How to attract an audience on Google+

Follow the leaders?
- Thoughts about getting in those circles... Also for business pages!

I can’t say this often enough: If you want to have people circling you, first you should be doing this to people yourself. There are lots of lists the search and suggestions for all interests and now you can ask people to share their circles with you directly, either in private or in public.
Try searching Google+ for "shared a circle with you" and save the search, then you'll have a never ending supply of interesting people, recommended by the Plussers.

Communities are an excellent place to meet users who are interested in the same things you are:
This new feature will be a game changer for Google+ as it makes getting together and finding interesting people even easier.  You can interact with the folks in the community or circle them and start following what they post about outside the community, too.

When posting to Communities, please stay on topic.

- Check the discussions or topics and the Community guidelines on the left before posting to a new Community
- Don't share funny memes, music videos or your family photos in a community meant for serious discussion
- Don't spam anywhere or your profile might get suspended because people report spam

- Don't start a community just because you can without being passionate about your topic, sometimes it's better to join a bigger one and get more interaction that way

- Do not name your community with the same name that many other communities already have
- Do not use official Google or any other brand logos

- Do comment, +1 and share interesting content to and from the Communities!

CircleCount has created a list of the Google+ Communities, many tens of thousands of them already listed!
Google+ support site for Communities is a good place to start and find answers to many questions.

How to start:

To make good use of Google+, you should follow the five C’s: 

Circle, curate, create, communicate & consume!

After posting some stuff, the next step is to make comments. It does not have to be a full-blown opinion or explanation, just a few words to show you’re interested.  When you do comment, the author and all other commenters get a notification (unless some of them muted the post), but your circles won't know.

You can also promote good content in two ways:

- Click "+1" to let the author of the post know you read their post. Your circles won't be informed that you +1'd something.

- Click "Share" to tell your circles about this. You can choose what circles to share with or if you want the whole of Circleverse to know, then go Public and better still: Use #hashtags to describe the contents of the post, and you can also add your own introduction text. 

The hashtags can be yours and unique or already used by someone else; when you type # and start typing a word right after it, Google usually suggests some hashes.

Try it - share this blogpost on Google+!  Just click on the +1 button on top left (black bar) and choose with which circles or Communities you wish to share.

Profile, it all boils down to your profile

When the Plussers (others too, not just the original poster) see your contribution (+1, comments or share) they will check out your profile's hovercard and perhaps the profile, too. If they like your content, then they will circle you.

You have to engage to be in the game. At this point it would be nice to have your profile picture and tagline ready, the one that shows on your ‘hovercard’:

- When you mouse over somebody’s name in Google+ you see a hovercard with a picture, name and some text, if the person has filled out their profile, that is. Otherwise you’ll just see a Bluehead image and a name.

When owners or moderators get requests for joining private or controlled Communities, they will check your profile to see what kind of person you are. If there is nothing to see, many leave your request unanswered...

How to get more people to circle you:

Take a look at you profile's 'About' page.

Employment – Think carefully what you write here because the text is shown on your ‘hovercard’. This is a big factor when deciding whether to add someone to circles or not! You can make the text quite long, but be careful not to bore or overwhelm the possible followers.
Make it snappy, like an alligator sandwich.

Remember to use ‘current employment’ option for the text to show.

- Your Google+ profile page has a section at the top between the photos and your name, where you can add a brief description of yourself.

Click the space and write; don’t make it too long, just so it shows in full. I recommend making it public for ‘anyone on the web’, as it will be your personal 'headline'. If several people have the same name, this is what distinguishes you from the rest.

Write your own content!

How about telling your contacts that you've joined G+?
Write a simple post, then choose the circles you want to share it with. G+ suggests those circles that you used in your last post.

If you select individual circles, G+ asks if you also want G+ to send e-mail to those people who are in your circles - if you do this, be careful to not annoy your contacts. Sometimes G+ won't ask about this, and that means no e-mails will be sent.

You can also add those friends who have an email address but haven't joined G+ yet: Just type the email address in the bottom share box.

You can add formatting like *bold* and _italic._ Just put those characters around the words. You can also mention others by typing + followed immediately by the name of the person. Google+ offers you a choice of names in a drop down menu, choose the correct one or paste the Google+ ID after the + sign. (The ID is the 21 -digit number series in the profile URL or address.) This will turn into the +name after posting.
To edit an existing post, click the small down arrow (top right of the post) and select "edit".


Remember however, no matter what you do on Google+:

Business Pages owners:

Too many of you haven't given any thought for the text on your hovercard Tagline!

You have around (or less in some cases) 30 characters for the 'tagline' so don't waste them in repeating the company name, never mind the SEO. The name is displayed on the hovercard and the tagline comes right under it.

The funniest tagline I saw just recently was "Company x - accessory in..."
- Accessory in what? Murder?  After the fact?

When people are mousing over your name anywhere on Google+, they're looking at the hovercard and  they want to know what the company is about.
2-second-pitch, I call it.

Remember: Good content is the most important step of all, without content you'll get nowhere...
Hope this is helpful, enjoy! :-)