Designing G+ In
Crazy to suggest using G+ as a tool to power your online marketing right? Maybe not. Greatest return always comes from the least understood ideas. GooglePlus is a "least understood" idea these days.
Their leader left and TechCrunch said G+ the social net is dead. They may be right, but that is beside the point. G+ has always been more than a social net. G+ is a suite of tools marketers can use to find blue oceans.
Blue oceans are the as yet unspoiled places where marketers can still swim without fear of a herd of sharks. Oceans where sharks eat themselves are "red oceans" such as Facebook.
We suggest designing G+ into your marketing and site. Hold weekly hangouts, you don't need a G+ profile to use hangouts now, and created a branded community if only so you rule your name in #seo. Finally we suggest curating the great comments you will receive on G+ as a source of future content.
We've never been able to figure out how to use circles in a unique way, but they too beckon with possibility. By creating weekly content based on Hangouts and Community you get lots of GoogleJuice, the least expensive #videomarketing we know about and great community development tools that cost you NOTHING.
The linked post discusses Mark Traphagen's call to use G+ as a hub of your marketing. That's a great call since the price is RIGHT (free though you may spend some making G+ play the way you want it in your design). Designing G+ tools INTO your community creates the cheapest, biggest and best online win we can think of.
So the death of G+ is greatly exaggerated and, if you are smart, you will find a way to design the tool's many possibilities into your marketing.
We have used any of these tools, but xeroxing our wireframing template is old, hard to share, and takes too long.