As a mompreneur, we are always on the lookout for ways to promote our blog and gain more traffic? One effective way to do this is through social media.
By sharing your blog posts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, you can increase your exposure and help attract more traffic. However, sharing your blog post on those sites alone isn’t enough.
Google+ is also a very helpful platform for promoting posts. One amazing feature is that Google+ allows you to train Google on how to best categorize your site in searches.
In my research, I found that it’s best to put your entire blog post into Google+. While LinkedIn allows 120 characters, Twitter 140, and Facebook 60,000, Google+ allows you to share 100,000 characters in your status update.
What’s great about Google+ is that Google indexes updates so they can be found in regular Google searches. .
Are you ready to promote your blog and drive more traffic using Google+? Here are 6 steps to sharing your post on Google+:
1. Go to your Google+ brand page.
Start by getting on Google+ and sign in as your brand page. To do this, just click on the small gray arrow near your photo in the upper-right corner.
2. Next, paste your complete URL into the Update box before putting in anything else.
While using Google+ as your page, place your blog’s URL before you put in anything else. This is because Google+ grabs images from the first web link it identifies.
By pasting your blog link in first, you ensure the update ultimately links to your blog.
3. Copy the entire text of your blog post.
Now go back to your blog post and copy the entire text. Take that text and paste it into the Google+ update above the URL you already put in there.
Next, go back to your blog post and copy the post title and paste that on top of all of the text in the Google+ update.
You are doing this for two reasons. First, you’ve already taken the time in writing your blog posts to use specific keywords that will help Google and other search engines classify your site. So why not reuse them here in Google+?
Second, most people on social media like to take in as much information as they can without leaving the particular social media platform they’re on. There are few Google+ readers who will actually click on a link and go to your blog post to read it. So your goal is to make it easier for them by including the entire text within your update.
Only the first section of your update will be displayed to Google+ readers, but they can easily click on “read more” to see the rest.
Copy the entire text of your blog post on your Google+ update.
4. Format the post in Google+.
Now that you have pasted your entire blog post text in your Google+ update, apply some formatting to make it easier to read. Here’s how to format text in Google+:
- To Bold words or phrases, put “*” on either side of the text you want to make bold.
- To Italicize words or phrases, put “_” on either side of the text you want to italicize.
- To Strikethrough words or phrases, put “-” on either side of the text you want to line through.
By formatting your text, you make it easier to read and it more closely resembles the blog post on your site.
Use Google+ formatting options to make your update easier to read.
5. Share your update with your circles.
Now that your blog post is inserted and formatted, you can choose whom to share it with. I’ve found that Google+ makes it a bit challenging for pages to get followers (compared to other social platforms), so it’s probably a good idea to share it with everyone you can.
Choose which circles you want to share your blog post with.
6. Reshare your update with your personal profile.
Similar to Facebook, you can share your post from your personal profile on Google+. When you go to your personal profile, you will see the blog post in your stream. Simply click “share” to share it with the circles you want to receive your update.
There’s there’s no need to add much additional information in the update, since Google+ does a great job of including text from your page’s update.
Share your Google+ brand page update from your personal profile.
Since many have a larger following on their personal profile, using this technique gets your blog and your Google+ brand page in the face of more people. Always remember to choose “public” in addition to any circles you share with.
Share with the appropriate circles and add your own interesting heading.
You should now see your blog post in your personal stream.
Too Time-Consuming?
This technique is not nearly as easy as letting an auto-publishing service share links to your blog posts on your social media platforms.
But following these steps better appeals to the way users of each social platform best interact with your content. It’s not only a great way to keep your brand in front of your target, but it also helps to drive traffic to your website.
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