With so many social media platforms to keep track of, it’s easy to let some fall by the way side. You might decide that you don’t need a Pinterest board or a Tumblr blog or simply don’t have enough time to maintain it all. However, there’s one platform that you cannot afford to ignore. Google+ has incredible SEO value, as the search engine indexes its own platform better than any other, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While your audience may not be the largest on Google+, an optimized page will help users when they search for your business’s location, hours, phone number, or any other information they need.

Follow these tips and tricks from Social Media Analyst James Garvey, and you will be well on your way to Google+ mastery:

1. Post to your Google+ page – Optimize content that you’re posting to other social media channels to include relevant hashtags (such as subject and/or location), photos, GIFs, videos, and publish it to your Google+ page. Maintain the frequency of your posts for the best results.

2.  Claim your page’s custom, branded URL – Once you’ve set up your page and have acquired more than 10 followers, added a profile photo and waited until your page is more than 30 days old, you can claim a custom URL that matches your brand, making your page easier to discover and share.

3. Link your website to your Google+ page – Link your Google+ page to your website to not only create an inbound link from Google+, but allow your Google+ page to appear on the right hand side of search results.

4. Build up your Google+ page’s “Links” section – Add links that are important to your business in the “Links” section under the “About” menu. Include your website, blog, social media profiles, and other pages you want to drive traffic to.

5. Optimize your “Story” section – Create an informative “Tagline” and “Introduction” that entices users to click through. The “Tagline” and “Introduction” sections become your pages meta description when your page shows up in Google search results.

6. Optimize the first 45 -50 characters of your Google+ posts – The first 45 to 50 characters of your Google+ post becomes that post’s page title in Google’s search results, so create the first line as if you’re writing a blog post title and make sure to include any keywords that you’re trying to rank for.

7. Use visuals as frequently as possible – Unlike other social channels (besides Pinterest) Google+ supports animated GIFs which can help you to stand out among static images and click-to-play videos. Use GIFs to grab additional attention. Also, utilize photos and videos whenever possible.

Using these simple tricks will put you well on your way to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Not only will Google index your Google+ page more accurately and reward you with higher placement on SERPs, but your audience will be able to access the information they need quickly and easily, and hopefully reward you with their business.

 “Financial institutions that do not offer P2P services, such as through partnerships with app providers, risk losing younger customers.” – Javelin Strategy & Research, as quoted in the August 19, 2014 Boston Globe

Change is coming to the financial services sector and it is not necessarily banks, insurance companies, or investment firms that are leading the charge, nor are consumers.  Who is to blame for the next industry to be revolutionized?  It’s those pesky millennials again with their insatiable appetite for breaking old systems and reassembling them so that they work better for their needs.  And, because they usually don’t want to put on a tie and do 9-5 at a “real job,” they are forming their own companies and boot strapping their startups in a classic David (them) verses Goliath (the financial services industry) showdown.

GCAi founder John Garvey discusses digital marketing with fintech startups at the recent Startupbootcamp.org event in Boston.

Recently, GCAi founder John Garvey, served as a mentor for the global fintech accelerator Startupbootcamp.org were many of these upstarts where displaying their wares and ways as well as looking for advice on how to get Goliath’s attention. Tab was one of the more unique ventures to present that day. Paul Cheek’s venture, a former MassChallenge finalist, is currently being beta tested at an eastern Massachusetts bank. It allows individuals to essentially share a bill with their friends. While that might not initially sound like the most novel thing for an app to do, consider the possibilities. Through Tab, you can split the cost of dinner, drinks, tickets or even your rent quickly, securely and with little effort.

Ease of use through a smart phone is the calling card of millennials when it comes to consumer and financial products. If it is not already built, like Paul Cheek, they will build it themselves – and mobile payment is taking off with their crew.  According to this recent Boston Globe article, use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payment systems is skyrocketing – with one leading app chalking up $314 million in mobile payments in the first quarter of this year alone.

Brian Thopsey and members of his FundWisdom team pitch to Startupbootcamp.org mentors, including Garvey, as well as an emerging technology officer from Fidelity and the director of Boston’s new Fintech Sandbox.

Another fintech startup that presented to Garvey and other mentors, which included an emerging technology officer from Fidelity and the director of Boston’s new Fintech Sandbox, was FundWisdom. This brave new venture is taking on the world of crowdfunding – a very fresh and emergent way to invest in startups. Led by founder Brian Thopsey, the impressive team from FundWisdom was not worried about the SEC screwing up the whole intent of the Jobs Act (making it easier for all of us to help finance ventures which currently only accredited investors can put their money into). In fact, the FundWisdom crew is not intent on just joining the crowdfunding pack; they intend to lead them by aggregating the deals from many sites and presenting them to investors – and startups, who want to know which platform to sign up with.

The GCAi team will attempt to keep our readers up-to-date on the fast moving fintech world – as the ventures highlighted above are just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s leave it at this, fintech is on fire and financial services as you know them are so #yesterday.  Stay tuned.

We had not “mixed” it up with Andrew Grochal for a few years, so we were due for a quick catchup. As it turned out, our timing was fortuitous. The Heartbleed bug was turning into a full blown influenza and the “change your password” cry was coming from all corners of the Internet. So, who better to share seaweed salad and conversation about password security with than the VP of Operations of Certus Technology Systems, a company that is going to make your smartphone your password…sort of. 

We first met Andrew at a Tech Cocktail Demo Day at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge where he was showcasing his new networking app Mixer (click link – if you look closely, you can actually find John Garvey in the crowd). Mixer was a fun app that used data from LinkedIn to help you connect to others at an event. The moment of connection was called a “Mixer Moment” and the GCAi team had one – making a valuable connection who we  are still in close contact with today. For a variety of reasons, Andrew and his team put Mixer on the backburner (the way backburner), but it wasn’t long he started working on his next best thing.

The GCAi Digital Marketing team had the opportunity to grab a bite in Boston with Andrew recently and we were very impressed with his new venture. Essentially, the Certus app that you have on your phone serves as an authentication platform that allows you to log on without a password. That is just where the magic started as our discussion quickly expanded to the multiple ways online vendors could use this technology to engage customers in a highly secure way. “Every time you log in to a site, we’re generating a unique, one-time use password that only exists for a split second. It’s a kind of sound fingerprint that your smartphone creates, and the other device hears,” Andrew recently explained to Scott Kirsner in a recent BetaBoston article. Certus reports that more than 60% of consumers have five or more passwords. Couple that with a recent Huffington Post article stating that “12345” was the most popular password of 2013, you can see how much consumers hate passwords and how hackers love that!

Andrew demoed the Cetrus app for us right there in the restaurant. It’s voice authentication and facial recognition features worked flawlessly. He told us that he is meeting regularly with interested investors and is in the middle of a pilot test. According to the BetaBoston article, Andrew, Jack Wolosewicz,

Founder/CTO, and Paul McGowan, VP of Sales, have already raise nearly $400,000 in seed funding.

No more passwords? Now that’s something to get hysterical about.

Everyone is an expert, guru or even a ninja on the Internet. So, it is no wonder that many businesses do not know the right digital marketing moves. On the other-hand, if Google says you earned the black belt equivalent in online advertising that surely means something. And, they said just that to us (brag!).

Mary Fallon | Media Director

GCAi is now a Google Partner, a unique certification that designates us as an experienced and trusted online advertising expert.  We have had Google AdWords Qualified planners on staff for several years now and achieved our partner designation through “demonstrated expertise, experience, and a measurably high level of customer satisfaction” – as Google likes to say.

“Online advertising is very complicated and changes all the time,” noted Mary K. Fallon, Media Director for GCAi and an Individually Qualified Google AdWords Planner. “The Google AdWords network provides access to incredibly powerful online advertising tools and platforms.  We spend the time getting certified each year and building and managing campaigns so our clients don’t have to. They just receive highly measurable results.”

Achieving Google Partner status is no walk in the dojo either. Our AdWords planners must take certification exams each year and in several different categories. Those rigorous standards ensure that we continue to build high quality campaigns and apply best practices as quickly as they develop. Through the Google Search Network, we can place high quality ads right next to related search results. Sensei Google also taught us how to use The Google Display Networks to place geo-targeted, cost effective ads on content sites like Boston.com (Boston Globe), NYtimes.com (New York Times), and WSJ.com (Wall Street Journal). Those are just a few of the bazillion choices we have.

Time to bring back Mary Fallon: “All the social media marketing and online advertising platforms we use, including Google, are constantly in flux so it’s important that we stay up-to-date with every algorithm tweak, system upgrade, and protocol change. Therefore, the learning process never truly ends.”

GCAi also creates and manages social media marketing campaigns on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. And one more thing grasshopper – GCAi is the only digital marketing agency in our market to hold Google Partner status. “Kiai” ninja-gurus!