Google + is an extremely important platform for anyone that wants to market their business online.  It is much more than a social network and within the next 2 years you will have a Google + account whether you like or not as it is the foundation layer for all Google products including search.

A couple of months back we covered an article on Google plus tools but we’ve discovered some more useful tools and plugins we want to share.

So here are 3 killer tools if you are using Google Plus for Business.

1.  Share scheduled content on Google Plus using Doshare

If you use your Google + personal profile to share content to your network then you need to install DoShare.  This is a chrome plugin which allows you to schedule content to share out on Google +.

When you install the Chrome plugin you’ll get a little button on your browser.  When you find content you want to share you click the button and up popups a screen similar to the following where you fill out additional details related to the post.

Here is a great post from Lee Odden that I shared out a couple of days ago:

 

DoShare for Google Plus
Schedule content to share using DoShare2.

 

You can also define what circles you want to share your content out to and also schedule the content.  The reason tools such as Hootsuite don’t support the scheduling of content to a Google personal page is because there is no server side facility for doing this.  This means you can’t send a message to Google plus and tell it to send it later.  Instead you need to process everything on the client.  This means that for this scheduling to work effectively you need to have chrome up and running at the time you have scheduled the content.

As part of this plugin you also have the facility to send any Google Plus posts to Doshare.  When you find interesting content on Google Plus you may want to schedule it out.

 

Send to doshare
Click this button to schedule delivery of a post later

 

What I do is use Google Chrome for all my social media activities and use Safari for everything else.  This saves me a lot of time and helps me to become more organized.

2. Find and mention authors using replies and more

If you put a comment on a post on Google Plus and mention someone’s name in the comment they get notified in gmail that you mentioned them.

So what you need to do is start typing in the persons name and Google will look up to find a list of people that matches and then you can select the appropriate one.  In the example below I’m looking for Sarah Evans.

 

Searching for Google plus author
You type in the first couple of letters and Google will show you a dropdown you select from

 

Replies and More is a Google Plus plugin that I first heard about from Guy Kawasaki.   When you install it you get a button ‘reply to author’ on every post.

 

Replies and more Google plus plugin
A ‘reply to author’ button is added

 

When you click the reply to author button it automatically adds the persons name (i.e. Sarah Evans)

 

Replies and more response for Google plus
The authors name is automatically added

 

It also adds additional sharing options to the post so you can share a Google plus post to Twitter, Facebook or eMail.

 

Replies and more social media sharing
Easily share Google + content to Twitter, Facebook or e-mail

 

3.  Hangout Graphics Creator

I came across this tool from a weekly post that Ray Hiltz (Google Plus Expert) shares with his weekly Google Plus tips newsletter.  Thanks Ray!

Hangoutmagic allow you to create a customized banner which appears across the bottom of your video image when you are on a hangout.  So, when you are on a hangout you may want to display your name, company and logo.

 

Hangout Banner Image
You can add your own text and logo to appear on the bottom of your video when you are on a hangout

 

Here is a video which steps through how to set it up.

 

 

There are a variety of tools that allow you share content to you Google + Page. For example, you can use Dlvr.it to automatically pick up your blog post and share to your Google Plus page.

Summary

Google + is a platform that is going to become more and more important.   As it develops there will be more tools to help.  You really need to start building your network now!

Here are some Google Plus Experts to follow:

Ray Hiltz –  I came across the hangout tool through Ray’s weekly tips, well worth signing up.

Mark Traphagen – Mark writes very comprehensive posts about Google + that are always worth reading.

Amanda Blain – Over 2 million followers on Google +

If you use Google plus for business what tools are effective for you?

So what tools do you use?  Are you benefiting from Google + ?

photo credit: ivanpw via photopin cc


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