Should I Use Google+ For My Business

What Is Google+

Google+ can be described as sim­ple as a social net­work like Face­book but it does quite a bit more. It allows users to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties with sim­i­lar users, hang­outs (online con­fer­ences / phone calls), pri­vate or pub­lic posts or shares and more. Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Google+ pro­vides author­ship or author­i­ty to con­tent on the web. What I mean is this, you can con­nect your blog post to your Google+ account, mak­ing you the author of your con­tent across the web. Here is an exam­ple of how that con­tent might look on the web when a per­son has ver­i­fied his/​her author­ship on Google+. As you can see from the above snap­shots, I typed in ​“best mobile crm” in a Google search. On the first page, I see a num­ber of search results includ­ing this blog I wrote a year ago with a thumb­nail of myself on it. It shows my name and how many peo­ple are in my ​“cir­cles” (ref­er­enc­ing Google+). This is hap­pen­ing because I reg­is­tered that I was an author on my busi­ness blog in my Google+ account. You must have a per­son­al Google+ account to do this. Fol­low these instruc­tions to make your­self an author of your con­tent: Google Author­ship.

Should You Be Using Google+

Google has been push­ing Google+ hard for almost 3 years now. It boasts over 300,000 users and grow­ing. It con­tin­ues to be inte­grat­ed in the local search results of sites like YouTube and Google Maps. So yes I think it is a good idea to sign up for a Google+ account and begin to hang­out a bit on this plat­form. You may not find a lot of engage­ment just yet as a con­trac­tor on Google+, but that should not stop you from being there. I would rec­om­mend you start slow but strive to be con­sis­tent. It is a great way to help brand your com­pa­ny. Start by cre­at­ing cir­cles (sim­i­lar to Face­book friends) such as: Local Busi­ness­es, Nation­wide Pro­fes­sion­als, Ven­dors, Cus­tomers, Prospects. Spend time not only post­ing some of your blogs and pho­tos of your work but engag­ing and inter­act­ing with local busi­ness­es. Help share their con­tent! Con­sid­er start­ing a ​“Hang­out” (video con­fer­ence) and edu­cate your audi­ence about help­ful tips and tricks in your indus­try. If you need help learn­ing more about Google+ or just want to see best prac­tices, make sure you fol­low these guys: 

• +Mark Trapha­gen (mar­ket­ing on Google+)
• +Ron­nie Bin­cer (Hang­out Helper)
• +Chris Bro­gan (Social Media consultant)
• +Jay Baer (Social Media / Con­tent Consultant)

Recent­ly, the head of Google+ left the orga­ni­za­tion. This has caused quite a stir of news feeds around the social net­works. A num­ber of peo­ple are say­ing Google+ will die out soon. Based on what I have seen so far and read, I high­ly doubt Google+ will be shut­ting down. There might be some changes to how it all works, but I would say there is noth­ing to wor­ry about on your end. Just make sure you have a busi­ness page (for­mer­ly Google Places) and that you have a plan in place to active­ly use this plat­form. A few good links to fur­ther look into Google+ 

1. Google+ Web­site
2. Google+ SEO Blog Arti­cle (a long one but a good one)