Should Your Business Have A Google Plus Page?
The simple answer to this question is yes. You might as well set one up now because, if you don’t, every time you log onto your YouTube channel or your Gmail account Google is going to pester you to set one up anyway. Of course, you might not have a Gmail account or a YouTube channel. If that’s the case, and you never intend on getting them then, well, you should probably still set up a Google Plus Page for your company.
As I mentioned previously, Google is trying to get all its users, no matter what part of Google they are using, to sign up for every Google service imaginable. To be honest, though, signing up for every Google service imaginable isn’t too bad an idea. Gmail is a popular and respected email service. YouTube is the biggest video sharing site out there. Drive is great for sharing files. Calendar is perfect for companies that need to share work schedules. Blogger is a very good blog site. Search is… Well, it’s the original Google, the most successful internet site of all time.
So, all of Google’s services are useful, even the ones I didn’t mention above, but why do you need a Google Plus Page? All you need to sign up to any Google service, after all, is a Gmail account. Well, it turns out that Google are so proud of their social network they want everyone to start using it, despite its lack of popularity when compared to the likes of Facebook.
To persuade people to use Google Plus, the search giant released a special dashboard a couple of months ago. From this Google Plus dashboard, users can organise their business’ profile and settings on many Google services: they can change their company address on Google Maps, they can manage their YouTube channel and they can change their company’s search results on Google Search.
Search is how Google made its name. It’s the most popular search engine online and it makes the most money of all the free-to-use websites. Maintaining an active presence on Google Plus, by setting up and managing a Page for your business, helps your company rank in Google Search – not just your Google Plus page, your website as well if you link the two together.
Don’t get me wrong, Google Plus has a number of great features as well as the dashboard. On the service, you can post diverse content with interesting hashtags to drive conversation. You can follow, comment, +1 and interact, potentially gaining your company new clients and customers. You can find communities that are relevant to your business and connect with likeminded people. Best of all, you can use Hangouts to run video conferences.
When Google last updated Plus, adding hashtags and changing the stream, I noted that, although the features improved the social network, people still wouldn’t flock to it. Google announced, last year, that 400 million people were on Google Plus. In may this year, that figure went up to 500 million. At the time this seemed like a stretch. The reality was that 500 million people were signed into a Google service, be it Gmail, YouTube or docs, but they were not necessarily maintaining an active Google Plus account.
For the reasons I have mentioned above, though, its still worth setting up a Google Plus business page. Don’t put as much effort into it as you would your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but make sure it’s there so that when you need it (and, considering Google’s domination, you soon might) you can access it in a moment.
What do you think of Google Plus?
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Will Sigsworth
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Should Your Business Have A Google Plus Page?
Reviewed by Anonymous
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Thursday, August 29, 2013
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Reviewed by Anonymous
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Thursday, August 29, 2013
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Anonymous
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