From time to time I am asked…”who on Google+ should I put in my Google+ Circle?”  This becomes a very hard question to answer when their question is usually followed by a list of people and businesses they found on Google+ who are turning them off to Google+.  Since most of these questions come from my clients I do what I can to guide them to finding the people and businesses who would meet their interests.

Who Are the Players

So who are these people asking me these questions?

Professionally, I deal primarily with the realist of the business world, the people who write the checks that make or break other business, the businesses with the large marketing budgets who want to move off Facebook to Google+ and who are the exact people everyone on Google+, including Google itself, needs interacting on their platform.  These business and their brands will draw in more people who follow them.

Naturally, these people are busy running their businesses and they don’t have a lot of time to spend online so they come to me to help cut to the chase on what Google+ really can do for them.  Of course, they don’t have to come to me to get this information but do because of my many years of overall business experience most people in social media consulting will never have.

These business people are not the over 50 crowd..or even the over 40 crowd many of you who know me will assume I only have association. These are business people, men and women,  who think very clearly and really don’t have the time to spend on things or people they see as not providing anyone value.  Are they misguided to think they are going to be able to control the the stream of content they are interested in reading about?  No!

Consumers Rule

Their attitude towards Google+ reflect exactly how their consumers think.  They look at Google+ as how their customers are going to see Google+ and Google+ will reflect on their Brand’s image.  The feedback they provide clearly tells me they are not even remotely interested in being associated with the snake oil campaigns starting to pop up everywhere on Google+.

Is it unrealistic of them to feel they will be able to homogenize their image on Google+?  Not really.

Most of these business owners and execs I talk to are only interested in controlling what they see when they go to Google+ which would reassure them consumers have control of what they see on Google+. Fortunately, these business people influence other businesses and if they see Google+ being something beneficial to their businesses the other businesses standing on the sidelines watching will come on board as well.

.gifs Killing G+

So, I work really hard to make sure they clearly understand Google+ and explain to them how to deal with their Google+ account to see the things they ONLY want to see. Unfortunately, Google makes explaining Google+ a very , very hard job, especially when it comes to explaining why Google allows their platform to be murdered by people who post .gifs and autoawesomes by the dozen.

However, I am encouraged to know these business execs have direct connections to the power levels of Google. Fortunately, I’m starting to get these busy people to change their mind about Google+ and they now see the value of Google+ over what the other social spaces do not offer.

Google+ Can Be a Much Calmer Place

Google+ to them is a much calmer place to spend their time and after training them on all the things they need to avoid I have been able to impressed upon them the valuable information they can gather on Google+.

Strangely they all are very negatively opinionated on the flood of so called SEO experts they see in the G+ stream who report seeing frequently thumping their chests like lowland guerrilla in an effort to attract attention to their old school ways of showing people how to use ineffective forms of internet marketing. This is when I get the question asking me who I recommend they put in their Circle to avoid wasting their time..and being insulted.

Don’t Be Body Slammed by a Lowland Gorilla

To insure these business people get a good start I do privately provide them all with my ‘A List’ of influential Plussers who I associate with directly.  However, I found giving them guidelines on who to look for and provide them with pointers on how to tell when snake oil is being pitched works better.  Here are just a few of the guidelines I offer them:

• Search Google+ for Well Known authorities in a field of interest.
• Stay away from the glamour headshots of someone wearing Google Glass
• Be leery of the posts featuring a Display Ad that includes someone’s headshot you do not know
• Be cautious of clicking on a Source Link from someone posting flashy display ads.
• Think three times of attending a Hangout with someone who is over marketing their event
• Read the person’s Profile’s carefully..no profile or a profile the reads like a sales pitch..keep moving.

I spend a lot of time with these business people showing them how to find interesting people on G+.  Getting their feedback a few weeks later thanking me for helping them and their staff to understand Google+ is very rewarding.

Who Are These People?

However, it is not uncommon for me to get a text on my phone from one or two of them asking me who is someone they found in their their stream who is spouting off about a G+ Hangout they are part of that claims they are the expert in some area of online marketing.   Unfortunately, many times I know the people they are turned off to and in most cases it takes me a bit to connivence them the person is OK..misguided..but OK.

Nonetheless, the feedback they provide me on some of the people they see on Google+ makes me think many of the people who are attempting to use G+ to attract consumers to hire them for their services..or to read their book..or whatever, may not know they are turning off more people than they are attracting.

Take a Look at Yourself

This feedback has resulted in me stepping back a bit from what I was doing on Google+ and has resulted in a number of things I and SyncLab Media are now doing on Google+.

There are a lot of snake oil looking marketing campaigns on Google+ from some very good professionals.  I really hope they take note of how they are coming across to a large number of people who could make their day a lot better and  they see the need to tone it down a notch or two or three.  Changing how they come across to people on G+ and being less confrontational with others who do know G+ sure would get their content looked at by more people if they did.

Let me know how I can help.