With more than 800 million users Facebook has a head start on Google Plus, which currently runs with 21 million profiles. Google Plus enters the game offering businesses many similar features as Facebook, albeit with slightly different names.
- Facebook v Google Plus
- Like button v +1 button
- Video/group chat v Hangouts
- Smart friend lists v Circles
Considering the parent company, Google Plus may be running at an advantage with search engine optimisation, but even so, there’s a lot of ground to make up. Google intends to amalgamate all +1 button clicks from all areas: Google Plus, websites and search results, to determine search result relevancy.
Company Search and Profiles
An experimental Google Plus Direct Connect (what a mouthful!) will let you Google-search using +1 after a company search, taking you direct to that companies business page on Google Plus (if the Google Plus Direct Connect has been activated!)
There are 5 categories that Google Plus allows you to place you pages. They are:
- Local Business or Place
- Company,
- Institution or Organisation
- Product or Brand
- Arts, Entertainment or Sports
- Other
Many companies were allowed to roll out pages for Google Plus ahead of the general public and although they may have search benefits over Facebook brand pages, the actual number of Facebook users may initially overwhelm anything happening in Google Plus. However, Google Plus will be able to learn from the mistakes and changes that Facebook have made in the past.
The basic launch of a Google Plus site appears relatively straightforward, but where there are many companies who offer expertise in adding functions and features on Facebook, at this early stage there are few that offer the same service for Google Plus.
How to set up your business profile on Google Plus
First you will need to have an active Google Account (free to register if you don’t have one yet). Google Account comes really useful for many other tools: Analytics, AdWords, Webmaster Tools (to manage your business website and search results), YouTube (video marketing), Docs and Apps, Gmail and Calendar.
Next you will need to go to Google Plus: http://plus.google.com and activate your Plus profile. At this state you may like to set it up but going through settings, filling in all information, uploading your picture. That’s what a Plus profile looks like once you are done:
Generally it looks like Facebook: you’ve got your Stream of updates in the middle which you can search or filter by Circles (option to the left). You can start a Hangout (chat) with group of friends, add friends you may know, see who is online. In the top right corner you will see updates and notifications (currently 0 next to Tamara’s name), and if you click a little down arrow next to the picture in the corner you will find all the management options.
Now we proceed on to create a business profile.
Scroll down your Plus profile until you see a link on the right hand side, under People You Make Like:
You land on the category selection page. In our case we will choose Company and fill in details about WP Design Genies.
Next you will need to choose your profile image and fill in your tagline – brief description of what your business down. Think about your top keywords when filling this in!
That’s it – you are done. Your page will have a unique Plus URL (here’s ours: https://plus.google.com/100996839673889486378/posts).
What you can do with your Google Plus page
Pages can interact with other Google+ users who are in their circles much in the way that a Google+ profile owner would. As an owner of your Google+ page, you can:
- Interact with others: +1, comment on, and reshare people’s posts.
- Grow your leads and connections: Add people (who’ve already added you) and pages to circles. Mention people in posts and comments (who’ve already added or mentioned you).
- Have private and public webchats with your connections: Start and join hangouts.
- Stay spam-free: Block and ignore people and pages.
- Spread the word – While on Google+ acting as your page, click Spread the word on the side of the stream. This will allow you to share your page in a post with people from your personal Google+ profile. The sharing action will come from your personal Google+ profile – not from the Google+ page. For instance, let’s say Raj has a page for his band Didgeridoo and the Kangaroos. If his page spreads the word, the people shared to will see the update as coming from Raj, not from the page.
- Post updates frequently and keep your profile fresh – People are more likely to engage with a page that contains fresh posts and a complete profile.
- Linking your Google+ page and your website – This is a great way to drive traffic to your page and it provides an excellent opportunity to engage with your customers and fans in an intimate fashion.
- Linking your Google+ page with your AdWords campaign – If you’re an AdWords customer, you can link your AdWords campaign to your business’ page. Connecting your page to your campaigns allows your advertising and page to share +1′s. Any +1′s on your ads will increment the count on your page and vice versa. To enable this connection, simply enable Social Extensions in the Ad Extensions section and enter the URL for your Google+ page in the ‘Google+ Page’ field.
Pages are extremely similar to profiles, but they have some key differences:
- Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned. Learn more.
- Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
- The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
- Pages have the +1 button.
- Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.
- Pages can’t play games.
- Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’.
- Pages don’t receive notifications via email, text or in the Google bar.
- Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device.
- Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location.
So please check out our Plus WPDG page and share your thoughts. Mention your own profile or page there if you like. Questions or problems? Use Plus, Facebook or Twitter to get in touch, we are always happy to help!
What do you think Google Plus will do for businesses? Have you set up an account on Google Plus? Please do share your thoughts below!
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