This increasingly famous version of a social network that Google has created a while back is gaining traction year after year, and it´s another great way you can utilize to further promote your YouTube Channel.

You´ll see that´s actually one of the factors the platform analyzes if a video deserves a high ranking or not due to social shares from the Google+ community.

In fact, there are a few specific things you can do in order to increase rankings and promote your content to attract more viewers.

1. Integrate YouTube with Google+

One of the first things you should do is integrate both platforms!

That way when people comment on your YouTube video while on Google+, their comments show up on YouTube.

This is great for increasing the social credibility of your content and will certainly help to attract people to your Google+ profile and YouTube channel.

By integrating them you´ll also get to share specific videos to certain circles in Google+ and get further engagement that way or you´ll even be able to manage multiple YouTube channels from one Google+ account.

The fact is that the list of benefits goes on but just to give you an idea you´ll get a bunch of social features that will help you to further promote your channel.

It´s easy to do and it just takes a minute.

2. Optimize Your Profile

It might sound obvious to you but I promise it´s really not for many people.

If you are one of those that want to optimize every possible area of their online presence then say tuned.

Fixing up your profile to make you look great and help you to stand out from the crowd is essential if you want to attract some eyeballs to your channel.

Think about it, if you´re the one that´s already facing the camera in your video then you want people to get a good first impression of you just by checking at your profile picture and reading at your “Story”.

Craft a nice tagline that you believe in and/or want to transmit others, re-write as many times as you possibly can until you get the right introduction, and finally try to choose a great pic that shows your face.

If you don´t do this then any other piece of information you read in this article will be a waste of your time.

Here are a couple of actionable tips to implement right away.

• Use keywords that you want to rank for in search engines (like YouTube) in your cover image filename.
• Make it high-res. Meaning between 2120 x 1192 pixels.
• Add a well-thought caption that attracts more viewers.
• Make your introduction brief but concise and to the point.
• Show your face! Your profile picture should be you and just you.

3. The Video Transcription Method

When you post a video in the platform one of the most effective ways you can drive traffic to your channel and increase exposure is by focusing on writing a really good post that can be attached to your video.

Basically, what you want to do is use the transcription from your video, what´s being said in it, and create a useful summary that describes what you can get from watching the content.

In fact, Tim Schmoyer, who is officially certified by YouTube in Audience Growth, said that in the very early stages of his channel he used Google+ a lot to grow his following.

He said that you should think of that so-called description as a mini blog post and it can even improve your ranking in the Google search results.

How to Transcribe & Optimize a Video?

Well, it´s actually a simple two-step process where you get

Use Headlines, start and end each one with asterisks so it makes your headlines or titles bold.

Now, if you want to really take advantage of the SEO involved in this technique you should use a slightly different headline and description in your Google+ post against your YouTube video.

As I´ve said before, Write a Long Description, something that´s a couple paragraphs long at least will do so much better in the platform than just writing a few sentences to state what the video is about.

You have to take in consideration that Google+ is both a visual and a text medium.

Tag individual Circles, that way you´ll target a specific audience that you know will be interested in your content.

Although you don´t want to be spammy about it, use it discreetly and be clever when you target what people you want to share it with.

One more thing, it has to be a mutual circle so the notification of your recently released post goes through.

PRO TIP! Include eye-catching images to your post. Maybe the thumbnail of your video will do! (The optimal size for your post images is 497 x 373 pixels.)

4. ¡Boost your Reach with Hashtags!

They not only are used like with Twitter, meaning they are related to every post that is using them too and gives signals to the platform for what specific topic you want to be ranking for.

But it also gives more context to Google about your post and it´s an effective way they use to organize and recommend content to other users. Just like this.

Image from https://moz.com

Those associations are not random at all, they´re organized according to your content and the hashtags you´ve used on your posts.

Make sure you´re specific with your hashtags and try to target your audience effectively that way. You´ll increase your reach and exposure drastically if you do it right.

With Google+ you must aim for a maximum of three or four hashtags since they´re automatically set to a bold font and using too many could distract from your content.

PRO TIP! Make sure to check out from time to time on trending hashtags (viewable from the explore tab) for extra opportunities that could create more engagement. 

5. Pick the Best Time

Choosing the best possible time to post is one of the key factors that can increase the impact and reach of your publications.

If you really want to maximize the chances of getting discovered and increase your following then you should consider an app called Timing+.

With Timing+, you can forget about trying to guess when should you post on Google+, it makes the job for you.

It is a great free tool you should immediately apply if you want to know what are the best days and times for you to post on the platform if you want to be seen for the majority of people. 

Image from keywordroom.com

One thing you should make sure is that the time zone is correctly set so that the best suggested times to post are adapted to your actual time zone.

It also adds some other great features with useful data, like the average rankings your posts receive per day, a ranking of the best days of the week to post, or even a list of your most popular posts.

The only drawback is that it can only be used for personal accounts and not business pages. 

6. The Influencers Way

This is another great method you can implement to grow your account and get to more people so that they can share your posts and watch your videos.

One great way to reach some influencers is through an underused feature of the Google+ platform, Ripples.

Here´s how you can use them.

The first thing you should do is find a post that you might think is interesting or could be engaging for your audience.

Then, go to the small down arrow in the upper right of the post and click on “View Ripples.”

You´ll be able to see who’s sharing what, and how far their reach is so you can look for the people that have the greater reach, in most cases, what we call Influencers.

The purpose of using the Ripples feature is to find those people so you can add them to your circles. 

If they follow you back, and you continue to post good content then you´ll have a good chance that they reshare the content that you have on your feed.

Just make sure to use this strategy wisely and pick the very best content that could have a greater impact so you don´t waste your time trying to grab people´s attention.

7. Automate Your Posting

A general rule of thumb you can find across most social media platforms is that the most you post and active you are the more often you’ll appear in feeds.

The more often you appear in feeds, the more likely you are going to be seen and then followed.

In other words, the more you participate and make proper use of the platform the more people will follow you.

It is actually a simple process, the hard part is that it takes time and it takes a lot of effort to stay consistent during that time.

So, how can you make it easier to stick to it and get results? Automate the whole thing!

There are some great tools that can help you with that and are absolutely free.

Buffer, for example, lets you create an account and use their auto-posting service which added support for Google+ Pages and offers the possibility of schedule updates to Google+ Pages.

You´ll be able to schedule 10 posts at a time and have several days already set up so you don´t have to worry.

Another great one is Do Share, which is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to write Google+ posts and schedule them for specific times.

When the scheduled time arrives, the app will automatically publish the post to Google+, automating the entire process for you.

You can find there are many other apps and services that can help you to automate your business and get you on the right track so you can think about creating awesome content.

8. Actively Participate in Communities

Communities in Google+ are real living things, as with Facebook Groups you´ll be joining a group of people that share the same interests and in most cases are looking to learn more about it.

I´ve talked about this in my Promote your YouTube Channel Through Facebook article, so you might want to check that one out.

The point is to make yourself a known and active participant in the community, make yourself valuable, giveaway useful information, help others in any way you can.

If you do that people will start to notice you and recognize your knowledge and efforts, some of them will actually start to follow you.

If you do that for a while and you build up a reputation within the community people will pay attention when you ask for something in return.

Let’s say that you have uploaded a new video on your YouTube channel that´s related to XYZ and you share it with them by saying they might want to check it out because it solves a certain issue or doubts that are often posted.

By doing this for a couple of weeks you´ll get an increasing following and you´ll add a ton of value to those same people who might want to subscribe to your channel to learn more about what you have to say.

9. Google+ Comments Power

In order to create more interaction among your group of people, you should ask them a question when you finish your post or video so that they engage with you and your content.

That´s when they´ll start commenting on your videos and get involved with your material.

If you´ve integrated both platforms (YouTube and Google+) you should benefit from comments in your videos!

Why? Simply because the number of comments it´s actually one of the signal factors, as with likes and shares, that can increase your video´s ranking in YouTube search results.  

Another thing you can do is to use the comments plugin that allows you to take the usual readers from your blog into more comments and active followers in your Google+ account.

Similar to Facebook´s this commenting system, that is officially supported on Blogger.com, can be used through WordPress.

10. ¡Make Your Posts Interactive!

Now, if you´re still looking for more ways to grow your fan base using your Google+ account here´s another you can try out.

These features can trigger notifications for recipients and show up in their Google+ streams which will affect the way your posts get shared and get further reach.

You can easily customize your favicon, description, and image so it can have a greater impact among users.

For example, customizing a button into your posts with a call-to-action label that you can choose from over 100 different options to appear on the button would significantly increase the engagement.

Last but not least, you can measure the impact your posts have using Google+ Platform Insights to check out the data related to views, clicks, and much more!

Create Your Own Google+ Community

Finally, as a bonus, I wanted to leave you with this great feature you have to get to know better. In case you didn´t by now.

Communities in Google Plus are very flexible and useful if you want to increase a following of people that can support a brand, or like, in this case, a YouTuber or a particular YouTube channel.

Firs of, create a community from a Page and make it public so that the content is viewable to everyone and it can be shared out of the community.

After you´ve done that, you should go with the moderation type of process. Where people that want to join have to be approved by you. That way you´ll get only the people that are really interested in your niche/topic.

Start editing, change the name if you want, the icon and pictures, make it attractive and congruent, keeping your YouTube channel in mind.

Once, you´ve set all that up invite people to join!

Wrapping up

Getting ahead with social media and making your brand stand out depends entirely on your efforts.

Optimize your profile, post daily, link to your channel, provide great value, learn about the many features that the platform offers for you take advantage of, and actively participate within the communities.

Finally, link to your channel and/or Google+ profile in every way you can, link to it in guest posts, or your own blog (if you have one), put it in your email signature, or even use it when you make a useful comment on social media.

Hope this information helped you!

Now let me ask you, Will you use Google+ to grow your YouTube Channel?