You’ve probably heard but if you haven’t Google Plus opened it’s doors for brands & businesses yesterday.   Along awaited it finally came.  You can now create a business page on Google+ for your business, organization, brand, product, or rock band.  What does this mean in short?  Jump on the band wagon now while it’s fresh, hot, and while people/pages are eager to fill their circles.

What are Google Plus Pages benefits?

• You Can Find Google+ Pages In Google Search
• You Can +1 a Page to Show Support and/or Add Them to Your Circles
• Even more connectivity with consumers
• A new search option called direct connect that will connect Google users directly to Google pages: Using the “+” option as a prefix you will be taken directly to that brands Google + page.
• Hangouts – You can invite people to your brands hangout and have a live social video session and even screen share.  Huge opportunity for sharing information, education on your product, or collaboration.
• G+ search – As your brand you can search for any keywords.  Geographical key words, relative search terms, your brand name, etc, and it will pull up everything relative from users/pages with the terms in the profiles or users/pages who have included the terms in their posts (your choice). For example I searched for KO Websites  and found someone who shared a blog post from us on his G+ profile.  I was able to use my personal account to reach out to him thank him and talk to him about his thoughts on the article.  This is a great feature to be able to use in several different ways.

What are G+ pages negatives so far?

• No analytics – Currently there is no analytics but I am aware of it coming with in the next few weeks according to Google.  (What Google Plus Pages Analytics will offer? Click here.)
• No notifications – Right now your page receives no notifications at all.  Not when someone circles you, shares your post, or comments on your post. I haven’t heard if they will be implementing into the pages or not but I really hope they do.
• No promotions – Your page will not be able to run promotions.  Only will be able to link to the promotions where they are being held elsewhere (Facebook lol).

Google is making it a huge priority to have minimal spam.  This is why your page can not interact with any one person unless they interact with you first.  For an example the person needs to add your page to their circles or share something with your page first before your page can interact with that particular profile.  Also if you have someone in your pages circle and they decide to un-circle your page, your page will automatically un-circle the person.  This will make for more creativity in getting your page circled but should hugely cut down on spam and will provide more valuable followers (meaning more likely to engage).  Another thing is un-like Facebook you will not be able to provide incentives for page plus ones.  For an example you will not be able to promote people to plus one your page for a discount in return.   Another attempt to cut down on spam and to ensure good content is getting plus ones not pages that are buying them.

So for us and I’m sure many businesses (in time) it will be another social network on the line up for their company/brand.  Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Tumblr, Myspace (just joking) and so on.  (Man the list is beginning to get long)

Circle Us on G+! 

How to create a Google Plus page? Go here.

Need a social media marketing manager to direct your Google Plus page and other social networks for you? Contact us here: Social Media Marketing Management for your business