Ever since Google officially launched the much-awaited Google+ Business Pages, thousands of businesses and organizations online have been at the tedious job of building and nurturing their page in an endeavor to stand out or at the very least make the most of the undeniable weight of the Google brand. It has already been established that activity on Google+ has an influence however minor at the moment as far as search engine optimization is concerned and with the large number of users joining Google+ at a rate that can only be referred to as phenomenal, more than ever, it is important for marketers to claim their brand and represent themselves on this new social network. If you’ve created a page for your business on Google+ then don’t kid yourself that this is as far as it goes. You will need to build your leads and in this post, we will teach you how to do just that.

How to kick start your lead generation using Google+

1. Start discussions with your peers and influencers

After you’ve registered your page and populated it with your basic details, it can be an absolutely great idea to set up a schedule of discussions that you’d like to have on issues that relate to your industry or niche or problems that relate to your products and services. You can think of this activity as an editorial calendar for your Google+ page.

One of the great advantages that Google+ has over the other social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter is that it’s easy to have actual conversations and encourage responses. As you get started with your Google+ business page, Circle some people in your field with relevant interests, and invite them to participate in conversations. You can do this by adding their name either to a post or a comment by typing a plus sign (+) followed by their name (e.g. “+Pete Wilson). The user you tag will receive a notification that they were mentioned accompanied by an invitation to respond. Since there’s no real limit to how much text you can include in one entry, it’s a great place to start a discussion and subsequently inviting other people to the conversation. A few marketing uses of this Google+ business strategy are generating feedback from your followers about your content, products, or services, building your relationships with the other industry thought leaders and establishing your company as an industry expert.

2. Include videos and attractive images on your page

When starting discussions or posting comments on your Google+ business page, it can be a brilliant idea to include videos and images to your posts. Unlike the other social networks that only display thumbnails or make you exit the site to access content on another site, Google+ supports users posting rich content onto their stream such as photos and videos that can be prominently displayed on the business page.

This, if you didn’t figure it out yet, offers you as a marketer the opportunity to create and display sharp looking calls-to-action for your followers as well as to share messages visually. Since Google+ allows you to add images of any size as well, don’t settle for small icons or hard-to-see graphics. Instead, do that which you can’t do on the other social media platforms. Upload bright and attractive images that will help pull your viewers in and engage them. It will also encourage your followers to click-through to your website.

3. Add your blog posts to your Google+ page

While there isn’t a method for auto-publishing the blog posts on your website onto Google+ yet, an important reason to be active on this network is to make sure that your posts are being published on your business page getting an opportunity to earn comments, shares, and +1s on the site. These factors, as you probably already know, can all impact the search engine optimization of your site. You see, Google loves to see positive interaction and engagement when it comes to content so evidence that people are enjoying a site and its content is extremely valuable. It’s a great way to expand your network and online visibility while simultaneously subtly promoting the organic search results for your website. You might or might not be aware of this but people who find your blog posts in the organic search results can now see how many +1 votes it has received as well as the names and faces of any friends/connections who have personally given it a vote. This is a tremendous vote of confidence for each article you generate

4. Find inspiration for your email-marketing message

The best content to produce and share with your prospects often comes from asking people what they are looking for. Truth is, unless you ask, you may never know what people need. As such, something you can do to help your case is to use your Google+ page followers as a focus group to determine if there’s any important content you’re missing out on or if they’d like to learn more about a particular topic. Build their requests into your next email send, and make sure you share the web version of your email on Google+ so your followers can see it right away on the network. This is yet another opportunity for people to engage with you and your brand, and they’ll appreciate you even more if you incorporate their feedback and requests into your content production.

5. Promote your offers to generate leads

Don’t forget to share your business offers and landing pages on your Google+ page. While you don’t want to overdo it with self-promotion (obviously nobody likes people who only talk about themselves), you should still tell people about your offers and what value they have. Promoting a new eBook or whitepaper that users can download from your site on a landing page is a great way to turn your Google+ followers into your business leads.