How To Get Targeted Google Plus Followers For Your Brand

If you're building a brand online, you don't just want any Google Plus followers, you need to know how to get targeted Google Plus followers that actual are interested in your niche.

Instead of buying thousands of Google Plus followers cheap on a site like Fiverr that don't even care about your business, you need to tap into your competitors' followers.

But how do you do that? Or maybe the better question would be: How do I do that without using blackhat methods or using up all my valuable time?

Well you can breathe a sigh of relief my friend because getting these niche targeted Google Plus followers will be much easier than you think.

The Targeted Follow Method

One of the easiest ways to get targeted followers on social media is to follow the right people and let them follow you back. Once you have your Google Plus profile setup, I recommend you create a “business” circle.

You can call it something else if you want, but this circle's entire purpose is to separate who you want to follow that you know is interested in your brand's niche.

Once you have this circle created, it is time to start circling people who have interests in the niche your business is in. But how do you find these people without wasting all your time?

All you have to do is go to the Google Plus search bar at the top of the page and search people who are authorities in your niche, or just competitors of your business.

Find some that have thousands of followers and look at their posts.

Because you can't just view a whole list of someone's followers on Google Plus like you could on Twitter or Pinterest, you need to find posts with lots of engagement (+1s, shares and comments).

Look at the bottom right corner of the posts and notice the faces of the people who engaged with the post. When you hover your mouse over those faces it will say “Activity on the post”.

Click the activity on the post and it will list the different engagements and the people who were involved. Then if you hover your mouse over these engagements, an “add” button will pop up on the right side.

Now, you can go down the list and add all these people to that “business” circle you made earlier.

The great thing about this compared to Twitter or Pinterest where you might just follow a list of someone's followers is you know the people who follow on Google are much more likely to engage with your posts and follow you back.

The reason for this is because you are following people who already regularly engage with social media posts and that you know are active.

Many times if you follow people using other methods, it may be faster, but you end up following a lot of dormant accounts who's owners may not even log on much at all or share your posts.

When you do end up following people who don't want to follow you back, I recommend you use Circloscope to manage them.

Circloscope is a tool I use find out who follows or doesn't follow me back and if I don't find those people interesting enough to keep following, I use it to unfollow them.

Circloscope has other very useful functions as well, but I definitely recommend it for managing your following.

Having A Good Widget

To keep growing your targeted Google Plus followers, I recommend getting a “follow widget” like Ana Hoffman uses at Traffic Generation Cafe. This is what here Google widget looks like:

As you can see it gives visitors on her blog a very easy way to follow her on Google Plus without having to do much work.

Making it as easy as possible is the key to getting your blog readers to take an action like this and this widget allows them to follow her by simply clicking one button.

If you want a widget like this on your blog you can download one here.

Popular Hashtags

If you want to get targeted followers on Google Plus, hashtags are a great way to do it. Using popular hashtags will help you get your posts seen by the right people, giving them the chance to see your brand and possibly follow you if they like it.

To use a hashtag effectively on Google Plus, simply create your post and go to the bottom of it and put the “#” symbol with a word or group of words after it that related to the post (without using spaces between the words.

An example of this would be: “#internetmarketing” for a marketing post. And of course, you can add multiple hashtags per post to get even more visibility, but don't overdo it or you will look like a spammer.

I recommend using 3 or 4 related hashtags at the bottom of each post. Now, you don't want to just use any hashtags, but you want them to be related, as well as popular to maximize post views.

To do this, there are a few effective ways you can use to find popular, related hashtags for Google Plus…

1. Use the dropdown menu in the process of typing the hashtag.

While you are starting to type your hashtag, a dropdown box of popular hashtag results will appear for you to choose from. This is Google's way of trying to help you pick a good hashtag to use.

It will look like this when you use this method:

2. Type a hashtag itself in Google Plus' search bar and check for related, popular hashtag results.

Just go to the search bar at the top of the page within Google Plus and type in a related hashtag to your niche that you may be thinking about using.

Then, Google will give you a page of results that include other popular tags related to that niche.

It will look like this:

3. Type in the hashtag and look for other posts in search results that use it.

When you type in a hashtag related to your niche and the search results come up, don't limit yourself to just looking at the “explore hashtags box” in the top left corner, also look at other posts that use the same hashtag.

Most likely, these brands used multiple hashtags and not just one. See how much activity these posts got and if you find a popular one, check and see what other hashtags they used on the post.

4. Check other websites.

Last but not least, if you need to find popular hashtags, you can check websites that specialize in that or that have written articles about some of the latest trending hashtags.

For instance, hashtags.org covers the latest trending hashtags on social media sites like Twitter and Google Plus.

Google Plus Communities

If you are trying to get targeted Google Plus followers and are not posting in niche-related communities, it is time for you to start. You may think Google Plus Communities are like Facebook Groups, but trust me they are WAY better.

With Facebook Groups being overrun by spam a lot these days, you may think it is the same way with Google Plus Communities. But, these communities actually have very high activity levels on posts.

As long as you keep your posts in these communities related to the overall topics that are allowed to be posted, you can expect to see some +1s, shares and comments on your posts.

When you look for communities to join, just go to Google Plus' search bar and type in some keywords related to your niche, then select the “communities” option to narrow down results to only communities on the topic.

Look for communities that have at least a few thousands members and some good group activity going on.

If you post in 5-10 groups consistently you can expect some increased visibility for your posts and some new followers that are interest in your brand.

Modeling After Authorities

Obviously, if you want to get more targeted followers on Google Plus, you need to actually post things people would find interesting. The best way to ensure that you do this is by modeling after the authorities in your niche.

Search for your competitors or just other brands in the same niche as you and look for their most popular posts. The posts with the most activity are the ones you should model after.

Now, don't go around telling people I just gave you permission to copy other peoples' posts on Google Plus because that isn't what I said.

I said you need to model them, or use a similar concept but don't copy it exactly how they did it. But, on the other side of this, people tend to worry so much about coming up with their own content from scratch.

This is great and all, but that is hard to do consistently. Like I said, you should never copy anyone, but that doesn't mean you should “reinvent the wheel” either. See what works.

Then, change it to fit your unique brand and use the same concept to create another popular post that will attract new followers.

Using Your Email List

If you have a blog, which you should, then you are probably collecting emails. If not, you need to read this post about doing it right. If you are, then you can use your autoresponder of choice to have people automatically be exposed to your Google Plus account after they opt into your list.

Many business brands do this to make sure their fans have every opportunity to see promotions, updates, and content.

So, if you have a list, have a welcome email in your autoresponder that says something to the effect of “don't forget to follow up on Google Plus” and have a link to your profile.

You can't have much more targeted followers than the people that actually have opted into your email list already, right?

Conclusion Of How To Get Targeted Google Plus Followers

When it comes to building a following on social media, it isn't just about quantity, but more about quality. If your followers aren't interest in your brand, they probably won't care about your content or want to become customers.

If you use the “follow method”, leverage a good widget, use popular hashtags, post in related communities, model after niche authorities and work your email list, you'll be getting thousands of targeted Google Plus followers easily.

What is your favorite way to get targeted Google Plus followers?