When I first wrote about Google+ over two months ago, I shared some insights from Dan Carr, a photographer who had over 42,000 followers. This is what he said:

“The biggest influx of followers comes when people share their circles. This is the key feature. S o people have a circle with their favorite photographers and they share the whole thing. Most photography fans simply then click the button to follow everyone in that circle and I was was around from the very beginning I think I end up in almost every photo circle.”

This circle sharing has continued and now Dan’s follower count is nearly 350,000 (that’s more than the top 3 resorts on Facebook combined). Not bad for a ski photographer on a site that some are calling a “ghost town”, eh?

Circle Sharing & Resorts
So, that’s great and all for photogs, but what about ski resorts? I’ve done my best to maintain a circle that includes all ski resorts on Google+ and track the results of that circle being shared. During the last two weeks, that circle has been shared 8 times across three different days. The chart below is total daily growth of ski resort followers on G+. Can you pick out which days the sharing happened?

You guessed it, January 5th, 6th, and 9th. On days that circle was shared, growth averaged 329 new followers. On the days without sharing, the average was only 79 new followers. With few followers and few resorts, it’s almost a blessing in disguise to be able to so easily identify what works.

The solution to gaining fans on Google+ is pretty clear: get into a lot of circles and get those users to share their circles. If that’s the effect of a couple people sharing, imagine if a few dozen got on board.

A Call to Arms+
My challenge to you is two fold. If you are on Google+ try doing two things after you finish reading this article, it should only take you a few minutes:

1. Share the Ski Resort Pages circle on your own Google+ account and your resort’s G+ account and encourage others to do the same
2. Create one new circle that includes your resort, name it something intriguing like “My Favorite Places on Earth” and share that circle and encourage your followers to pass that one along as well

The more circles your resort is in and the more it gets shared, the more you’ll get out of Google+. Dan Carr is a pretty clear example that, a) it’s worth your time to give it a whirl, b) with some effort and work you can reap some pretty serious benefits.

It’s Still Early
Remember, Google+ is still in it’s infancy. Pages are only 2.5 months old. However, Google is already showing they are serious about making the site a success by integrating it into many of their services (search, YouTube, Blogger, Android, etc.). I’m still hesitant to suggest launching a full-scale attack, but there are many brands that have done so. I can’t help but wonder if the resort that tries will catch everyone else napping and become the Dan Carr of ski resorts.

Few social networks have this kind of viral potential by sharing a group of followers that you can follow with one click. It’s going to be really interesting to see how this feature plays out over the next few months.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.