Some would think that getting a lot of attention on these social sites can be tough, but honestly, it isn’t really that hard. In fact, for internet marketers, promoting via social media must have these 3 qualities that will make your social media marketing more efficient, also known as the “3Es”: Easy, Effective, & Engaging.

Easy

To get plus 1s and likes on Facebook and Google+, respectively, seems to be hard, but is actually quite easy, once you know exactly what you are dealing with. For instance, knowing and researching about your target consumer can make your social media marketing attempts much easier, as once you’re knowledgeable enough in your target, you can easily tailor your post or your page to appeal to your target demographic, which will sure generate a lot of notice to users, and will build your reputation even further. All with just a simple research.

Effective

An effective method to increase the awareness and reputation of a page or post on your social media campaign, is to simply make sure that the content is worth reading, and better yet, worth sharing. If you’re targeting new consumers of your product or service, consider a page that highlights all the strong points on your product or service, and expand further on it so that it’s appealing to those types of consumers. If you’re targeting existing customers, then state the advantages of your new offer over the old one that your customers are engaged into, and convince them that there’s more benefit into your new product.

Engaging

If your page or post gets a large number of recognition via likes or Plus 1s, then chances are high that a lot more people will view your content as popular and reputable, which will encourage more and more users to share your content within social media, which in turn, will generate more recognition, and the method goes on and on, until you see your Likes or Plus 1s pile up more quickly. This kind of engagement received by internet marketers, in turn, must be taken full advantage of in order to maximize the potential number of ratings that your business will acquire.

Successfully integrating all these “3Es” into your social media marketing campaign, will assure you the a huge number of Facebook Likes and Google+ Plus 1s, all while effectively minimizing your cost and effort.

Businesses have a lot to be thankful for after Internet had given both social media. Social media sites have given both small and huge businesses the same chance of being seen and heard. These same businesses have also used online customer feedback as a direct review of their products and services.

Customer’s feed ask via social media sites is very important to all businesses with online presence. Not only do online users judge a certain business’ credibility with the number of like it has attained, netizens also use the number of likes to gauge whether they will spend their cash on this company’s products or services.

A customer’s “like” is very powerful. It is a sign of approval from customer who got his money’s worth. A business will definitely boom if it got thousands of “likes”. In that same line, many company websites has placed a “plus one” button on their official websites. Get more plus ones because they are far better and more powerful than the like button.

Once a customer clicks on a company website’s plus one button, it will instantly send a signal to Google or any other search engine that site has tied up with. That search engine will then tally up how many plus one’s a company page has receive. The company which will  receive the most number of plus one’s will be the first on the result list ones their category has been searched online by a potential customer. It means a lot for a business to get more plus one hits.

Many small to medium scale businesses are investing on plus one packages in order to compete head on with the industry bigwigs on the online marketing battlefield. Attaining the highest visibility in a search engine is the main output once a business gets more plus one hits than any of its competitors.

A perfect example would be Dunkin Donuts.

Despite fierce competition from business who sell the same specialty, Dunkin still manages to be on top of their game by getting as many as 500 plus one’s every day. No matter what search engine you use, once you key in “donuts” on the search field, the first thing that will always appear is Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin not only managed to maintain the same quality throughout these years, their marketing team has also unlocked the secret to staying “afloat” and earning: getting more plus one’s. Therefore, if you have business and you want to keep up with the rest who are good at what they do, you would have to get yourself plus one’s.

A few months ago, if I were to be asked what I really thought about Google Plus, I’d say it has all the makings of another Myspace or Friendster. Only this social network iteration never made it to the top of the heap.

But what if I told you that I too had a change of heart. That just as other social media consultant that were changing their tunes on how they project Google Plus’ future would be, I too am dismissing my early predictions. Well, I have, and below I will discuss some of the points that have forced me to come to this different conclusion. To all business owners out there that are still stuck with our early finding that Google Plus was only a fad, hopefully you’ll soon find the light too the same way most of the social media consultants already have.

“Communities” is a feature that went up and above what Facebook’s groups does. Communities allows people to connect to each other through interests, which are searchable. It’s very easy to connect to like-minded people, which if we think about it, is really one of the main mission of social networking. What’s up and above about it though, is that even business pages or brand can join in. A capability missing in Facebook groups. It’s easy to imagine that this innovation is pushed to further give reason to Facebook users who should find this feature neat.

Hangouts is another feature of this social networking site that have yet to be duplicated by its bigger rival. Of course, when I say big, I mean about total user numbers. Google is a much bigger behemoth of a company and I would never make a mistake about that. Video conferencing even up to know is such a premium feature that one has to invest significant dues to get access to. And here comes a social network offering it at no charge! This remains the biggest draw of Google plus for me. Hangouts alone should be enough reason that Google plus is not a fad and that to get More Plus 1 may not be such a waste of time after all.

Finally, let’s not forget how Plus ones are not just mere copycats of Facebook’s “like button”. Plus ones are able to do more for businesses than Facebook likes. They add value to your business website and increasing their likelihood securing a higher ranking on the search engine we are all clamoring for – Google Search. Thus, it never is a loss cause if you invest time in Google plus, these features ensures that.

There have been many scare of changes like these that almost prompted me finally to drop Google Plus from my daily routine. Being a that I’m a social media marketer, companies rely on me to get their message across through social media. Thus, I’m a regular at prominent social media sites. At some points, I also wonder if Google Plus can still be considered as such.

To cut the long story short, Google Plus has been a top referring site for my blog now. Therefore, it’s very hard for me to ease up on posting regular updates to it since it’s been delivering. It made my decision to keep it a part of my daily routine even at times when I wasn’t getting significant results from it.

This article is for people who aren’t convinced with Google Plus at this point. Below are the things I make sure of every time I log in the platform.

Get As Much Friends and Add Them to One of Your Circles

Don’t be shy on clicking the plus one button on a post that didn’t come to any of your immediate friends. The Google plus user community has a smaller number compared that on Facebook. They are more tightly knit, thus it will be okay for others to even comment on someone’s post. This is how you start engagement and make new friends. This is especially true if you’re doing this on a page of someone who is interested on the same things you are interested too.

Share Other People’s Post

This is what I consider as my closer. If you want to befriend someone, sharing one of his post almost certainly gets you a ticket for an “add back”. If you feel that the content of his or her post is interesting and he was able to compose something that you read all the way, then it’s okay to share it. It’s more likely to make you and the owner of the post friends, and if it’s really compelling content, you also have the chance to draw more people towards you because that content is great.

Post to Public

Posting posts for to be viewed in certain circles is to use the platform as a private user. However, if you want to use your Google Plus profile for marketing purposes, you want to post as much public posts as possible. Just make sure they aren’t spam or they would have a different consequence. Making a post public allows it to be seen by the maximum number of people. It will have the chance to get more Google Plus Ones compared to some other types of posts. In fact I have a posts that ranks in the first few pages of Google search for the keyword I’m gunning for. That means yes they are visible in search as long as they’re comprehensive enough and unique.

Now why did we come up with this conclusion? Google really now is too much invested on their social networking darling to afford to pull the plug on it. Just this holiday season, they’ve giftwrapped many changes on their social networking site, some of those are as wonderful presents (when you’re into using it as much as Facebook).

Google rolled out a handful of updates for Google Plus today making it more endearing for netizens from all over.

Google Plus’ Milestone

This last quarter of 2012, we have seen Google plus finally reaching another height in its existence. One that is another proof that it is in fact a plausible alternative to the social networking site we all are using. I mean quietly it has reached the milestone of having more than 400 million members and according to one senior executive from Google; it currently hosts 100 million active users each month. Both are nice feats to have, especially when you add in the equations that just earlier this year experts were speculating whether Google will discontinue supporting the platform sometime this year.

It turns out what Google is doing is the complete opposite. Looking at Google plus from the outside, I mean you don’t even have to be a user to appreciate but Google plus now is just a soup of features and benefits. It has now added features to its mix that is just waving at you to be more active to it since a lot of those features are not present with the current king of the hill – Facebook.

The Updates

Firstly, other than the fact that Jelly 4.2 (a more fluid version of jellybean) is now for our enjoyment, Google has released a feature called Photo Sphere. From what I’ve seen it basically allows android users to take pictures as epic as those in Google maps. These pictures are more than panoramic as you can literally turn 360 degrees. Viewing a Photo Sphere in Google Plus would really make you a prouder owner of an android device.

Another feature than I want to highlight is the free capability of android users to back up their photos in full-size original resolution photos on Google plus. All an android user has to do is to turn on the instant upload feature and each snap on their android device would automatically be uploaded to a private album in plus with a free 5 GB of storage.

Hangout, which has been the difference maker between Google plus and its competitors is being showcased this holiday season. Once you active the upgrades by downloading the latest Google plus device whether it’s an android or iOS, attending a hangout will be much easier for you. It now only takes 150 kbps of bandwidth to be in a hangout!

The events and calendars has some treat up their sleeves as well. A lot more has been added to the Google plus shop and if you’re a business owner thinking to get more Google Plus one, don’t let second thoughts distract you.

Yet, Google plus is still standing firmly. What’s even more surprising is that it manages to be more deeply rooted now in people daily internet experience. Obviously it has an undeniable leverage because of its ties with its big brother or make that two big brother (the Google guys). For the moment though, I am not bold enough to assert any predictions because in all honesty nobody can say for certain how the social media landscape would unfold a year from now.

Being that I’m an internet marketer, my days are usually composed of exciting things like hunting for keywords, keeping up to date with trends and researching new techniques for SEO. Okay, I wouldn’t bet anything to prove those things are fun; you got me. Anyway, as I was saying, since my life is being spent mostly on the digital world, I’ve taken notice of the recent surge of articles depicting Google plus as many of my colleagues’ savior.

Naturally, with my inquisitive mind, I was compelled to do a simple experiment of my own taking away more fun hours out of the already lackluster day I was having.

One of the most basic steps you’ll first learn with SEO or branding is how do you know which platform to work on first. For this, all you need to do is to run the business name of your client and see what comes up to the top of the search result. In this case, I was doing an experiment of my own to catch up with this growing trend I’ve encountered, therefore all I had to do is to run my name. Upon typing my full name Facebook came on top to no surprise since I’ve been on there since 2007. No other platform could surpass the number of links I’ve built on that platform through the years of almost daily social networking. What came in second concluded what I was searching for in the first place. Google plus trailed in close second. It did this while I was hardly using the service; that means my Google plus hardly has any photos, status updates (I’m not even sure if that’s how it’s called over there), I haven’t even spent an hour filling my account profile with all the gritty and fancy.

Looks to me like we do have plenty of reason to invest our time to get more Google plus 1. I’d say that getting one equals several other shares compared to the weight of other social networking sites. After all, I’ll admit that spending too much time logged in online isn’t healthy for anyone. Perhaps, if I tender more of my efforts into this I’d end up having more fun time at the end of the day.

The venue/arena: is set at the internet

The opponents: the companies adopting social media

Their prize: A bigger piece of the pie (of the online users of social media sites)

Each day battles are being fought and most of the online users it is happening right under their noses. Each company does its best to be the top influencer and once it gets there, to not be toppled over by the ones behind. Everybody is trying to catch up to everybody. It is chaos. The landscape is cut throat and challenging. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s fun!

It’s a good era to be alive today if you get excited with marketing. We are in a unique point right now in history when a humongous company can take the leap and trust a few individuals claiming to be social media specialist for the entirety of that big company’s marketing efforts. If you are still clueless and would finally want to learn what I’m talking about, it means that the industry is in the state of flux. Business owners are clueless. It’s free for all for everyone who knows how to pitch social media marketing. I’m telling you, it doesn’t take too much to say it convincingly to someone. And that is what the problem is, saying it is one thing, being able to execute it for the sake of the company that is paying you good money is another.

Since I have been on a mission for a while now to make the mystery of how social media works for a brand less concealing, I am going to present you tips on a more familiar manner.

Links are the Vegetables

Most people don’t include vegetables in their diets as much as they have to. Even though its healthy for us, just like how links are important for not just SEO but also for branding, it is the part of our content often undervalued.

Videos are your carbs

Videos are great content but no web crawlers are able to read them yet as easily as they can with text. Your only chance with videos is if they go viral.

Text is the main course, the meat

It is the body of the text and it can be composed of many nutrients such as keywords, headings and tags. Social media site sites have this type of content the most since these are what people consume the most

Pictures are for desserts

Images are eye candies, and they are treated as such by social media sites as well. Users love them since they are the most effective to convey a message. Although like videos, it isn’t much good in search.

Whenever you engage users through social media sites such as Google Plus, it is important you get a balanced dose of these on your overall contents. Doing it would ensure an increase plus ones.

When we talk about traffic, the best example people can relate to it is by being in social networking sites. Yet even in its simplest form, once online we are bound to yearn for traffic at some point. Say you posted a photo of what you are having for breakfast (which doesn’t necessarily mean I do this personally, I’m talking generally here) into any of your social networking timelines, what do you expect next? Isn’t it for people to recognize that you’ve taken such a beautiful photograph and you want others to like your upload? In order to do that though you will need traffic. I’m talking about that kind.

Getting traffic online requires great skill and diligence because of that we welcome any methods that will ease up the wok a little bit and that is where Google plus comes in the picture. Ever since I have noticed how effective Google plus is at pushing visitors to content I blog about, I couldn’t get myself to stop on doing things to increase plus one. Although it does not boast the same user base that Facebook and Twitter has, I can confidently say that this social network more than holds its own in the process of SEO (search engine optimization).

Do you want proof? Here are some great ways to take advantage of Google plus’ marketing prowess:

Insert links on your profile

It’s necessary-know that the Google plus profile allows us to embed links directly into texts that makes up our profile. When that happens, your profile becomes more visible in search.

Embed post links

The same way you’re allowed to embed links on your profile, your posts on the home tab are allowed to have an unlimited number of links. What you need to understand is, post on Google plus is like a blog post. IT could actually make it into first page ranking if it has accumulated enough shares and plus 1s.

Insert keywords in your posts

The first sentence in your post on Google plus acts as a title in a blog post. Much like how it is in a blog, it is best if your incorporate keywords on the title to gain maximum traction of online traffic.

Indexing in Google plus is instantaneous

On our blog, we would have to wait several weeks before we get significant foothold of organic traffic. Not so with Google plus, some even claim it to be instantaneous. Because there is not much waiting before a content you’ve just posted gets published in Google the search engine.

Most people look at how social networking sites this way – they are great platforms for marketing a business. We would like to think that because of the nature of how their users tend to share whichever great content floats around to their networks, a social networking site’s user count must be the top factor on what platform to prioritize our marketing efforts on. This way of thinking does make sense until one reaches the point of learning the entire story of how Google plus’ engineers have constructed it. Unless we get to know this Google offspring, a marketer will continue to rely on his pet peeve of social networking sites, which is not having enough market shares of online users.

On this article, I will go as far as saying that most people are looking at Google plus entirely the wrong way. No, it doesn’t need to be branded the way we see other social networking sites, it is because the site was built to have an entirely different armada on how it could be used by its users.

Everything started with the fact that Twitter and Facebook are already established well at what they do. Google on the other hand, knew that it needed to come up with its very own social networking site or risk not being associated with the future of the internet (which is a nightmare for the giant company). Being that Google is good at what it does – search. Google decided to create a social networking site that has “search” as a key selling point. Without it, the site would have tanked only in a few months’ time and that it wouldn’t have a chance at all to increase plus 1s.

Do you want to have it proven through a simple experiment? Search for your name in Google Search and see what web services come close to the top? If you have Facebook that probably is on top. If you had Flicker that is going to get close as well. Your Google plus profile will surely be right in the mix. Just consider though, out of those on top, which has been your most recent sign up? Usually it would be Google plus, yet somehow it has managed to rank well even if it can be the most infant web service that has our profile in it. Now start putting that in the context of your business name instead. I’m sure you’ve got SEO right up there at the top of your priorities. If Google plus is not a part of those priorities yet, it’s not too late still.

I’m going to call off that bashing now since I was once a tech blogger myself (that is one reason why I know the deficiencies that runs in their head). What I’ve said is brought by the insatiable articles I’ve read the past couple of weeks about Google Plus being dead. I can’t tell you how much links have brought me to sites, pages and blogs which all talks about the same thing – that the Google Plus boat is sinking and it’s time to jump over board. These people suggest it’s a far better decision to leave the platform now and start investing your time and effort previously reserved for the Google Plus platform and transfer those over to let’s say – Twitter.

Nonetheless, there are points to this “advice” that my gut just won’t take. It’s because contrary to their claims, personally I’ve found success through Google Plus more easily. What these writers fail to see is that Google Plus has developed into a tight knit community. No one will argue that it has the smallest share of the pie when it comes to user counts. It doesn’t have the billions of users of Facebook, it doesn’t even have the half a billion by Twitter, and I’ll even cede to that of the Pinterest claim that they are now the 3^rd most popular social networking out there.

What Google Plus though a particularly well is nurturing the already active member that it has. It does a good job at offering services and features that makes an active member want to forget other platforms just like it did to me. Based on my experience, if you want to extend your presence and increase plus 1; by encircling a person you’ll get a higher chance of being circled back. This rate far overwhelms the odds you get to get followers when you follow people on Twitter.

As I’ve found out, this trend is directly associated to the loyalty of Google Plus users to their platform. They are more than welcome a newcomer and always enjoy the company of another active user from wherever part of the world he/she might be. It is a great example of a living breathing community and I feel that the Google Plus team has a lot to do with that. I only hope that if somebody is thinking of trying out the Google Plus platform that they don’t get discouraged by all the negative press it has been getting lately.