New Google+ Communities Are Here

by

dawntrenee

One of the most valuable features for marketers on Facebook and LinkedIn has been Groups. They are forums where people with like-interests can discuss certain topics. For marketers, this is an excellent way to reach out to other users and build a brand s authority. Now, Google+ has launched its own version of Groups with Communities, giving this growing social network another weapon in its fight to become one of the leading sites for users and businesses.

Using Google+ Communities to interact with other users who have an interest in your field makes it easier to extend your influence and capture possible leads in a less commercial way than just having people read your updates and visit your business page.

Four Types of Communities

There are two private and two public types of communities. The creator of a public community can choose to set the community as unrestricted or to make membership by invitation or approval only. Anyone can join a public community and create posts, share video and images, join a Hangout and leave comments. With Public Communities, the content is indexed and searchable on Google and Google+.

There are also two options for private communities. They can be restricted to private members only, but still be found via a search. A fully private community is another option, which can only be found if a user knows the community s specific URL.

To get the word out about your community, you can share it with the Public Stream, which is going to inform all of the people in your circles as well as be included in the worldwide Google Index. That means it can be found through a keyword search just like videos, posts and images.

The communities can be used for many things, including:

• Customer support
• Event scheduling
• Live presentations
• Focus groups
• Document sharing
• Business coaching and consulting
• Specialized training
• Networking

You can schedule a Hangout and run it from within a Community. Invitations will be sent automatically to all members. Members don t have to be within the community in order to share their comments, but can post directly from public streams.

Google+ also makes it easy to share files both outside and inside of your Google+ community, in the same way that Facebook lets you share files through Dropbox.

If members of your community want to start a conversation immediately, they can choose to start a video Hangout or even use the Google Voice option free of charge. This works for people in the same city or even people in different countries, and there is no usage limit.

Google+ has been doing a lot to bring more people and businesses over. It has increased usability and added all of the features that marketers could want in a social network.

Have you set up a new Google+ community yet or joined a few? How well is Google+ meeting your needs as a marketer?

Dawn Pigoni of Be Social Worldwide is a certified social marketing specialist and a social media virtual assistant. Dawn offers superb social networking, social marketing and social bookmarking to WAHMs, Small Business Owners, Internet Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, and Coaches who desire to bring stunning internet presence through social networking to their businesses. Get Dawn s free report,

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