Google has officially made its new social networking site available to businesses and brands, so here’s how to set up a Google+ page for your small business.
You might be feeling less than excited about setting up yet another social networking account, but with some 40 million users on Google+already, it’s important you look at setting up a business page sooner, rather than later.
Dynamic Business is already on Google+, so if you’d like to add us to your circles, click here.
Follow these simple steps to set up a Google+ page for your business:
- Use a generic email address to set up the account. Google+ doesn’t have the same level of administrative capabilities as Facebook yet, so if you want multiple people in your business to have access to the account, we recommend creating a generic email address for your Google+ business page.
- Begin creating your page. Visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create and follow the instructions to create your business Google+ page. You’ll be asked to specify what kind of business or brand you’re creating a page for, and just choose the option most closely matching your organisation. Next, fill in your business’ basic information. i.e. your business name, your website and industry.
- Customise your profile. Next, you’ll be asked to create a tagline for your business (this is important, so come up with something that will draw the interest of customers!), as well as choose an image for your profile. We recommend using your business logo, as this will make your page easily identifiable to existing and potential customers. You can fill up your photo albums with photos of your team and your products, rather than using these as profile images.
- Get promoting & sharing! Next, you’ll need to share your page. Consider adding some content to your page before you start sharing it with your contacts, to make it more attractive for people to add you to their circles – no one wants to follow a page that’s empty!
- Spend some time getting to know the platform. Google+ is different to Facebook and Twitter, but it’s an important marketing tool so you need to spend a bit of time getting to know its features and testing out what content works best on it and what kinds of posts your customers will respond best to.
You should treat Google+ the same way you treat your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Upload content regularly, engage with your customers, respond to their comments and questions and think about creating a strategy for how you want it to work for your business – both in the short and long term.
As with any social networking activity, it can take time for your profile to gain traction and for your business followers, so make sure you stay patient, be consistent and stick to your strategy. The results will be worth it in the long run!
We’ll keep you updated about any updates or changes Google makes to the platform, but in the meantime, Happy Googling!
