Google+ Pages Quickly Adopted By 61% of Top 100 Brands

61% of the world’s top 100 brands created pages within a week of Google’s recent Google+ Pages announcement, according to research from BrightEdge.

That’s good news for Google. Clearly the brand interest is there, and coupled with interest from celebrities, this should help user growth.

Still, interestingly enough, only about 13% of the brands that created pages displayed a link to them on their home page (the number is more like 53% for Facebook). That news isn’t quite as good for Google. It seems that the brands want to make sure they’re found on Google+ if people are looking, but aren’t too concerned about making sure all of their visitors know that their Google+ Page is a good place to follow them.

“In this early phase of a Google+ presence, brands appeared to be having mixed success at building social networks around their Google+ presence,” the firm says. “In fact, Google had the largest fan contingent of any brand on Google+, having attracted more than 65,000 fans. But other consumer brand stalwarts like Coke, McDonalds and Verizon had only dozens of fans, all just a shadow of the millions of Facebook fans these brands have already connected with.

Mdonald's on google+

Of course, when you put in the amount of engagement displayed by the McDonald’s page, what can you really expect?

“Brands have been quick to embrace a presence on Google+, but clearly there is a long way to go in establishing social networks that really have scale and deep user engagement,” said BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu. “Now the real work begins for these brands if they want to extend their social presence on the Web from Facebook to the new Google+. And it will be interesting to see how these communication and marketing channels will grow in a way that remains meaningful for the world’s top brands.”

According to the research, 94% of the top 100 brands have a presence on Facebook. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not 100% if these are really the top brands.

One more interesting point made is that Google+ pages on average appeared in the top 12 Google search results for the corresponding brand, while the brand’s Facebook pages appeared in the top 13 or 14.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/google-plus-pages-2011-11

How to Make A Google+ Page For Your Business

This article assumes you already have a Google+ account. If not, go get one of those first.

1. Go to the “Create a Page” page.

Create a Page on Google+

2. Pick a category. You can choose from:

Local Business or Place (hotels, restaurants, places, stores, services)

Product or Brand (apparel, cars, electronics, financial services)

Company, Institution or Organization (Companies, institutions, organizations, non-profits)

Arts, Entertainment or Sports (movies, TV, books, sports, shows)

Other (use if your page doesn’t fit in another category)

3. Fill in the info it asks for. This will differ depending on which category you select, but is basically just basic info. It’s probably a good idea to fill out as many of the fields as possible, because the more info you give, the more Google has to work with when it comes to associating your brand with different things. This can’t hurt when it comes to search rankings.

4. Customize. Add your tagline, profile photo, etc. You can add numerous photos. It shows six at the top of the profile page, so it’s probably a good idea to fill in those at the very least.

At this point, you’re pretty much done with the set-up, but there are certainly more steps to take to promote it and make it more engaging.

5. Add content. For one, you don’t want just an empty profile. Start sharing. It’s probably a good idea to share some content even before your page has any followers. This will (hopefully) make people want to follow the profile once they do come across the page. Show people that you have interesting content worth sharing. If you’re not creating the content, this is still a good place to curate relevant content as it relates to your audience or industry.

6. Add photos and videos. Go beyond just filling in the six photos at the top. The more you add, the more engagement there is to be had. If people can look through your photos or watch your videos, that’s more time that they’re spending with your brand – especially if these photos/videos are your own content.

7. Add some Circles and Follow others. Google+ Pages don’t have to be, and quite frankly shouldn’t be one way communication channels. Follow others and get involved in conversations. You can interact with other profiles and pages as the brand.

More and more people are setting up Google+ pages all the time. I suggest looking at different ones and seeing which ones are doing things that you like, and keeping these things in mind in terms of how to apply strategies to your own business.
Think of how big Facebook Pages have been for businesses, then consider the potential search ramifications of Google’s counterpart. As I said in a previous article. You’re probably not going to want to ignore Google+ Pages.

Google+ also offers the Hangouts feature, which will let you talk face to face with people on the page (and use the various features associated with that). Your Google+ Page may become an important hub for customer service.

You know Google is only going to continue to add features and functionalities to these pages as well. As I said before, the Pages feel a bit rushed on Google’s part. They don’t even let you enable others to administer them, but that stuff is coming.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/how-to-make-a-google-page-for-your-business-2011-11

Google+ “It’s already good for rankings”

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/google-its-already-good-for-rankings-2011-11

http://us.cafe24.com

Google+ hasn’t even been around 6 months yet, and it’s considered a major player in the social media realm. It regularly draws comparisons to both Facebook and Twitter. But, Google+ does have one thing going for it that currently Facebook and Twitter doesn’t: it’s good for rankings… in Google. Imagine that.

At the BlogWorld Expo in L.A., Alltops, Guy Kawasaki and Human Business Works President Chris Brogan had a very interesting discussion about all things Google+.

During the session, a question was raised “Is there now connections between google plus and search rankings?” Brogan stated that:

 

“Google doesn’t index all of Facebook right now. It’s a lost cause for SEO, they’re also no longer indexing Twitter. Google does index anything publicly for Google+”

It should be noted that Facebook doesn’t allow it. Kawasaki chimed in that this is probably a direct result of the relationship between Facebook and Bing.

If you Google Chris Brogan’s name, you’ll see his Google+ stuff shooting up the rankings. The same holds true for anyone. When you post something publicly it’ll begin working for you, he states “It’s a Google thing”.

Brogan would go on to say:

“Google has such advantages, I don’t see how they can’t be a success with Google+ … I’m amazed that people are so skeptical, especially those in the tech press”.

It’ll be interesting to follow this and see if Google+ does reach the level that both Brogan and Kawasaki think it can.