Today, Google+ finally launched a series of new features that allow business owners to create and promote "branded pages" on Google+ - giving their brands a voice on the social network that has become infamous for deleting "personal profiles" that were setup to showcase brands.
With a 60% drop in
traffic last month, it seems Google have finally realised what rivals Facebook and Twitter have known for quite some time - that company profiles are a key ingredient in the recipe to create the perfect social network. But, moving to stand out from the rest, Google+ have pitched their new corporate promotion service as being focused on people and interaction, as opposed to mere information dumping (something many professional users of the likes of Facebook and Twitter are guilty of).
The official Google blog post (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html) about Google+ pages emphasises the ability for users to +1 a page (staking their online reputation on a brand's ability to provide a listed service/product by giving a virtual +1 recommendation), add any page to a circle (allowing users to interact with a brand on an ongoing basis) and, seemingly most importantly, spend time "face-to-face-to-face" with consumers using the Google+ hangout functionality (where multiple parties can participate in a group videoconferencing session).
Any existing Google+ profile holder can now create their own Google+ page by simply clicking the "create a Google+ page" button, found on the bottom left hand side of any Google+ page (e.g. go to https://plus.google.com/113674045186761333804).
The Google+ pages are not surprisingly similar to the existing personal profiles (in much the same way that Facebook pages reflect personal profile layouts) - including an editable profile information tab, photos area, hangouts and the promise of more functionality to come.
Once a Google+ page is setup, the account holder can then switch between posting on their personal profile, or on behalf of their corporate account, by going to the "home" (or "stream") page and clicking on a dropdown arrow (under their name, in the top left hand corner of the page) and selecting the page they would now like to use Google+ on behalf of.
As yet, it doesn't appear that Google+ pages can have multiple administrators (like Facebook pages), which means that more than one user cannot keep the page up to date and ownership of the page cannot be transferred - important to keep in mind when deciding who in your company should setup your page (avoid delegating this task to flighty or disgruntled employees who may hijack the page, if they choose to leave the company).
The release of Google+ pages means that corporate identities are now able to leverage the access Google+ provides to the geeky, the young and those disillusioned with Facebook. However, how popular the pages will be largely depends on whether Google can do more than just play the social network "catch up game" (with the likes of Facebook) and coax more users to adopt their platform.
With the carrot of the world's biggest search engine evolving their search results (over time) to potentially favour their social network's corporate pages, I am certainly going to be among those to secure a corporate spot on Google+ and see where the social network goes, over time.
Wendy Schollum is a web strategist and managing director of Xplore - your web agency (wendy@xplore.net). For more information on leveraging social media to promote your business, follow Xplore on Twitter (www.twitter.com/xploreNET), join Xplore on Facebook (www.facebook.com/xploreNET), add Xplore to one of your Google+ circles (https://plus.google.com/113674045186761333804) or call 0800 100 900.