Google+

Adjusting for the new Google Plus cover photo size

Last week, Google Plus made a pretty striking change to the layout of profile pages for both individuals and company pages. The dimensions of the cover photo used to take up a pretty small amount of real estate on profile pages, at a long and narrow 940×180 pixels. The new cover photos? They’re huge. At 960×540 pixels, they are the largest cover photos on any of the major social networks – Facebook’s comes in at 851×315. In addition to the cover photo size, there are some other formatting changes that you should take a look at if your business is on Google Plus. The profile photo is now displayed as a smaller, circular avatar. In status updates and interactions around Google Plus, the profile photo still appears as a square. Page title, page +1s, and additional company/brand information (including the…
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Verification Required on Google Plus Local Business Pages

A change came quietly to Google Plus this week that may impact the visibility and content of Google Plus pages for local businesses. Late last summer, we wrote about merging or verifying Google Plus pages with Google Local listings. Now, verification is required on all local business pages on Google Plus. If you set up a Google Plus page as a local business (meaning you business has a local address where you conduct business) and you haven’t yet verified your page and merged it with your Google local listing, this change will affect your page. Fruition recommends that you complete the verification process immediately to avoid the consequences, which range from missing profile information to removal of your Google Plus page from visibility on Google. At Fruition, we help many of our clients set up and maintain Google Plus pages…
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How Google Plus Communities Could Impact Your Business

Google Plus has been growing steadily since its start, though critics of the new network on the block have expressed concern that although Google Plus has many users, they are not typically as active as they are on other networks. Because of this, it has been more difficult to create and sustain social interactions on Google Plus with the same success rate as on Facebook and Twitter. Like other social networks, Google Plus offers the opportunity to create a business page, but given the difficulty in earning interactions, how can Google Plus benefit a business? There are many different answers to this question, including a new Google Plus feature, Communities. But first, a little background on why Google Plus is important. Search Engine Optimization: Having a Google Plus page can help positively impact search engine rankings. Google values the quality…
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How-To: Merge a Google Plus Local Place and Business Page

By Sara Villegas Recently, we noticed that users can now merge Google Plus Local Place pages and Google Plus Business pages. It’s a long-awaited answer to one of my biggest pet peeves about the Google Plus network, and best of all, it’s pretty easy! One of the main frustrations we’ve had in the social media department lately is the fact that Google Plus Local Places listings and Google Plus Business Pages are separate, and are not linked to each other in any way. Google Plus Local Places, when claimed by the business owners, could house tons of company information, including photos, videos, reviews and other business details like hours of operation and contact info. Google Plus Business pages display most of the same information, minus the reviews. Both Local and Business pages factor into our SEO strategy at Fruition, which means…
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Not a robot: How to auto-publish your content and stay authentic

By Sara Villegas Automation is the next frontier for social media. Think about it – who has time to sit around and manually publish every new piece of content they create on all the social profiles they own? For many of Fruition’s clients, this would be overwhelming – many of them have upward of four individual business networks to update, not including additional promotion via personal profiles. But aside from the inconvenience of visiting, logging in, crafting and posting individual messages on every social platforms, it seems there are now a few good reasons to consider using a social media scheduling tool to share your content socially. HubSpot recently released some new data about users who auto-publish their blog content to social sites – and the results are pretty impressive. In their analysis of 3,308 business to business and business to customer…
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Google+'s Latest Desperate Moves to Gain Relevance in Social Media

By Todd Atkins Spam in Google+ Stream Google recently began rolling out spam into your Google+ stream. They call it “Hot on Google+”. It’s almost always poor quality garbage content, not relevant to you, from someone you don’t know, and you didn’t ask for it. It’s spam. This isn’t entirely new, they’ve been adding spam into your Google+ stream for a while now. It was easy enough to block it with the Adblock plugin using the hide a section of a webpage feature. However, I guess Google caught on to that little trick and now assigns a unique identifier to each piece of spam in your Google+ stream. How to Rid Your Google+ Stream from “What’s Hot” Spam For a while I was just reporting Google’s spam as spam. Maybe it was a bit childish and maybe if enough people…
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Adding Google Plus One with Google Analytics

Creating an event out of Google Analytics only takes one small extra step. The benefit of getting the Google +1 data in Google analytics is two fold. First, you can segment traffic that +1′s your pages. This can help you determine if this traffic is generating more sales, spending more time on the site, and what I have found most interesting how it compares to traffic that uses Facebook’s Like button. Secondly, you get a good indicator of what causes people to it the +1 button. You can run A/B test to determine placement of the +1 button to improve this traffic. To get started, and if you haven’t done so already, first get the Google Plus 1 code from their tool creator at Plusone-button. When you get your Plus One code just add this line below it on your…
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Turn Off Google+ Enhanced Search Results

By Todd Atkins Say what you will about Google Plus. It is here to stay. Yesterday, Google rolled out a new integrated search results that incorporates the Google+ network. If you search on something like “unicorn tears” and there are matching results that people in your Google+ circles have clicked +1, it will show you that there are some personalized results for you.   Clicking on this link displays all of the personalize results, as you might expect. I did a post on the Least Effective SEO Techniques a few months ago which used a screen grab of the serp for “unicorn tears”. Someone at Fruition clicked +1 and shared it on Fruition’s Google+ Business Page now that post is showing up under my personalized results. In my opinion, it is too in your face and a major step backwards…
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Google+ Pages: Business Profile Pages Almost Here

By Todd Atkins Ever since Google rolled out Google+, business owners have been eagerly anticipating the ability to use the new social media network to interact with their customers and establish their brand. Over the last few months a few rumors had spread like wild fire about when this feature would be available. Today, Google announced that Pages for Google Plus are here! Well… almost here. UPDATED 11/9: Google+ Page Creation is now open to all. As of today, Google+ Pages has officially launched in beta mode. Google says the new social media feature is not yet ready for everyone. Instead, we’ve been given a sneak peak into how Pages will look and a few suggestions and ideas into how business can use it for both Social Media Marketing and branding. When it is ready, you’ll be able to create…
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