Blog

Google+ is now open for business(es)!

November 8th, 2011 Posted in Google+, Rebecca Roebuck

Since summer businesses have waited patiently for the opportunity to join in on Google+ and yesterday Google officially opened the doors to Google+ business pages. Previously Google+ was only open for personal profiles. Google discouraged businesses from using the profiles for businesses and even shut down a few businesses trying to use Google+ profiles as business pages.

So what now?

Businesses who want to join Google+ should head out to https://plus.google.com/pages/create to create a page. The process is simple:

First, it is important to decide what Google+ profile you want connected to this page. For now, Google+ business pages do not have admin rights like Facebook pages so the login used to create the page will be the only login with access to update the page. So make sure you are logged into a business Google account before creating your business page.
Choose a category that best describes your business (Local Business; Product or Brand, Company, Institution or Organization; Arts, Entertainment, Sports or Other).
Enter the basic information for your business and click Create.
Next Google+ will ask you to customize your page a bit with a tagline and profile picture.
Then you will be prompted to spread the word about your new page to your circles. Remember, this is all done through the Google+ profiles you used to create the page.
Click Finish and you are taken to your Google+ business page. The Get Started page provides some useful information about how to update and promote your biz page. You can then easily toggle between your personal profile and any pages you have created.
Once your page is complete you can add a Google+ badge to your website to connect your website to Google+.
Don’t forget to also add a +1 button to your website to allow users to share your content on Google+.

Now start updating your page! The process from here is similar to personal profiles. Pages can share posts and add photos and videos. A few Google+ pages that have already been created are:

Macy’s
Angry Birds
Anderson Cooper 360

Have you created a Google+ business page yet? How do you plan to use it for your business?