A couple of weeks ago Google finally launched their Google+ pages for brands, a feature to compete with Facebook’s popular Fanpage an attempt to step up the social media race against the likes of Facebook and Twitter and we thought it was high time we gave you the scoop and let you know our early thoughts and some of the benefits of jumping on the “plus” wagon.
Facebook has roughly 800 Million users and growing and while Google+ is currently stated to be less than 40 million, why all the hype? Well, while that is a considerably smaller userbase at the moment, it is still growing at a considerable rate, and getting in earlier rather than later has its benefits. Not only that but a slightly more conservatively sized community also means there is less noize, less spammers and is as a result less saturated.
So how do you use Google+ for your business or website? To start click on Create Google+ Page. On this page you will have to select your business or brand type and fill in some basic information. It is useful to include your websites address whenever asked to create a cohesive link between your + page and your website. You can recipricate this on the other end by optionally adding a meta code to your websites <head> section, and adding the link/button somewhere on your site.
Once the basics are taken care of you can then customize your about content areas, upload images, and begin to use the stream (equivalent to your FB Wall). The image upload tool used by Google is a great example that they are showing their intent. The image uploader has a complete section for image editing not limited to just crop, rotate and resize but also including an array of effects more common to the likes of Photoshop users. I think this tool may be more aimed at individuals and getting them to switch rather than directly and businesses and brands though it is still a handy tool to have.
Hangouts
Hangouts are one of the unique features that Google+ pages have over fb fanpages, allowing for video streaming between multiple users. I know from speaking to professional developers that these tools are already being used by the masses for project management and multi user conferences, adding this to Google+ pages for businesses is an intuitive idea that already has Dell suggesting they may utilize this part of their social branding for live video tech support.
The Future
I feel once Google have better consolidated it’s other services with easy +1 integration, the platform can then really take off into a league of it’s own. If they included easy sharing of Google Docs, Calendar Invites and some of the other Apps tools into Plus, and also allowed for sharing with Circles, then they may just have the perfect hybrid between personal and business, finding a nice middle ground between Facebook and Linkedin. This would result in them offering a fairly comprehensive project management system.
Why not check our currently very humble Google+ Page – Pixelloop.
Takeaways
You Want Google+ Pages in your life! okay that may be a bit extreme, but they are useful in your marketing strategy.
If you have any questions or need help setting up, customizing and getting the most our of your Google + page find our more about how we can help at Social Media Design and Consulting.
Here are a few creative design ideas of how to use your image strip at the top of the + page. Creative Google Page Designs.
