Best Practices in Jan 2012 for Google+ Business Pages

6 Flares 6 Flares ×

As a note, check back to this post because we will be updating it as more features become available.

Create Your Profile

Creating a Google+ page is easy. After you create your Google+ profile (which you can sign up for with a Gmail address), you click the HOME button up top and look on the right hand side for the link to Google+ pages.

Pick a business category (you have the choice of local, brand, organization, arts or other), and add your product and brand information. That’s it. Now you have a Google+ business page.

Back at your profile page, under your name at the top, you’ll see a link for your new Google+ page, and you can click on it to manage your page.

You can share this page with up to 50 other administrators as well by clicking on the gear at the top right, then settings, then looing for the manage link on the left.

After you have dragged and dropped photos and added as much information as you like to your profile, you can start sharing comments. In order to engage as many people as possible, you should add all your employees, friends and customers in your circles. Encourage them to suggest feedback and engage in the conversations on your Google+ page.

Promoting Your Google+ Page

In order to promote your page, you will want to follow as many influential people as you can by adding them to your circles. Circles can be segmented to keep your followers and influencers separate. You should encourage the people in your circles to share your page with their own circles. You should customize your discussions to your different circles. For instance, if a certain customer has a complaint and airs it on your Google+ page, you are able to respond only to that user, and this helps in reputation management and branding. In addition, one way to start getting noticed on Google+ is to “+1″ other people’s posts, which not only gets your avatar out there, but also is a nice thing to do.

Make sure to add the Google+ button prominently on your website, mobile website, and newsletter. It should be near the Facebook and Twitter icons. Google+ users can then click this button to +1 your web page content. This will ultimately help to improve your SEO and could increase your website traffic. It is easy to copy and paste the code into your web pages.

You can also download the Google+ app so that you can use Google+ from your mobile device. However, as of this post, page administrators can not post via the mobile app yet, you have to be the creator of the stream to post.

What and When to Post

Just like Facebook or Twitter, you should plan to regularly post updates on Google+ with content that your customers would find interesting. You can share content from other people here as well. Remember that Google+ is for socializing, not totally marketing, and you will drive people away if you only make posts about your services and products there. People want to join your circle in order to have conversations with you, get coupons, or other information. They also expect you to respond to their questions promptly on Google+. If you want to engage more people, make sure to “post to public” so everyone can find your content.

You will want to add keywords to your posts by creating a title for them, and then adding in the URL you want to link to. You can also add hashtags to your posts if that makes sense.

Make sure to turn on the “authorship” for your content, so Google begins to note that you are the creator of your own content. In order to do this, click your name in Google Plus to show your profile and then in the upper right corner look for the “Edit Profile” link. Once you are there, look on the right for “contributor to” and click that link. Now you can type in the URLs of the websites where you want to claim the content you have written.

Social Etiquette

You will also want to make sure you can respond in a timely manner when someone adds a comment to your post. If they +1 and share your post, it’s a good idea to thank them. If they +1 your post, a nice acknowledgement is to add them to your circles.

Google+ has a function (@name) that allows you to ask people to respond to your posts. It is one way to put your content in front of people that will likely contribute to the discussion but it should be used with care, because you may seem too demanding, and loose followers by overusing it. You can add people who frequently comment on your posts to a circle you use to start debates.

Create comments with more information than “great post”. Your comments should add value or spark more of discussion.

Using Google Hangouts

Anyone with a Google+ login can create a hangout or join a public hangout. Hangouts are live videoconferences where users can interact. Similar to hangouts in Facebook that use Skype technology, Google+ Hangouts also allow the conference session to be published to YouTube almost instantaneously.

Don’t worry if no one comes to your hangout right away. You can send anyone in your circles an invitation to hangout and join you. The first time they hangout, they will download an app that allows them to video and chat, as well as screen share. There is a Google video that explains hangouts. Businesses can use hangouts for question and answer sessions, sales calls, customer service interaction, networking events, concerts, meetings, and many other useful sessions. Since Google records all the participants in a hangout, businesses can check the Google+ profiles of the attendees and add them to their circles.

As more and more people begin using Google+ the opportunities for businesses will grow exponentially.

You can share this page with up to 50 other administrators as well by clicking on the gear at the top right, then settings, then looing for the manage link on the left.