A small feature was quietly ushered into Google Plus some months ago that I missed. Though I love Google and follow them religiously, I did think (until now) that the Google Plus platform had a very limited social function and online marketing potential. Then I changed my mind. Coming from the people who always seem to do it right another opportunity for success, the opportunity for “Interactive” Google Posts.

This feature has our internet marketers clamoring and customizing client APIs to achieve the objective of every marketing project – to convert the prospect and make them do something. What we marketers fondly refer to as a Call-to-Action.

This is Great!

I'm not the only one that thinks this is great. Barry Schwartz tells us we should be using Interactive Google and I agree. Simply, Google+ Interactive Posts is a way to add richer content to your Google+ posts.

You can do things like:

• Prefill text in the post content for users who want to share your page
• You can add call to action buttons that link to a specific URL or action
• You can control the title and target URL of the post
• You can control the snippet used in the post

What are Google+ Interactive Posts?

Interactive posts, as the name suggests, allows the reader to take an appropriate action based on the shared post. Your existing “dull” post is juiced up for the prospective reader with an offer to sit up and take an action thereby engaging them to a greater degree. Interactive posts are easy to setup and it’s high time to start including them in your online campaign.

Used correctly, Google’s Interactive posts will provide an easy and prominent way for users to share their site or app with other Google plus users and invite them to take action. For example, they can RSVP for an event, download an eBook or add their email to a newsletter list. Interactive posts can and will drive new users to your site, help you improve your conversions, and increase engagement.

Google Interactive Post Creator

Setting up your Google Interactive Post Creator is easy. You can follow the instructions here to set up your own Post creator or if you are using wordpress you can use the plug-in here.

Don’t Forget Mobile

Interactive posts also allow mobile users to engage users of an app for a specific purpose. Users can send posts to other users asking them to sign up, write a review, buy an item, check-in, listen, or whatever their app calls for. These interactive posts will trigger notifications that show up in Google+ streams. How cool is that? Google also allows you to pre-fill suggested sharebox text and recipients, and customize the post's favicon, description, and image.

How to set up the Call-To-Action (CTA) button

Whenever you write an interactive post for websites or mobile, you can set the CTA. There are a limited number of actions available but most everything I could think of was covered. Google also translates all CTAs into the native language of the reader. This option is particularly helpful when doing international SEO and marketing.

When you create a custom share button, you can engage the readers in a variety of ways by linking to external URL’s or pages within your site. They can be made to:

• Signup for a webinar or event
• Apply for positions
• Buy products
• Ask and engage
• Donate to projects
• Answer questions
• Bookmark webpages
• Attack or Defend, depends on your imagination
• and many more..

Google has a comprehensive list of CTA buttons; you can view the whole list here while given below are few of the popular ones:

ADD_TO_CART: This label adds the item given in the post to the reader’s cart on your website.

DOWNLOAD: For PDFs and other resources that the user would want to review offline.

COMMENT or DISCUSS: If it’s a blog post, the button can directly link to the comment’s section.

INSTALL: Post about a popular app, after which the users can install it directly.

CONTRIBUTE or GIVE: Perfect for Donate apps or even Kickstarter-like crowd-funded projects.

PIN_IT: Takes care of sharing through Pinterest.

RATE: For review sites – movies, products, services, etc.

REGISTER or SIGN_UP: Cuts short the distance from the post to the website and then to the sign-up page.

SUBSCRIBE: A favorite for signing up more subscribers.

Google states that “Interactive posts can drive new users to your site, improve conversions, and increase engagement.” You can also control the post contents besides title and the target URL.

Interactive Posting is NOT New

Interactive posting is not a new concept. Facebook has been the leader of leveraging interactive content and interactive posts have been one of the enabling factors that have driven brands to success on their platform.

Interactive posts also maximize the principles of real time engagement. These posts, being created on the Google Plus platform can fit seamlessly into any media strategy. The other benefit to this type of publishing is the ability to track the engagement data and drive further optimization of content moving forward. By tracking impressions, engagement rate and social actions, you can directly map to your core KPIs.

A Gift From Google

These interactive posts help us guide customers to take a specific action. For this I say “Thank You Google” However, before depending solely on the interactive posts, be sure to setup a viable marketing model for your product; ensure tangible benefits for the customer and establish trust and authority before finally setting your CTA button.

Remember, in sales, no matter how good a product or how interested the customer, nothing matters until they buy, subscribe, download or do something that causes engagement at some level. That’s how you close a sale.