Your 10 Step Google+ Launch Day Checklist

Google+ is now open to the public and with that opening, corner offices are asking marketing departments around the world: “What are we doing with Google+?” If you need an answer besides “I don’t know”, this post is for you.

First and foremost, brands are still not rolled out, so put the thought of a corporate page out of your mind for the moment. Let’s talk about building up your personal G+ presence. As with all social networks, size does matter, so feel free to send this post to the rest of your marketing team. The more people from your company that follow these steps, the more powerful your network of people will be to support the main company page when brands are allowed to launch.

1. Set up a profile that doesn’t suck. Take the time to fill it out and tell people about who you are. Bonus: add in your blog and other recommended links to ensure complete coverage of your digital presence. If you’re doing this as part of a company, make sure you’ve got your company in there!

2. Set up a redirect. Google+ still doesn’t have friendly URLs. Set up a redirect off your domain name that is easy to remember. I’ve got cspenn.com/g for mine.

3. Seed your network. Google+ pulls from GMail and Google Contacts. Take your personal mailing list and dump it into your Google Contacts, then find those people on Google+ and circle them as existing contacts.

4. Turn on those social widgets. The +1 button now lets you share publicly, so if you’ve got a blog or website that can use widgets from companies like ShareThis, AddThis, etc., make sure they’re up to date and active.

5. Lame as it may be, if you have pages on the web that are important to you (like your company, your blog, etc.) hit the +1 button on them now.

That way you’re getting your pages into G+ (and Google’s real time SEO analytics):

6. If you use social networks in your email signature, add in your G+ redirect.

7. Sync your social! On a regular basis, remind people on each network where you are on other networks:

8. Make sure all your welcome pages have Google+ integrated into them.

9. If you’re not already sharing and participating on Google+, now would be a good time to start.

10. Go back and read how to set up metrics on Google+.

Google+ is out the door and publicly available. If you haven’t had a chance to use it until now, use this checklist to lay the groundwork for getting up and running really fast.

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