentation is one of the most significant differences between Google+ and the other social networks. Thanks to Circles, it’s possible to target specific groups of guests with highly relevant content that speaks directly to their needs as a group, while taking care not to overload other fans with content that might not interest them.
If you want to avoid a massive segmentation headache later on, the key is to place the new people you follow into a suitable circle right from the outset. Let’s say, for example, one of your property’s largest target groups is corporate guests, so you create a Business Guests Circle. Now, each time you stumble across a popular post related to corporate travel, you can add all the people actively engaging on that post directly to your Business Guests Circle. Hopefully at least some of these people will follow you back, and if they do, they will have access to everything you post privately for that circle.
Look For Active, Interested Followers
Growing your Google+ audience takes time and work, and you want to be sure that the audience you build is worth the effort. This means making a few judgement calls. If a user hasn’t taken time to add a profile photo and a few lines about themselves, chances are they’re not going to actively engage with the content you post. Likewise, if you know the vast majority of your bookings come from Australian travellers, picking up tons of followers in India or Malaysia won’t do much more than bulk up your circles.
In other words, don’t blindly follow everyone that follows you. A little filtering will help you cultivate an audience that is of real value to your property moving forward.
Have you taken steps to grow your audience on Google+? Have you been successful? Let us know in the comments below!
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