Using a Google+ Business Page

As Google makes every effort to encourage web users to participate with the Google+ social network – such as through the rebranding of Google Places which we have covered above – it’s important for businesses to consider how they could or should be using this network to market their business and to communicate with customers and prospective customers. As with Facebook, Google+ gives companies the option to create a business page, which can be used to market their brand and communicate or interact with users.

Google+ is Google’s social network, designed to generate more traffic and activity through Google and to compete with Facebook. Since its launch, Google+ has only attracted low levels of usage, because many people who are already using Facebook don’t want to recreate their social networks and migrate to this new service. The only way Google+ will succeed is through offering something that Facebook can’t (like the integration with Google’s wide range of services), or by Facebook antagonising its user base (which it tends to be quite good at!). For Google, the success of Google+ is paramount and they are doing everything possible to increase the awareness and usage of this service.

As we have covered above, it’s important for businesses to set up or claim and manage their Google+ Local listing/s. Alongside this, having a Google+ Business Page is also something to consider sooner rather than later, to create a presence on this service and to make a business more ‘social’ for those customers or prospects who might be using Google+ and want to interact through this tool. At some stage, Google may also make a significant move that ensures Google+ becomes a more important, and therefore popular, tool for web users or businesses, so it’s good to set up a business page now.

A Google+ business page can be in the form of one for a company, institution, organisation, or a page for a particular product or brand. There are clear parallels with Facebook business pages, whereby users can recommend your business, products or services to friends and contacts across the web through the use of the “+1″ button. It’s also possible to share different aspects of the business with different groups of people, as it enables the targeting of the particular sections of the customer base with news, updates, promotions, links and photos by keeping “followers” up to date.

As well as being able to share information and promote your business through Google+ business page, it’s possible to measure how the interactions of ‘followers’ on the page affect your brand and business. The data that Google provides through Google+ and through Google Analytics, makes it fairly easy to understand Google+ activity – in particular, what people are saying about the business, how many +1′s the business receives and how these affect the traffic on the page.

If a business is using Google Ads (AdWords), they can also use a social extension to their adverts and so give the option to web searchers to link through to their Google+ business page. There is also the advantage of having the power of Google’s search engine connected with these business pages – Google calls this “Direct Connect”, which allows the inclusion of a “+” before the page of interest in a search (e.g. +Pepsi) which then generates the results for that business page.

Although web usage is still comparatively low for Google+ at the moment, it doesn’t take much to create a Google+ account and then set up a business page. That will at least establish a presence on this tool and content here can be generated in tandem with any activity on Facebook (or Twitter). Having a page available also gives your customers the option to follow it if they choose to do so. And, should Google+ suddenly get a significant boost in value and usage, your business will be well positioned to take advantage.

If you’d like to know more about Google+ Business Pages and how these can help to promote your business, contact us now.

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