Roger Mozbot invited you to join him on Google+! Well, he would, if he had an account. Unlike the rest of us, he's waiting until it comes out of beta, a wise decision considering some of the problems the social network has faced in the past weeks. On the other hand, there's a lot to like about Google Plus; if anyone's taking a shine to it early on, it's online marketers of all stripes. As with Twitter, it can take some work to get valuable invites from the right people.

Not getting added to as many circles as you'd like to be? Will Critchlow from Distilled talks with Rand about some strategies you can employ to get those invite emails flowin' faster than spice flows out of Arrakis.

Video Transcription

Rand: Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another special edition of Whiteboard Friday. I am joined once again by Will Critchlow, founder and Director at Distilled.

Will: Hi, Rand.

Rand: Will, thanks for being here again. It's great of you to fly all the way back over.

Will: Again, every week.

Rand: Yeah, my God. Amazing.

Will: You're killing me.

Rand: I think we're wearing the same shirts as last time.

Will: Well, this is my traveling clothes.

Rand: Oh, I can tell.

Will: Yeah. Thanks.

Rand: Yeah. Can you zoom in on that, Casey?

Will: Get on with it.

Rand: So we have some tactics this week, some tips for folks who are thinking about Google+. The first question that I get, I got this from someone who is speaking at MozCon, he said to me, "Boy, Google+. Feels like it is really early to be adopting that. Very early to be jumping in. Not yet a ton of value from participating." And I strongly disagreed.

Will: This is the time.

Rand: Now is the time. Jumping in early is when marketers can get outsized returns, and by learning the system early and growing your participation early on, I think you can do exciting things. One of the things I noticed is that my profile on Facebook has, I believe, 1,780 followers right, but my Google+ profile circles has 9,980. So Facebook is a lot bigger.

Will: I haven't checked mine, but I am sure it is right up there.

Rand: I am sure it is. But Google+ is clearly getting adopted by some people.

Will: And I think the problem, I guess the thing people are raising, is they feel like those people aren't relevant to them. So, if you are an in-house marketer at, I don't know a pet store, if these are all other marketers, are they the people that you want to be talking to?

Rand: Or tech people or startup people . . .

Will: Exactly. I guess to that we are saying, "Yes, start now, but pay attention to the fact that that is the current audience."

Rand: I couldn't agree more. So, the first tip that we have is to build out a robust, complete, useful profile. What are the essentials of this?

Will: Well, I think the number one, for me, well, apart from genuine contact detail, your name and so forth, is the photo.

Rand: Yes.

Will: I think that's the most memorable thing. There are so many people where you know their avatar.

Rand: Yeah.

Will: I think bright colors work well. I think headshots work well. Especially here, where it's you. It's a person.

Rand: Right. Well, and they won't allow brands at this stage.

Will: Right.

Rand: So using a non-authentic photo, I agree with you.

Will: So I would go with a brightly colored . . .

Rand: I have actually done background color testing on photos for my personal account to see whether my Twitter account would get more followers or less with certain ones. Orange works very well for me.

Will: We have people from different Distilled offices have different colored backgrounds.

Rand: Perfect. I love A/B testing everything in marketing, including the background color of your photo. So, tip number two, share content targeted to early adopters. What do we mean by this? Especially for someone who is that in-house pet store owner.

Will: Right. Well, one idea if you are creating content is talk about the marketing stuff you're doing. So I love the idea of sharing case studies and stuff that is going to be interesting to that audience. The immediate return isn't that they know that you're marketing. The immediate return is getting the traction, getting the early adoption, getting involved in the platform at this stage.

Rand: And with Google+, the more circles that you're in, the more that your content has secondary effects. It is not just the circle I shared with, but it is everyone who is connected to those circles. The Venn diagrams overlap, and the second levels and third levels mean that more people can see it, more people can share it.

Will: Right.

Rand: So every person that you can potentially reach on Google+ is a valued added influencer maybe for the future when you share the things that really matter.

Will: Absolutely. So I like that stuff. Then there is a whole bunch of stuff that is the kind of thing you would see on Hacker News, I guess.

Rand: News and technology? Sure. That startup stuff.

Will: That kind of overlap, but it's the same people.

Rand: Right. And you also see a lot of stuff that is like Reddit focused. There's entertainment, news, politics . . .

Will: Absolutely. Politics. Yeah, and especially because it is such a good platform for replying because you get the threaded stuff.

Rand: Yeah.

Will: I think we get a lot of particularly news and politics stuff where people go back and forth a little bit.

Rand: Yeah. That's quite good. All right. So we can share this type of content. We just have to find ways to make whatever we do relevant to these things.

Will: Or whatever we find. You're building your persona as well. So it can be stuff you're interested in.

Rand: Right.

Will: We were both sharing that thing about the space shuttle flight the other day, right, which is nothing to do with our day jobs.

Rand: But that was a great article.

Will: That was an amazing article.

Rand: Great article. So last tip we've got, oh, sorry, tip three of four, use circles to bias your sharing. This is something I can only do with Google+.

Will: It is a platform thing. Yeah, absolutely. This is the thing that I want in a social platform that I am going to use. This is the thing that means that I can segment the people I am speaking to. I kind of feel sometimes like Facebook in particular gets a raw deal here, my Facebook friends, because most of them are my real, like they're my basketball friends or guys from school or college . . .

Rand: And yet you're talking SEO and tech.

Will: . . . and I am talking SEO all the time. They're like, "Really? You're boring." Which I'm not saying I am actually more interesting than that. But here you can segment it. So you can talk SEO to your SEO people, you can talk tech and family and friends and so forth.

Rand: This is a brilliant way to make sure that you are not flooding these people with the wrong stuff.

Will: Right. And it means that you can start now, and in the future as all your real target market gets on there, you're not going to be boring them. You can still keep talking to the people who you built . . .

Rand: Great future of Google+.

Will: We love this one, right? This is . . .

Rand: Yeah, this is an amazing one. So, Gianluca Fiorelli, who of course is a frequent contributor to the blog, possibly he is watching Whiteboard Friday from the couch right now.

Will: Live.

Rand: It's amazing.

Will: Hey.

Rand: He was noting that he can take his Spanish marketing friends, his Italian marketing friends, his English marketing friends, and share different content with each of them in their appropriate language, which is absolutely an amazing feature.

Will: Which is great, because it means we can follow him without getting all of the Spanish and Italian stuff.

Rand: Bombarded with. Right. I follow Fabio Ricotta, for example, on Twitter, and he tweets in Portuguese very frequently.

Will: Yeah, you just have to skim past it.

Rand: Yup.

Will: But here you don't have to.

Rand: That's amazing.

Will: It's great.

Rand: So the last tip we've got.

Will: Yes. They have this, much like Facebook, I guess, when you throw a URL in that you want to share . . .

Rand: You can choose the image from . . . .

Will: Yes, it pulls the thumbnail. I guess what we're saying is that realize that if it pulls the wrong one or if it doesn't pull one . . .

Rand: You need to change.

Will: . . . you can upload your own one.

Rand: That's right. You can upload your own. So, even if there is content that you are sharing, for example, just a little complaint, a rant, a whatever, I am always using minus, I'll upload a little photo, and I'll have an arrow that points to it so that there is some URL associated with it and that way I can also measure click-through rate.

Will: Perfect.

Rand: Which is great. All right, Will. I am excited. I will see you on Google+. What's your Plus? plus.google.com/100170499799078378149?

Will: Yeah, that's me. See you there.

Rand: You can follow Will, too.

Will: Should we put a link in?

Rand: Hopefully. Hopefully, they'll get real profile names sometime soon.

Will: I'm sure they will.

Rand: Will, thanks for joining me again. Thanks to all of you. We will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Will: Bye.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com