Are you a Google Plus fan boy? Do you post often on the platform? Let us bring your attention to the newest feature of Google Plus, namely G+ Collections. This new feature would allow you organize your G+ posts and updates in a better way. In other words, what you do with boards on Pinterest, G+ Collections would offer you that. And the bonus is the backup of the largest search engine.
It’s a great tool for the marketers, who are more into content curation. It helps in labeling content for better navigation. Your audience can easily find out an article or a post or an image under a Collection. Moreover, your don’t need to create a separate follower base for your Collections. People, who are following you, are automatically following your Collections. Apart from that, if you want to share your Collections with other Communities and circles, you can do that as well.
In this article, we will show you how to create a Collection, how to customize it, share it with your G+ Communities and 8 different ways to use Google+ Collections for your business.
How to create a Collection:
Get started with the drop down option on the left hand side.
Click on Collection and it would land you on a separate page, where you can create a Collection.
Be careful when you set the visibility option. It can’t be changed later. Name it properly. Your Collection is ready. You can customize it with your profile color and header image.
Color options are already provided. You can choose from the header image options or upload something on your own.
How to share a Collection:
There are 2 ways to share a Collection with your circles and communities. First, the normal “Share” option that comes on G+.
Second, look at the new down arrow button under a post. You can also share a post in a Collection with this button.
Both these options have their advantage and disadvantage. The former lets you add your opinion with the post, while posting it your Collection. On the contrary, the latter would allow you share with just one click. But it does not let you add your own take with it.
8 ways you can use Google+ Collections for your business:
# 1 Keep all your tips under one Collection: Google Plus Collections offer a great way to collate ideas. You must be giving plenty of tips and suggestions to your audience on the platform. Why not putting them in a Collection? It would help your followers find all of them under one roof.
Google Webmasters created a separate Collection to offer tips to web admins. This way, they can create a hub for all the tips and tricks.
# 2 Document your events: Google+ Collections can be used to document events and festivals. For a business, it can be a great tool if they organize events and want to promote it uniquely on social media. And the best part is, you can post anything on these Collections; starting from blog posts to event images.
# 3 Organize social media contests creatively: If you want to run a social media contest, you can collect all your ideas and promotional content in one dedicated Collection. G+ Collections can prove an ideal platform to cross-promote your contests. Once you start receiving entries, you can feature them in the Collection.
In other words, it would document the entire contest for your G+ followers and would inspire them to participate as well.
# 4 Document campaigns: If you have any upcoming campaign to promote online, Google Plus Collections will help you. You could create a private collection to collate ideas and a public one to document a campaign step by step.
Google created a collection to announce their launches. This is a great way to document their projects in a better way for their audience.
# 5 Offer ideas: Want to share your ideas with your audience? What could be a better way to do it with G+ Collections? Innova Disc Golf have created a Collection for giving pro tips, where they share videos on disc golf. This way, they also promote their YouTube videos on G+.
# 6 Categorize services and products: As a business, you must have some services or products to showcase on different social networks. G+ Collections can be one of those ways too. You can share your product images and how-to guides in a Collection. Or if you are a service company, you can share ideas about how to use your services and what would be the benefits.
Brit + Co offers DIY ideas and also offers classes and kits to help their audience. They have created several collections to assist their G+ audience with home improvement ideas. And they are promoting their services very cleverly on the platform.
# 7 Sort keywords: People search with keywords on different social networks and G+ is not an exception. For this reason, you should strategize your G+ Collections with keywords. For example, if you offer clothing items for women, think of keywords like “How to dress for party” or “How to accessorize”. This would give your Collections more attention.
We searched with “Content marketing” on the platform and found the first result as a Collection story. Now you can image how well it works for content discovery on Google Plus.
# 8 Preserve quotes in a better place: Quotes are a very popular content type in digital marketing. You market quotes on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Then why not on G+ too? No matter if it’s yours or someone else’s, quotes have a better place to stay on the platform and it’s called G+ Collections.
So, have you tried your luck at any Collection on Google Plus. Let us know about your experience and how it is benefiting your business needs.
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