Google+ has recently allowed businesses and brands to join its social network and set up individual pages separate from the business owners (or administrators) personal pages. What does this mean for your business? Essentially, Google+ is another way to expand your business’ sphere of influence to reach even more potential clients. Much like Facebook, Google+ helps you to build a social media presence for your company, so you can offer information and develop a rapport with visitors, many of whom may eventually become clients.

Getting Started
If you own a business or brand and already have a personal Google+ account you can simply go to the Create a Page tool to get started. If you don’t have a Google+ account it takes just a few minutes to open one.  You will be asked to select a category (local business, product/brand, company/organization, arts/entertainment/sports, or other). If you have a physical location (rather than being strictly a web or online-based business) then you can enter address and phone number information, which will be provided to local consumers who land on your Google+ page along with a map so they can easily find you.

How it Works
When a web user comes across your Google+ page through search engine results they will have the option to “+1” your page. They can also add it to their “Circle” so others within their circle can see it. To put it in Facebook terms, a +1 is equivalent to a “like”, while adding a site to a circle is the same as becoming a fan. Either way, both actions increase your online reputation as well as increasing your reach. Having a Google+ page will also increase the search engine results for your website – something that is vital to forging a business relationship with web users.

Linking
Interlinking your Google+ page allows visitors to easily visit your website from your Google+ page, and vice versa. You can add a badge or button to your website by using its Badge Maker program, and you can link from Google+ to your website by following the tutorials found here. Remember that you want to keep visitor on your pages (whether Google+ or your website) for as long as possible to increase the chance of conversion.

Enhancements
The more time you spend fleshing out your Google+ page, the more results your will have. Add appropriate keywords and descriptions to increase search engine traffic. Also include images and videos if possible – it may not seem important but it does have an effect on user interaction and retention, as well as search engine results.

Setting up a Google+ page only takes a few minutes, and will work to give your company increased reputability, as well as providing an additional online location for browsers to learn about your business and what you offer.

Creating high quality content and fostering meaningful relationships on the web will become even more important with the merging of Google+ data and search functions.

Google+ recently announced a whole heap of business page features including the ability for users to have multiple admins or managers for a Google+ Business page and to also be able to transfer ownership of a Google+ Business Page.

This is great news as many people have been waiting for this feature which at the moment allows for up to 50+ google users to be admin or managers of any one google page:

In this video I show you exactly how to add an admin to your Google+ page:

“The man who wrote the book on LinkedIn shares his secrets to becoming an expert social networker.” Including using the search facility on Linkedin to leverage your connections, expand business and create deals.

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Google always manages to create a huge noise on the internet when it rolls out a new product. This internet behemoth has created a huge buzz with the launch of its new social networking platform Google+ (also called Google Plus or very often simply Plus). Even though it is only in a beta version and you have to be invited to join it there are already 20 million visitors to the site and the numbers are growing. The feedback about Plus seems to be very positive which is hardly surprising considering Google has put in a lot of effort to give it features that Facebook and Twitter do not have. Internet marketers and brand managers are also studying it with a great amount of interest in order to find out of it can be of any use to them.

One area that is of particular interest to online marketers is whether there will be any connection between Google+ and SEO. Most marketers are obsessed with the search engine ranking of their websites and rightly so because this indicates how easy it is to find the website. There is only a slim chance that a person will visit the site if it is not on the first page or at least the second page of search engine results.

There has always been a connection between a topic’s popularity on sites such as Facebook and Twitter and its position on search engine results page. Google has a handy +1 button that lets people indicate whether they “like” a particular page. There is no clear guidance from Google regarding whether a page that has many +1s will appear higher on search engine pages but it seems inconceivable that this will not be the case after some time. As it is, it is pretty hard to avoid the +1 button because it has become very ubiquitous on Google search engine results. As a matter of fact, there are indications that Google will create a +1 button that webmasters can put on their pages. This is being done so that visitors to your site can recommend your content without even having to leave your site.

Another interesting thing that one should point out is that Google pays great attention to the quality of content when it comes to deciding search engine results. It won’t be a surprise at all if the company collects data on how many +1 clicks a page receives in order to determine its search engine ranking.

As a webmaster or an internet marketer, you need to watch developments on Google+ very closely so that you can be well informed about the ways in which you can do SEO better. The internet is a medium that is constantly changing and only people who know how to adapt to these changes properly and quickly have a chance of survival. Make sure that you get plenty of familiarity with Google+ so that you can use this powerful tool to boost search engine rankings of your web pages.

Please if you like this article +1 or like… thank you Kerry

Kerry Fitzgibbon on Google+

If you are interested in what happens on the internet you would have heard that the internet giant Google is trying to muscle in on territory that currently belongs to Twitter and Facebook with the launch of its own social media platform. That Google+ (Google Plus), as this new entrant is known, has generated a lot of interest is a total understatement. This new social media platform is sometimes described as one which looks a bit like Facebook but works a little like Twitter. Even though it is currently available in a beta version only, it already has more than 20 million users and the numbers just keep on climbing.

Facebook and Twitter users are creating Google+ accounts as well because this platform offers them a lot of the features of Facebook and Twitter without the disadvantages and also adds many more useful features. What remains to be seen in whether Plus will be able to help online entrepreneurs promote their businesses. As of now, Google+ is not available to businesses because people who sign up cannot create business profiles. The company insists that all user profiles be based on real names because its objective is to connect real people. However, online marketers are advised to become very familiar with this platform because it seems Google will be rolling out branded/business pages over the next few months after more testing with selected businesses.

Business owners are looking at Google+ with keen interest because even in the short space of time it’s been up and running statistics already indicate that it is a very effective referrer of online traffic. A recent “Social Media Showdown” case study compiling web analytics for Wordstream.com/blog for one week in July had interesting results:

“Google+, despite only being around for 1 month – and even then, being released in a limited “field testing” mode, drove more traffic to our blog than LinkedIn – it was roughly a third of our Facebook traffic and over half of our Twitter traffic. This was a huge surprise given how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers we’ve accumulated over the last several years, and given that at the time of this writing, I don’t even have a company presence on Google+ yet, or any Google +1 buttons on our website.” – http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/07/26/google-plus-vs-facebook-vs-twitter-vs-linkedin

Many more websites are keeping track of how many referrals they get from Google+ in order to gauge how effective it will be in the long run.

There also seems to be a great likelihood that Google+ will play an important role on how search results are indexed and what ranking a particular URL gets in search results. Google has not yet given any indication that this will be a significant factor but the +1 button that it includes practically everywhere should give online marketers a hint of what direction this company will take. Google is also releasing advertisements asking for beta testers for its online business service called Business Pages.

Google has had a few duds in the recent past such as Buzz and Wave, but you cannot deny the fact that this company puts the entire weight of its immense resources behind new launches.

If you are an online marketer then it is certainly in your best interest to become familiar with Google+. You should start building your networks (or circles, as they are called in this case) so that you can start using them to promote your business when Plus is finally made available to business managers and entrepreneurs to promote their businesses.

If you find this article interesting please add your comments below

Thanks Kerry

Kerry Fitzgibbon on Google+

I’ve had many people approach me lately asking why they should join Google+!! Most people are confused about why it is necessary in the first place? After all, doesn’t Facebook give people the best way to get in touch with people all over the world and doesn’t YouTube satisfy all of their needs for content sharing? At the same time, there is great interest in anything that Google launches because it puts the weight of its immense resources to develop new products. This social networking platform is said to combine the best features of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites while doing away with the drawbacks.

There are a couple of significant features to Google+ I’ve noticed over the past few weeks of intense immersion into the depths of the plus revolution. One of the most important factors that Google+ takes care of is the privacy of individual users. As a user, you will be able to control your privacy settings with a great amount of ease. Although it might take a bit of time initially I thoroughly recommend you take full advantage of sorting out your “Circles.”

This feature allows you to compartmentalize your contacts whether it be friends, acquaintances, celebrities etc.. so you  click and drag names of your friends etc into groups (Circles) you have assigned them to. You can then decide which circles updates go to.

One of the biggest problems that Facebook users have faced is how to resolve privacy issues and there are many instances of people getting into problems because of the ease with which information is made available. Facebook does have a feature called Lists that enable you to choose who gets your updates and whose updates you want to read but I have found this not as easy to use.

Google+ scores over Facebook and other social networking sites by offering an amazing videoconferencing facility through a feature called “Hangouts”. You can talk to up to 10 people at a time using this feature. However, Google might overcome this disadvantage by signing up with Skype to provide video calling facility to its members.

If Google+ has a major drawback it is that this social networking platform is not currently made available to businesses yet. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are very popular with businesses because they provide business managers with many opportunities to interact with customers and promote their products and services. Google+ does not have this concept of fans or followers.

Twitter is very popular because the messages are short and concise. However, this is also its biggest drawback because people might sometimes need more information. The general consensus is that while you get more information on Twitter you will get better quality information of Google+. It is also very difficult to maintain privacy over Twitter without missing out on all the action.
Google+ has not yet become mainstream and the company is busy removing the many glitches that early users have found. However, it seems likely that it will give Facebook and Twitter something to worry about. The interface of Google+ is also very attractive and the apps are very useful. Lots of people who are already on these social networking sites are signing up for Google+ as well and it remains to be seen if they will leave one for the other.

Kerry Fitzgibbon on Google+