Trying to start cold with people online is not a fast way to get more conversions.
It can actually do more harm than good to start pitching your content to others when they haven't shown even the slightest interest in what you're giving them.
One way to get more promising leads is to create opt-in circles on Google+.
Circles are a great way to make contacts and build stronger relationships with people through social media.
Start with opt-in circles and as your relationship grows, you can start moving people further into your inner circles where you can have more sales-oriented conversations.
When you have people opt-in for your content, they are more likely to engage with you and share your content within their own network.
This is one of the best ways to see your content go viral.
Setting notifications for those who opt-in helps bring more awareness to the content than if it just pops up in someone's news stream, where it is often overlooked.
This is a better way to get attention.
Here are five steps for building opt-in notification circles for your Google+ profile or business page: 1.
Create New Circles for new engagers.
Anytime you see new interaction from a person on Google+ you can add them to a new circle that you have designated specifically for new engagers.
This can be for any level of interaction, like giving your posts or page a +1.
You can choose to add people to the same circle or break it down to those who gave you a +1, those who shared content, or those who left comments, etc.
2.
Set up notifications.
After you have about 50 people in a circle, you can set up notifications for your posts.
When you select "notify by email about this post," a direct message will be sent to each person to let them know about the latest piece of content.
While this is a powerful tool to use, you don't want to go overboard with it.
If you are posting several times a day, you don't want to start pestering people in your circles.
Instead, notify only when you have an important piece of content that you want to call attention to.
3.
Share publicly.
It is also a good idea to let people in your circles know if you are going to be adding them to other circles that will be shared publicly.
Many people will not mind when it happens, but there can be some who do not want to call any attention to what circles they are in, especially if your products or services are more sensitive in nature.
4.
Offer direct notifications.
You can ask the people in your circles if they would like to opt-in to notifications for posts.
If they do, you will also want to see how often they would like to get those notifications.
This goes back to #2 where you don't want to become a nuisance by over-notifying the people in your circles.
Find out a happy median for everyone and stick with it.
5.
Create notifications circle.
Once you know which people would like to be notified on a regular basis, you can add them to a new circle just for people to send messages to when you post new content.
This makes it easy to click and share.
Google+ only allows you to notify up to 100 people, so if that number grows to over that number, you can keep those extra people in a separate circle to add in later on.
Then, you can look for any people who are in the notifications circle and are not active and swap them with someone who might be.
Allowing people the choice of whether or not to be notified about your posts helps to create a stronger bond with them.
You don't want to overwhelm them with content, but you also don't want to have your content missed by those who will get the most benefit from it.
Create opt-in circles on Google+ and you will have an easy way to keep up with leads without having to send out cold content.
Do you use circles on Google+ to group prospects? How else can you use circles to find more promising leads?