Google Official - Reviews Will Not Come Back on G+ Local Pages

[Linda Buquet]

Opps Darren, we posted at same time so I didn't see your last post.
And you maybe didn't see mine under it.

But yes his personal profile has been more for professional networking I think.

But I listed his practice too. Def not as many followers but seems like it's worked for him to some degree.

 

[whitespark]

Woah. I hear you, Linda. Chip is killing it on G+. A rare example! I would definitely not abandon it at this point.

For businesses without much of a following, the question becomes whether it's worth it to put in the effort on G+ to get to Chip's level. I'm starting to wonder...

Chip, would you say that your work on G+ has paid off in terms of building your business? If yes, how so? It might not be a direct path from G+ to new patient, but perhaps by building relationships on G+, it leads to new business in other ways?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Dave]

I too took a look at Chip's business' G+ Page. Looks impressive with a lot of followers, and I've learned his personal G+ Page is much much larger. Kudo's.

If you wanted to describe and document how you built the following, chose the categories and how it helps in business that would be tremendously educational and helpful to others.

Meanwhile the pages have changed. Will they still work the same way?

Early on for some of our smb's we worked G+ local business pages. Response was way minimal. Far more minimal than FB. We dropped it. I scanned for G+ local communities throughout one of our regions. Found very little engagement or membership and saw far bigger crowds in diffferent social media venues.

You are probably the exception. Kudo's Again. Do you wish to share on the experience?

 

[Dave]

I too took a look at Chip's business' G+ Page. Looks impressive with a lot of followers, and I've learned his personal G+ Page is much much larger. Kudo's.

If you wanted to describe and document how you built the following, chose the categories and how it helps in business that would be tremendously educational and helpful to others.

Meanwhile the pages have changed. Will they still work the same way?

Early on for some of our smb's we worked G+ local business pages. Response was way minimal. Far more minimal than FB. We dropped it. I scanned for G+ local communities throughout one of our regions. Found very little engagement or membership and saw far bigger crowds in diffferent social media venues.

You are probably the exception. Kudo's Again. Do you wish to share on the experience?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Super Important! Google just confirmed all the features that will be missing on the new Google+ pages. And it's a lot more than just reviews!

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/38436-finally-official-google-statement-all-google-local-changes-after-g-update.html">Finally: Official Google Statement on ALL the Google Local Changes after G+ Update</a>

 

[SmilesbyPayet]

Re: Finally: Official Google Statement on ALL the Google Local Changes after G+ Updat

Interestingly, I am still getting people to Follow Collections on my Page, which I guess means those Collections are being shown on the "Featured" page of Collections?

So if a Page were to continue building Collections of interesting and relevant content that Followers like and will see in their Stream, perhaps there's a way to continue using Pages? Even if the number of Paqe Followers drops, but the Followers of Collections increases, that's an interesting thought.

Also, if a Page continues building out Collections of semantically relevant and linked content, does anyone have thoughts on how that might show in Search? I've never noticed or even noticed anyone talking about it, but do Collections surface in Search at all? Maybe as part of the Knowledge Graph?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Finally: Official Google Statement on ALL the Google Local Changes after G+ Updat

Hey Chip this is a different post than the one we were discussing your G+ profiles in, so might be confusing to folks that are not jumping around and following every thread. And that was a great discussion I'd like to see this post added to.

Want me to merge this over to where that convo was???

Also FYI to answer your Q above in part, we were talking about you and that original thread over at Blumenthal's. Check out what he had to say here.

 

[SmilesbyPayet]

Re: Finally: Official Google Statement on ALL the Google Local Changes after G+ Updat

Linda, my apologies for getting threads mixed up; guess I need to be a bit more careful as I'm re-acclimating. Yes, of course, please combine however you see fit to keep topics on track.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Finally: Official Google Statement on ALL the Google Local Changes after G+ Updat

Moved and merged now. No worries Chip.

It gets confusing since Google didn't tell us what was up - right up front. So we had a few threads as this whole thing unfolded.

 

[SmilesbyPayet]

I too took a look at Chip's business' G+ Page. Looks impressive with a lot of followers, and I've learned his personal G+ Page is much much larger. Kudo's.

If you wanted to describe and document how you built the following, chose the categories and how it helps in business that would be tremendously educational and helpful to others.

Meanwhile the pages have changed. Will they still work the same way?

Early on for some of our smb's we worked G+ local business pages. Response was way minimal. Far more minimal than FB. We dropped it. I scanned for G+ local communities throughout one of our regions. Found very little engagement or membership and saw far bigger crowds in diffferent social media venues.

You are probably the exception. Kudo's Again. Do you wish to share on the experience?

Dave, I'm certainly glad to share, although of course it may not matter much at this point. LOL

I initially grew my Followers by becoming heavily involved in the photography community on G+; it took a year or so before I cracked 1,000 Followers, but around the middle of 2012 (I double-checked the timing using CircleCount), I began posting to a few of the big Theme Pages (Landscape, Architecture, B&W, Flowers, etc) and had some photos featured, which at that time meant that your name was added to a Daily, or Weekly Shared Circle, and when that happened, it wasn't uncommon to be added to the Circles of 1-200 people within a couple of hours. Plateaued at about 2,000 followers until early 2014, when I connected with some people like Mark Traphagen, Eric Enge, David Amerland, Martin Shervington. Again, through networking, commenting, sharing, my Follower count grew to over 6,000 by mid-summer 2014, and since then it's just slow and steady growth. That's the story of my personal Profile - getting deeply involved in a couple active communities (photography and then social media marketing/SEO/websites).

As for the Page, I had one of the very earliest G+ Pages when they were announced, whatever they were originally called. Probably one of the first dentists in the world. That's about when Linda and I started talking on a big dental forum, and she eventually helped me fix some dupe problems and optimize the Page for the guidelines back then. That one developed far more slowly, though, and it didn't start gaining Followers until early 2014 through that same learning and engagement with the SMM/SEO/website people. And the way I did that, was basically using it just like it was a person - as a Page, I joined Communities, commented on posts by others, shared interesting content from others, used hashtags and plus-mentioned people who might be interested. Much of what I learned came from Martin Shervington and his Plus Your Business Academy. But the basic method was to interact with people as the Page, much like a Brand representative.

We should be realistic about the Page Followers, though. I'd estimate a minimum 30% of those are spam or fake. Assume only 600 actual followers and it's probably close.

I'm pretty beat from Thanksgiving today, so tomorrow I'll write a bit more on how it's helped business.

 

[Dave]

Dave, I'm certainly glad to share, although of course it may not matter much at this point. LOL

I initially grew my Followers by becoming heavily involved in the photography community on G+; it took a year or so before I cracked 1,000 Followers, but around the middle of 2012 (I double-checked the timing using CircleCount), I began posting to a few of the big Theme Pages (Landscape, Architecture, B&W, Flowers, etc) and had some photos featured, which at that time meant that your name was added to a Daily, or Weekly Shared Circle, and when that happened, it wasn't uncommon to be added to the Circles of 1-200 people within a couple of hours. Plateaued at about 2,000 followers until early 2014, when I connected with some people like Mark Traphagen, Eric Enge, David Amerland, Martin Shervington. Again, through networking, commenting, sharing, my Follower count grew to over 6,000 by mid-summer 2014, and since then it's just slow and steady growth. That's the story of my personal Profile - getting deeply involved in a couple active communities (photography and then social media marketing/SEO/websites).

As for the Page, I had one of the very earliest G+ Pages when they were announced, whatever they were originally called. Probably one of the first dentists in the world. That's about when Linda and I started talking on a big dental forum, and she eventually helped me fix some dupe problems and optimize the Page for the guidelines back then. That one developed far more slowly, though, and it didn't start gaining Followers until early 2014 through that same learning and engagement with the SMM/SEO/website people. And the way I did that, was basically using it just like it was a person - as a Page, I joined Communities, commented on posts by others, shared interesting content from others, used hashtags and plus-mentioned people who might be interested. Much of what I learned came from Martin Shervington and his Plus Your Business Academy. But the basic method was to interact with people as the Page, much like a Brand representative.

We should be realistic about the Page Followers, though. I'd estimate a minimum 30% of those are spam or fake. Assume only 600 actual followers and it's probably close.

I'm pretty beat from Thanksgiving today, so tomorrow I'll write a bit more on how it's helped business.

Thanks, Charles. I certainly look forward to hearing more. Happy thanksgiving!!!