What Should You Being Doing As A Business Or Brand On Google +?

Google July 7, 2011 3 Comments

Well the simple answer is you should do nothing. Despite all the hype around Google + at the moment it is very much for personal use and should not be embraced by businesses and brands because you are simply not allowed to do so yet by Google. That hasn’t stopped companies piling in there though with plenty of professional profiles already set up and even one of the first examples of a proper Google + campaign down below from an agency. While it might seem frustrating for businesses and marketers to do nothing on a platform that is so talked about online right now the wise move is to sit on your hands until Google makes business pages official (sometime later this year apparently) because you only have to look at the mess that some people got themselves in to by using Facebook for businesses through personal profiles. If Google + does take off the future is going to be huge for businesses with massive potential in lots of areas but for now it is a waiting and watching brief…

First Google + Campaign

As was to be expected it didn’t take very long for the first business to jump on board and start a campaign to tap in to all the early buzz on the platform. An agency was able to find a way to invite people in to the system and as the case study below claims was able to create massive buzz around their new company.

What Are Google Saying

One of the surprising and best parts of the Google + launch has been just how engaging the people building the platform have been with the audience. Everybody from the product managers to the top executives within the company have been making little videos explaining updates and changes to the platform. In this video they make it very clear that you shouldn’t be using Google + for business in any way…

Don’t Make The Same Mistake As On Facebook

One of the biggest problems that I hear about every single day of the week is businesses and brands who have set up Facebook profiles instead of business pages. Many did this before pages even existed as they spotted the marketing potential of Facebook before business pages were launched. As a result of this problem Facebook introduced a tool to help convert personal profiles in to business pages but it is messy at best and fraught with risk at it’s worst. The wise move is not to try and promote anything under a personal profile on Google + and wait for the official business pages because that could save you a world of pain.

What Will Brands Be Able To Do In The Future?

Once Google does actually let brands and businesses in there is going to be an endless amount of possibilities that they can do on the platform. Just look at hangouts as an example which are a place where you could engage with fans by using videos and live chat. Add in the fact that the stream could allow you to group people in to specific circles for different purposes and sparks which could be used for sharing content and this could be an amazing platform. Add in the fact that Google will of course build in hyper targeted advertising via their ad platforms and you could be looking at a great new way for brands to engage with consumers online.

Tags