- if your goal is to broadcast your message to as many potential customers as possible. In fact, if numbers are your only metric of success, then don’t waste your time with Google+ right now.

OK, now that the 7 of you disbelievers have stopped reading, let’s continue for the rest of you.

Google+ stats

Paul Allen reports Google+ has 62 million users, adding 625k users each day. (Image courtesy of Paul Allen).

Quoting Paul: “If this rate of new signups (625k daily) continues then Google+ will reach 100 million users on Feb. 25th and 200 million users on August 3. They will finish 2012 with 293 million users.”

To explain that in ways you can understand and compare it to something else, Facebook reports it has about 750 million users, putting Google+ at 39% as many users as Facebook – in just 12 months for Google+.

I bet you’re a little more interested now.

Other reasons to use Google+ for Small Business

1) As a first/early mover of businesses using Google+, folks will see your small business as someone they can ask questions of.

2) Google is also heavily weighting profiles and participation, so if someone is lagging in organic (unpaid) Google listings for their product/service, it’s an opportunity to move up the rankings.

3) Hangouts are video opportunities to hold mini-webinars to demo products or services. They’re free of charge, and no doubt you’ll soon be able to record your hangout and be able to upload them to (and refer back to them on) YouTube.

Examples: See Daniel Gordon and Samuel Gordon Jewelers for a great example of someone who is using Google+ effectively.

How to use Google+ For Small Business

Start by having all your key employees sign up for a personal account, and complete their profiles with photos, links to your online properties, and smiling photos. People love doing business with people. You can do this at http://plus.google.com

Share some relevant industry information – each person who has a Google+ account should now begin sharing some relevant information about your business’ industry. This should not be spammy, but instead information that would be of interest to people who do business with your business.

Share some relevant company information – If you have any great articles, now is a good time to share them. Just a few, not EVERYTHING you’ve ever posted.

After a few days, and at least 3 or 4 Google+ posts, you’re ready to create your business page.

Pick 1 person, and have her set up a Google+ business page. It’s as simple as clicking on this graphic in the right hand side of their Google+ profile.

For a complete profile, and to get the best results, she will need the company URL and a nice version of your corporate logo.

Publish the new business page on her Google+ profile (it’s an option at the end of the setup) and have everyone else who has Google+ share it with their followers.

Share a little bit here and a little bit there, measuring your time and seeing what happens with your investment. 30-90 minutes a week is all the time I’d invest right now.

For more ideas and information about using Google+ for your business, circle me on Google+, read What Can Google+ Do For Your Business over at Business on Main or pick up a copy of Chris Brogan’s Google+ for Business.

YOUR TURN: Is YOUR business using Google+ yet? If yes, please leave your businesses Google+ page in your comment. If you’re not, why not?

UPDATE: Google just updated their social search to make Google+ content even MORE relevant. Read about the Search Plus Your World update on the Official Google Blog.

Disclaimer: My blog is a part of an online influencer network for Business on Main. I receive incentives to share my views on a monthly basis.

I’ve been asked more than a few times already to explain what Google+ is, and if you need it, so when I found this video, I knew I needed to share it with you. At just two minutes and thirty seconds, it’s quick and easy to understand.

What do you think? Do you understand Google+ a little more now? Do you think you need Google+ now? Or are you waiting for it to gain mass acceptance before you dive in? I’m already using it, and you can check out my profile on the right sidebar, or by clicking onto Phil Gerbyshak’s Google+ profile.

As any reader of this blog knows, I like to showcase other people here, as the web is about more than just me. I’d like to share a tale of 2 guest posts, and talk about how you can do better guest posts to get more traffic to your site.

Guest post 1

Content rich, original article, focused on things the folks who read this website and who connect with the readers. Author monitored the comments section, engaged with those who commented, tweeted out the link to her network, shared it on Facebook, and did a great job promoting my site and her article.

Results: high engagement, many people reading the article and sharing the article. Others tweeted and Facebooked the article, folks commented, and even today, it’s a popular article several months later. And the links in the article and the author bio got clicked many times, as readers wanted to learn more about the author.

Guest post 2

Advertising like style of article, focused on his business, no connection to my readers. No comments to monitor, also no tweets and no Facebook shares.

Results: low engagement, few people read the article, and one comment very upset that I would post something so blatantly advertising. Zero clicks on any links in the article so far.

4 Lessons for other guest posters

1) Adding value works, blatant advertising messages don’t

2) Original content works best

3) If you want something to get traffic, you have to push it a little bit yourself

4) Monitoring and responding to comments is worthwhile

I’ll work to get more type 1 guest posts and less type 2 guest posts in the future. Thanks to you my great readers for your feedback and encouragement and demand to do a better job for you. This would be a lonely place without you here.

Great article over at Business on Main that outlines (with details) 4 steps to using online video to boost your business:

1) Plan your strategy

2) Make your videos

3) Place your videos

4) Drive traffic

All simple, yet solid, tips and ones every business can actually do to leverage the power of online video.

Don’t think video is important?

YouTube is now the second-largest search engine.

Are you doing video for your business? If not, what’s holding you back?

Get started by reading the article over at Business on Main about using online video to boost your business and then get going making some great videos!

My blog is a part of an online influencer network for Business on Main. I receive incentives to share my views on a monthly basis.

My friend and fellow social media lover Sonny Ahuja is doing a test run of his social media workshop for $297 for a full 3 hour workshop. I don’t know how many people his sessions can hold, so I’d encourage you to sign up soon.

I met Sonny a few years ago at an event I was sitting on a panel for. He sat in the audience quietly, and then I learned he was speaking at the next month’s event…as a Twitter expert who got his follower count up to 50,000 people. As you know, I am not a big numbers guy in social media, I think it’s all about finding the RIGHT people to follow you, finding the people who will click your links and actually buy your product, so I wasn’t sold. Interested, but not sold.

So I decided to ask Sonny out to dinner that night to see if he was really as smart as he seemed. I was a little skeptical. OK, I was a LOT skeptical! I know there are LOTS of ways you can get your follower count high on Twitter and never sell a darn thing.

Over dinner, Sonny told me about his family, told me about his offline perfume business, and asked me lots of questions about my business.

Then I asked him about his Twitter followers, asked about how he got so many people to follow him, and what program he used to inflate his follower count. He told me there was no “program” he used. Sonny told me it was all about adding value, being funny, and connecting with people.

He told me to follow him on Twitter and see what I found out.

And believe it or not, that’s EXACTLY what he did. Sonny made people laugh (or cringe, if you don’t like clean, corny jokes), he shared valuable content, and he talked with people on Twitter. Exactly what I teach people to do, and here was a guy, local to me, I’d never heard of before, and I was floored.

Fast forward a few months, and Sonny and I had more than a few cups of coffee, and we talked about doing some of these workshops together. Unfortunately I just haven’t had the time to work with him to do my share, so Sonny put together an amazing social media workshop for just $297 for 3 hours, at least for this first event on April 23rd second event on May 20th. And though he’s offering me a small spiff if you sign up through my link, I would absolutely attend this event if I didn’t already have plans on April 23rd May 20th (I need to get unbusy. I am DEFINITELY planning on the next one).

Put it this way: you’re going to learn a ton of social media information from a master of social media who not just knows the tools but who has also used this to build his very successful business for a full 180 minutes, plus I’m sure Sonny will answer questions for a while, and you can take as many notes as you want, for just $297.

SIGN UP TODAY for this social media workshop on April 23rd May 20th, 2011 in Milwaukee, WI.

Not enough reason to attend? Sonny is SO CONFIDENT in the value his workshop will bring, he’s also offering a 100% money back guarantee.

Wow!

Sign up NOW and then let me know what you think of the workshop.

As of 8 AM on April 19th, 2011, I am officially part of the team at Turning Minds, and I will serve as the Marketing Technology Strategist, doing many of the same things I’ve done on my own for much of the past 6 years.

Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my dream of being an entrepreneur. I’ve simply decided I can help my clients achieve more by working with a small nimble team, and there are TONS of reasons I’m excited to work with the team at Turning Minds.

Here are a mere 5 reasons I’m excited to be joining Turning Minds

1) Working with a team – One of the things I enjoyed about corporate America was working on a team of like-minded individuals. I worked by myself for much of the last 11 months since I left corporate America full-time, and there were times I got lonely. That led me to being less productive than I could be, and it wasn’t good for my clients, or for me.

2) Faster service for clients – I’m still going to do as many speaking engagements as I can, as that’s how I meet new potential clients and how I can share my best case studies about how social media really works. But while I’m doing that, I often can’t serve my clients needs as well as I’d like to. Having a great team who share my client-first attitude with me will allow me to comfortably have someone else serve clients while I’m working on other things.

3) Ability to Focus on What I’m Good At – As a solo-preneur, I’ve had to do every piece of client work by myself, or at least manage the partners I’ve worked with to ensure things are done with the same care I would give my clients. I’m sure I did some micromanaging, and probably some none managing, of my outsourced partners. Now that I’m part of a team, I can invest the time on the front end to explain the project and let each person on the team do what they do best, and get out of the way for things I don’t do well at all.

4) Constant collaboration – I’ve already this in action and I’m excited to see more of it. Things that I’ve done on my own I’ve shared with some of the folks at Turning Minds and I am impressed with the results. I love that I can now pick up the phone or send an e-mail and get feedback on what I’m working on and not have to worry about compromising client secrets.

5) Accountability for Results – Part of working with other people that I enjoy is the accountability I put on myself when other people are counting on me to produce. I haven’t written as much as I’d like lately, and now that I have a team counting on me, you’ll see more writing and more ideas from me. We’re finalizing our editorial calendar and will be bringing some great topics to light that can help you grow your small business faster.

One change you’ll see that may require a change from you, my dear readers, is my writings on social media and small business will be shared at Turning Minds. I’ll still be writing articles here about networking and public speaking and other random thoughts.

Go check out Turning Minds and sign up for the RSS feed and the newsletter. We’re going to share some great stuff there and I’m confident it will help your business grow.

Questions/comments/concerns? Let me know in the comments.

Great article in this month’s Fast Company magazine about social networking affecting brains like love. It’s super insightful and talks, in depth, about the way our brain is impacted by using social media…and how we go through withdrawal symptoms when we stop using it.

Seems like a good reason to use social media for people, but what about for companies? If we know that companies that instill trust create a bond with customers, and social media can build trust, and trust equals love, then companies would be well suited to use social media to create love for their customers AND for their employees.

Some great examples of companies who “get” this include Zappos, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines. I linked to their Twitter pages, so you can see how they use social media. You can find them other places too, but you should get a good feel for their style and how you might use social media in your company…or how you might try to convince your boss to let you tweet on company time.

Does your company get social media? If not, maybe you should share the article with your human resources department as an a way to increase employee engagement, because most people work harder when they feel love at work.

Last week I gave a presentation to the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce called 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Increase Your Sales. It was very well received, and I think the slides are worth sharing so you can increase your LinkedIn abilities.

What would you include if you were doing this presentation? Would you remove anything? Any questions I can answer for you?

If you’d like me to deliver a presentation like this to your organization, please contact me today.

Boy the Internet is one powerful machine. I didn’t realize just HOW powerful until I saw this video. Stats, stats and more stats, all that will make you stand up and say WOW!

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Can you believe that back in 1995, Newsweek thought the Internet would fail? Wow!

Of course, now folks say the same thing about social media. Social media is just a trend. Stats, composed of real humans, say otherwise.

Watch the video again. Check out the stats. Then tell me social media is just a fad, a phase, or something that’s going away.

It’s not going to be exactly the same though. Some services may go away. Some more shine more brightly.

But make no mistake: social media, things that are easy to create, easy to share, easy to understand, will not go away. We have the power, as consumers, as publishers, as people who have a real voice. Why would we give that back to a company?

I was talking with my good buddy Terry Starbucker this week about the upcoming SOBCon conference, and reminiscing back to the first event, with this year’s event being the 4th annual event. The photo in this article is from that very first conference.

What I love about SOBCon is the Big C Community attendees immediately become part of, and that they continue to be part of, once they attend one event.

It’s an amazing thing to me, this Big C Community. There aren’t a lot of places like this in my life. I’ve been part of a lot of organizations, and few have fulfilled my need to be part of this.

What’s a Big C Community?

A Big C Community is one in which a shared sense of purpose pumps through everyone in the organization, whether it’s a formal organization or an annual conference folks look forward to attending every year.

Why do Big C Communities matter? LOTS of reasons, but none more important than the 4 I’ll share below.

4 Cs of a vibrant Big C Community:

Collaboration – Members of a Big C Community work together, sharing their ideas, their talents, their passions, their love, with other members of the community.

Connection – Members of a Big C Community have a sense of connection and feel it even when they are far apart. Social media helps keep this connection piece of Big C Communities going long after the physical connection is over.

Consistency – Members of a Big C Community expect consistent display of the shared values from those who lead the community.

Communication – When you’re part of a Big C Community, you expect frequent communication from the leaders of the community and from others who are part of the community. You don’t expect to hear from someone only when it’s time for the next conference, but you expect to hear from others in the community all year round.

And to answer Rich Hand’s question, serving customers in social media does remain the same as serving customers offline: Customers don’t want to be treated like customers. They want to feel part of something bigger, and they want, no they CRAVE, to be part of a Big C Community.

I’m planning to go to 2 conferences that are Big C Communities to me: HDI2010 and SOBCon. Will I see you at either event?