Google+ Pages – More Social Real Estate



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Deepweb
on Google+

Google has released Pages for Google +

Google+\’s Pages are similar to Facebook Pages and allow Brands such as companies, organisations, local businesses, celebrities and other entities to create a presence on Google+

Previously there had been a lot of criticism of Google for not allowing these from the start of Google+. To the point that the \”Real Names\” policy caused the deletion of some profiles that are now essentially what Google+ Pages is meant for.

Similarly to Facebook Pages, you can add your brief business information and start using Google+ to share information.

There are some key things to note with these Pages

  • Google+ Pages can\’t add others to their circles (or follow / friend) until those people have added the brand page to their circles (to try and stop spamming)
  • As a follow on from the first point, it is more difficult to promote your page without having a personal Google+ account to promote the Page, the more people in your personal account circles the better.
  • The profile information is limited, if you want to get more information out there, use links to your website or use the post facility to add them into your stream
  • Your personal Google+ profile is your administrator account, you can switch between the two and post as the respective accounts.
  • It is important to do the Google+ Direct Connect (this puts you in the running to have the ability to be found on Google Search by adding \”+\” at the start of your name like a keyword)

It would have been nice to have a connection between your Google Places listing and your Page, I hope this is integrated as this would be a sensible way to combine these common things (maps, business details etc)

It is also a new kid on the block. There are no Apps like in Facebook to add other functionality like E-Commerce, but I expect this will be added later.

Hangouts (where you can host a video chat session) can be a really novel way of interacting with people following your page. I can see this being really good for video training, Q+A sessions and other mass interactions that are currently done via forums, wiki etc.