In the past, I've expressed my point of view that Google+ seemed to be a more intellectually stimulating social network than its direct competitor, Facebook.Many users in the early days of Google+ were more technical and built relationships with other technically savvy people. Those relationships were built through +1s and thoughtful commenting on social posts. There were few internet memes and jokes shared on Google+ in the early days.
But that's changed now that the social network has matured and the everyday average user is more than just the original tech junkies. It's now common to see jokes, memes, animated cat photos, and inspirational photos being shared by several people now. But one thing still remains true: the users of Google+ always appear to be more willing to engage in more thoughtful communicating.
Although memes and cat photos are entertaining, I assume your goal for Google+ is to build your business in some way. In that respect, you will be sharing posts with the hope to attract a larger audience, and ultimately gain business.
But don't just share something just because I told you so, or because you think it's the right thing to do. Simply sharing a link to your latest blog post or to your website won't bring you any more audience engagement than if you were to yell out to the world from your front door.
Simple sharing of your blog link is generally useless unless you already have a huge following.
Let's say you want to share your latest blog post to Google+. What's the best method of doing it? I previously wrote a detailed example of how you could post to Google+ here.
I've recently been reading about two different points of view regarding Google+ posting methods. The first point of view is to write a summary of your blog, while the other is to post your blogs to Google+ and abandon the blog on your website entirely.
My preferred method is to use the summary procedure, which is what I explained in that previous blog.
However, this recent buzz about Google+ posts to the exclusion of posting to your blog motivated me to revisit this topic today. Unless there's a huge dynamic shift in the long term use of the internet, for retail jewelers, and perhaps even all retail businesses, I'm always going to recommend maintaining your own website with a blog than to post your full blog to Google+.
We all use social networks to attract people to our business websites in hopes of one day making a sale. People are more likely to click links you share if you provide some details other than the link.
You should also use the social networks to be, well, social. You'll have higher clicks if you actively participate with your audience on the social network instead of just blasting out shared links.
But let me get back to that summary procedure... For each of these Daily Golden Nuggets, I typically have a lot of notes or stray thoughts that never make it into the final version of these posts. One of the tricks I've never shared before is that I keep track of these extra notes and thoughts and I'm including them as part of the details I share socially.
Every one of my Daily Nuggets is edited and reviewed several times before publishing, but the social shares I send out to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn are thought up quickly right before being shared. This social sharing process would be daunting if it weren't for those extra notes and stray thoughts.
I spend a little more time writing the social post for Google+ than the other social networks, and I try to incorporate as many of those extra notes as possible along with the link to each of these Golden Nuggets. These Google+ post are more than just "summaries" of the Nugget, sometimes I can fully explain the essence of the blog post without even reusing any of the content from it. The reader has the choice to click over to a well written blog, or they can take what they get from the detailed G+ share.
I do not recommend taking an excerpt from your blog post and using it as a teaser on your social share. I always feel a little annoyed when I read those teasers then jump to the blog only to find myself reading the same first 4 sentences again. That's a waste of my time, and I'm sure other people feel the same.
When you're trying to sell something, it is important to get the person back to your website, but you don't need obsess about getting them to click your blog link every time they read your post. That's an unrealistic goal. On the other hand, the goal of those longer essences' of the blog is to stimulate the +1s, resharing, and thoughtful commenting.
That brings us full circle to what I said at the top of today's Daily Golden Nugget, that Google+ a social network where you can build relationships through social engagements. But those social engagements do not happen unless you give your audience something worthwhile to engage with.
Track the results of your socially shared links and how well they bring visitors to your site, but don't focus on them so much that you lose sight of the fact that you also need to interact with your audience through these social systems. Sharing a link to your blog does not social interacting make. It takes thoughtful sharing and continual responsiveness with your customers.
