Google+ Archives - Christiankonline.com

85+ Time-Saving Social Media Keyboard Shortcuts – Infographic

Are you looking to become more efficient with your social media management?

This way you can spend less time managing your channels and more time creating content to grow your business.

One of the fastest ways is to learn social media keyboard shortcuts.

What are keyboard shortcuts?

For those of you not familiar with keyboard shortcuts, they’re a faster way to access features within a program without the need to access a menu.

Instead, you can press a combination of keys to perform the same function.

My favorite keyboard shortcut is Command + Shift + 4 to take a screenshot.

This particular shortcut has saved me lots of time when creating blog posts or writing articles because I can quickly take a screenshot using just my keyboard.

Why are social media shortcuts important?

Today, we aren’t just using keyboard shortcuts on the computer.

We’re also spending more of our time on social networks.

Because we don’t have a lot of time to waste, we need to be aware of the many social media shortcuts that are available.

This way we can work faster because of the demands on our time.

This article is going to take a look at social media keyboard shortcuts for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and Tumblr.

Social media keyboard shortcuts

Continue reading 85+ Time-Saving Social Media Keyboard Shortcuts – Infographic

Promoting your service using a Google Helpouts custom URL

One of my favorite tools I use to help grow my business is Google Helpouts.

If you are new to Google Helpouts, it is an amazing tool where you can give live help over video.

Getting started with Google Helpouts

I have been offering Helpouts since they began in November and it has been an extremely valuable part of my business.

So far, I’ve been using Google Helpouts for my Facebook one-on-one coaching sessions.

Facebook One-on-One coaching with Google Helpouts.

If you want to give your own Google Helpouts, you can get started here.

Marketing Google Helpouts

Once you have signed up and have a listing, your listing is available on Google Helpouts.

This is a good way to generate helpout sessions from people searching on the helpouts site.

What if you want to make it easy for people to remember your URL and do your own marketing?

For example, through your social media channels or to your email list?

This is where creating a Google Helpouts custom URL comes in handy.

Benefits of a custom URL

The main reason to create a Google Helpouts custom URL is so that it is easier to promote your helpout.

Example of a Google Helpouts custom URL.

Remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for consumers (people interested in your product) to become customers (people ready to buy your product).

This is where having a custom URL can help you out.

Instead of sending someone a URL that isn’t easy to remember, you can send them your Google Helpouts custom URL – or even add them on your business cards.

Here’s how to create a Google Helpouts custom URL in just a few easy steps.

How to create a Google Helpouts custom URL

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5 Hashtag tracking tools to help track and measure social media performance

How many of you are use hashtag tracking tools to help you identify and plan out your social media campaigns?

Recently, I was giving a presentation on how to leverage hashtags and spent a lot of time answering questions from people wanting to know if there were social media tools to help identify which hashtags they needed to include.

In this article, I am going to cover five hashtag tracking tools you can use to find the right hashtags to use with your social media campaigns.

What are hashtags?

For those of you new to hashtags, hashtags are a way to group conversations together.

For example, I conveniently use the hashtag #AskCK to make it easier for users on Twitter to ask me questions.

This also makes it easier for me to track the conversation by simply clicking on the hashtag.

Hashtags are also very useful when you want to insert your information into other larger conversations.

An example of this is using the hashtag #BizTips when sharing updates that are business related or using #Socialmedia when sharing content that is social media related.

Benefits of using hashtags

As I mentioned, by including hashtags in your discussions, it makes it easier for people to follow the discussion that is taking place.

For example, many events create their own hashtag so that attendees can see who is saying what at an event.

If they did not include hashtags, it would be difficult to follow all of the conversations taking place.

The same holds true when trying to measure how effective your social media campaigns were.

Imagine having to go through thousands of conversations. By including a hashtag, you can quickly filter the conversations to only show conversations using a specific hashtag.

This way you can quickly see the conversations and measure your performance.

5 Hashtag tracking tools

Now that you are aware of what hashtags are, how do you identify which hashtags you should be using in your social media campaigns?

Fortunately, there are a number of hashtag tracking tools you can use to help identify, analyze, and measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign.

Continue reading 5 Hashtag tracking tools to help track and measure social media performance

The complete guide to social media dimensions – Infographic

Do you struggle with finding the right dimensions to use on your social media channels?

With a number of social networks changing their social media dimensions, I understand how frustrating it can be to keep up.

For example, both Facebook and Twitter changed their social media dimensions in 2014.

Here is an example of their new layouts.

Facebook Page redesign in 2014. **Source:** Facebook Page redesign news

Twitter redeisng — Twitter redesign in 2014. **Source:** Twitter redesign news

While I love the new look of both channels, it can be frustrating for community managers, social media managers and businesses.

This is because when new redesigns come out, they don’t always tell you what social media dimensions you need to update to.

Fortunately, the team at Insight180 put together an extremely helpful infographic that features the latest social media dimensions for:

This infographic shows you which social media dimensions you need to use and also includes the right sizes for images you include in your posts as well.

So what social media dimensions you should be using for 2014?

Social media dimensions (May 2014)

Continue reading The complete guide to social media dimensions – Infographic

How to redeem or use a promo code on Google Helpouts

Did you receive a Google Helpouts promo code? Learn how to redeem Google Helpouts promo codes to get free Google Helpouts!

For the past few months, I’ve been using Google Helpouts to provide Facebook One-on-One coaching.

During this time, I’ve really enjoyed helping businesses fix their Facebook problems.

For those of you not familiar with Google Helpouts, let me explain a little about Google Helpouts and how they work.

What are Google Helpouts?

Google Helpouts are a tool you can communicate with professionals in your industry to get help.

Here are some of the features of Google Helpouts:

Video conference
Audio-only helpout
Chat
Screen-sharing
Record a Google Helpout (Hangouts on Air)

For my Facebook One-on-One Coaching sessions on Helpouts, I often provide promo codes so you can try them out.

One question that has consistently come up is how to redeem Google Helpouts promo codes.

To help you out, I’ve put to together a tutorial on how to redeem Google Helpouts promo codes. Follow the instructions below.

How to redeem Google Helpouts promo codes

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Opting out of Google shared endorsements

How do you feel about Google sharing your profile in something called Google shared endorsements?

What are Google shared endorsements?

Google shared endorsements for reviews — Example of Google shared endorsements in product reviews.

Shared endorsements are a way for Google to share reviews and recommendations across Google products like YouTube, Google Maps, and the Google Play music store.

With shared endorsements, Google will use your Google Plus profile and name when your friends are browsing businesses, products, and websites to help boost recommendations.

By seeing what your friends like (and don’t like), this can help bring social proof and influence user decisions.

While shared endorsements are a great way to use social proof to influence user decisions, not everyone wants their photo and name displayed though.

The great thing is that Google makes it very easy to opt-out of Google shared endorsements.

To opt-out of Google shared endorsements, follow the instructions below.

How to opt-out of Google shared endorsements

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Take Google+ further with Google+ Embedded Posts

Google Plus recently rolled out Google Plus embedded posts. Now before you think they’re copying Facebook, Twitter, or Vine, hold that thought.

What Google Plus embedded posts do is they let you take a status update from Google Plus and share it on your favorite blog or website. Big deal, right?

Why use Google Plus embedded posts on your blog or website?

When I first saw this feature from Google, it got me excited. This is because with Google Plus embedded posts, you’re not just including an image of a post from Google Plus.

Instead, you get to do the following with Google Plus embedded posts:

Embed a Google Plus post
Circle the author
+1 a post
Share a post
Comment on a post
Follow the entire conversation outside of Google Plus

This is kind of a big deal (and an advantage), because now you have a way to share content on Google Plus – where you can engage with one set of users.

If you want to take things a step further though, you can take that content (and the entire conversation) off to your blog or website by using Google Plus embedded posts to engage with a different audience who might not be connected with you on Google Plus.

This also allows your readers to do the same on their blog or website, which in-turn can help spread the word about your content and allow those readers who haven’t yet connected with you to add you to their circles.

Penchant for Google Plus

For anyone who has spoken with me at length about Google Plus, you’ll know that I also see this having huge SEO benefits. While this isn’t happening now, it’s coming.

The more you embed and engage with Google Plus content, the more likely Google is to boost the SEO ranking for that website.

Still not sure if Google Plus embedded posts are THAT valuable?

Here is an example of using Google Plus embedded posts within your blog or website. Notice all of the touch-points that you can interact with.

Follow these instructions to learn how to embed Google Plus posts on your blog or website.

Using Google Plus posts to grow your social presence

Continue reading Take Google+ further with Google+ Embedded Posts

4 ways to format Google+ posts and standout

Learn how to format Google+ posts and add appeal to your posts so that you stand-out.

While current social trends suggest that Google+ is still in second place behind Facebook in terms of growth, one area where Google+ beats Facebook is in the ability to add different types of formatting to your Google+ posts.

On Google+, you can add four types of formatting to your posts.

Bold
Italics
~~Strikethrough~~
Combination

Learning how to format takes just a couple of minutes and can come in handy when you’re sharing something important and you want to add emphasis to it.

To format Google+ posts, follow the instructions listed below.

4 ways to format Google+ posts

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Save Google searches to save time on Google+

If you could save Google searches and improve your workflow and save time in the process, what would you do with the time you saved?

For anyone who has spent time searching for things on Google+, one of the most overlooked features is the ability to save Google searches.

Saving your Google search within Google+ makes it easy to access items you search for a lot on the site. For example, if you’re a social media strategist and you’re always searching for terms such as “Google+ marketing,” instead of having to type this search in each time, you can save it for later.

Saving a Google search in Google+ is very easy to do. You can find instructions, along with a video on how to save Google searches in Google+ below.

How to save Google searches on Google+

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