Google+ is a rapidly growing social network, that presents a wide range of engaging content from millions of users, but it can sometimes be a little confusing when it comes to finding the right people to follow, or where to look for this engaging content. Much like Facebook pages, Twitter lists, LinkedIn groups, Google+ has its Communities. Groups of like-minded people sharing similar and targeted content, for your reading, listening or viewing pleasure.
Whilst there are some very niche communities, we thought we’d start off at the top, and suggest our top 10 communities that any small business can join to help them with their social media, web design and content sharing efforts:
Social & Design
First off, Google+ Help – whether you’re new to Google+ and need to know the basics, or are an experienced user and have in-depth questions to ask, this community will keep you in the loop with the goings on throughout Google+ and provide an engaging community to post questions or help others.
Looking for tips on your social media attemps? Social Media Strategy provides tips, posts, images and statistics on blogging, branding, content marketing discussions or marketing. There’s something for any social media manager, content marketing or digital worker to read up on and digest, as well as a whole host of knowledgeable experts for in depth discussion.
A community for community managers, which is a place to share experiences and knowledge between community managers. This community has a strict policy on link sharing unless required to enhance a question or discussion, which is why you won’t find any useless spam here, only useful, engaging and topical discussions.
The Photo Community is a creative place to view and share images, whether you’re a complete novice or an expert photographer. Whether you’re looking for inspiration for another post, ideas for a social media comment or even just to join in with some Q&A’s to help you with your own photography skills, to cut down on stock image costs or product shoots.
Infographics are a great way to convey information in an exciting and easily digestible image format – they can make for a great social post, enhance a blog post with statistics or provide a snapshot of data for research into a new product or need. This community is based around the sharing of various infographics over a multitude of topics.
Marketing, Web and Analytics
Run by Ingenious Britain, this Google+ community is for, but not exclusively, UK small businesses, offering great discussions, networking opportunities and bright ideas for everything from social media, marketing, analytics, SEO or fun stuff and useful blog posts.
Very much like the UK Small Business community, only with a larger following, the Small Business community provides insightful and informative articles on everything from industry stats, articles, how-to’s and events, although not necessarily tailored to a UK audience, it can still provide wholly relevant and worthwhile content to read and digest.
With the full community being called “SEO+ – Search Engine Optimisation/Website Design” you know exactly what you’re getting with this community. One of the go-to places on Google+ for discussions related to SEO or web design, offering tips on everything from ranking higher, guest posting advice, recent algorithm updates or even how to edit photos better or improving your grammar!
A user-driven community with over 50,000 members, Google Analytics is for all your questions, answers, tips, ideas, guides and references related to google analytics, or web analytics in general. A lot of the community is taken up with quick question and answer type posts, which can be very useful to read through. There are a lot of in-depth guides posted there, however, which can greatly improve your analytics know-how.
HTML5 is an important part of most web design, and this community is a great place to share and learn ideas, keep up with current design trends, read up on how to code certain design elements and ask a question to experts, whether you’re a beginner or a well-tuned with HTML5
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