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www.arborage.com Arbor Age / April 2014 25 lowing is a brief description of each and its bene- fi ts, as well as best practices to help you determine which social networks will best fi t into your social media strategy. Google Plus (G+) As the leader in Search Engine Mar- keting (SEM), Google aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Not only is G+ a social networking channel, but Google controls 65.2 percent 1 of what searchers fi nd online. If you set up nothing else, setting up your Google Business account is imperative, and will give you the most value. Generally speaking, the audience is made up of consumers who do not "know" you. How to use Google Plus By creating a G+ account, you claim your Google Business Page. Until you do, G+ will pro- vide information about your company that has been gathered from various sources around the web, correct or not. Lock down your company information to get the most out of Google services. Be- yond your initial company information, you can expand the basic listing by: • Telling prospects about your company's history, etc. — things that will make them confi dent that you know your customers and services inside and out. • Inventing fun ways to tell your circles what your company does, so your customers will know you're knowledgeable. • Getting people excited about the services you offer. Sometimes visual inspiration can really get people excited. Be creative — take and post pictures of projects, or simply post teasers to get existing and potential clients excited about what's coming next. Frequency Post new information to your G+ Business Account at least two times per week. Facebook Facebook exists so that people can share what they love most, with the people or "Friends" that are closest to them. How to use Facebook Facebook gives you the opportunity to build brand awareness and social value with new and existing customers by combining business with personal messaging. The people who interact with your Facebook page are most likely current customers, or they are friends or family of a customer. They "like" your company and are interested in what you have to say. Once you activate your Facebook account, you can: • Engage your fans in historical trivia. Not everything on Face- book has to or should be business related. Take the opportunity to engage your audience by posting events in your timeline. A great way to do that is to post a trivia question related to the industry that your fans might fi nd interesting. Then, answer the trivia question with a quick reply, or go all out and reply with a video. • Randomly amuse your audience. Entertainment is the goal of social media, and you can hop on the amusement bandwagon by giving your page a viral appeal. Think about how to really entertain your audience while still including company branding in your posts. • Give fans what they want. You can easily invite your fans to celebrate special events, products, services or the holidays with you. Frequency Post no more than one time every four hours and no less than twice per week. Twitter Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that can be accessed via native web and mobile applications, as well as various third-party management applications. Get people to trust you and your brand by spreading your message quickly and generating word-of-mouth marketing. Posts are called "Tweets," and users are referred to as "followers." How to use Twitter Twitter affords you the opportunity to build a personal relation- ship in a public forum one 140-character tweet at a time. You can use Twitter to provide: • Brief, informational nuggets about your company. Twitter is perfect for live event updates without too much detail — give just enough to keep your fans engaged and interested in what's happening right now. • Open tweeting to your entire company. Think about topics beyond your services, and don't forget about retweeting other industry-related news and tweets. Frequency Tweet daily, but at a minimum of twice per week. YouTube YouTube is another social media outlet owned by Google. YouTube is not just for posting videos of embar- rassing moments — it can also be used as a highly effective business