One way to judge the popularity of Google+ is with total user growth, and some estimates put the network at over 100 million users. Those projections indicate that Google+ could have 400+ million by the end of 2012.
Another metric is interaction with brands on the site. Google opened up Google+ to eager brands back in November of 2011, and within a week 61% of the world’s top 100 brands had created pages. So there was clearly initial interest from businesses. What was left to be seen was whether or not those brands could attract followers and interact with fans effectively on the network.
A new report from BrightEdge suggests that Google+ users have embraced brands in a big way over the last couple of months.
In December, the number of people that following one or more of the top 100 brands on Google+ was 222,000. In February, that number has skyrocketed to 3.1 million, an increase of 1400%. In just the past two months, for example, Coca-Cola went from being in 1,800 circles to 336,000.
All of this growth is impressive, but there’s one caveat. User adoption of brands on Google+ is incredibly top heavy. The top ten brands on Google+ hold all the followers (occupy the Google+ Ten!). Of the 3.1 million brand followers, 3 million are held by the top ten brands. In fact, each of the top ten by themselves have more followers that brands 11-100 combined. Check out the top ten brands on Google+ below:
It’s interesting how Google ranks on that list, with only 194,000 people having added them to circles. BrightEdge points out that at least they are doing better than big brands like Microsoft, Apple, and Goldman Sachs who have yet to really join the Google+ party in a meaningful way.
This is good news for Google+, but it’s tempered by this: Even with this growth, Google+ still only has 1% of the consumer interaction with brands that Facebook has.
The Page improvements include, most notably, the ability to add multiple admins to Pages, so you don’t have to rely on a single person to update them. You can add up to 50 admins. There is also a new notification system for admins and a page stat counter that allows admins to see page interaction (+1′s and circle adds).
The page features are now live, apparently worldwide.
In a post on the Google+ Your Business Page, Google’s Gustavo Franco wrote, “If you haven’t noticed already, multi-admin, ownership transfer, and notifications are live!”
“Managers can publish posts, respond to comments, add photos, change profile information, and even add/remove other managers,” saidGoogle+ Pages engineer Michael Nestler. “We’ve also added the ability for you to transfer page ownership. Ownership of a page can only be transferred to an existing manager. To do so, click the ‘Transfer Ownership’ link in the new Page Settings panel and then choose one of the managers you’d like to transfer ownership to.”
Google+ Pages, by the way, are also now appearing in Google search results.
Google held a live Q&A about Google+ for businesses. The biggest thing to come of this, that most businesses are probably interested in, is the coming functionality for multiple page admins. It should be here in December, and then you won’t have to rely on one person to be responsible for keeping the Page fresh.
It would appear that Pages are already well on their way to becoming much more useful for businesses. Google’s Kristoffer Sorensen sums up the FAQs of the session:
Multi-admin capability? Coming soon, before 2012!
Analytics? Coming soon!
Ability to schedule posts or auto-post? This is something we’re talking about but there is currently no way to do this.
Hangouts on Air? These are only available to a limited group of testers identified by our team, but we’re determining whether this feature will become more widely available.
Page management on mobile device? Enabling this functionality is a priority for our team and something we’re working on!
Events integration? This is something our team is actively thinking about – we’d love to hear your thoughts on how you’d like this to work.
The multi-admin feature was the biggest, most glaring hole in the product offering when it launched. Many were shocked, frankly, that this was not available upon launch, especially considering that it took Google so long to roll out brand pages to begin with. In fact, people were also pretty surprised that they didn’t make brand pages available when Google+ itself rolled out.
The fact is, however, that Google clearly wants businesses to use these pages, and the fact that some of this stuff has taken time is an indication that they want to get it right, and that has essentially been the message the company has been sending since Google+’s release. That’s why they didn’t want people setting up Profiles for their brands to begin with, until they rolled out the brand pages.
On its UK Google+ page, candy maker Cadbury shared a photo of a couple of custom candy bars it created in honor of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Why?
Why not?
Cadbury says, “Remember our 1kg Dairy Milk+ Bars? We’ve had some special personalised ones made, including these delicious ones for Google founders Larry & Sergey. Whose name would you like to see on a bar?”
This seems like as good a time as any to point out how Cadbury is utilizing the Google+ brand page for engagement. Last week, the company shared the above video, commenting, “We put a glass and a half of joy into each of our adverts… which is probably why they were the thing you most requested for us to post! Can you match these impressive eyebrow moves?”
A day before that, the company said on the page:
We like to start our Mondays by getting things in order, so if you’d all like to stand neatly in Circles that would help us immensely 😉
Oh but seriously… Just let us know if you’d like to be in any of our Dairy Milk, Wispa or Creme Egg circles and we’ll add you in! – Jerry
That post got 38 comments. This isn’t a tremendous amount when you think about Facebook pages, but not too bad for getting some engagement going on the young Google+ brand pages.
Cadbury has been pretty active on Google+ throughout the month, posting many photos, comments and videos.
If you’re looking for ways to make your brand page better, Cadbury’s isn’t a bad example to look at.
Google announced that it giving six companies the ability to implement Google+ Page management into their tools, so businesses have an easier time integrating Google+ into their social media management mix.
These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue.
“Businesses can create and manage their pages directly through Google+,” saysGoogle+ Pages Product Manager Sarsa McKinley. “We are committed to working on enhancements and innovative features to offer businesses more flexibility and power to run their pages. We also recognize that some businesses use social media management companies to manage their presence across multiple social networks.”
“We are currently working with these companies so that we can experiment and get feedback,” she says. “They were selected based on their extensive experience helping brands and businesses manage and analyze their presence on social networks.”
Each of the companies will be offering a subset of their customers the ability to manage their Google+ Circles, publish to the social network and moniitor usage, Google says. Presumably, this will all be expanded to more customers in time.
Google has a page for third party management tools here, which gives you access to these various companies via email, their sites and Google+.
Google’s Christian Oestlien presented at ad:tech New York this week talking about some marketing issues Google is hoping to solve with Google+. These are:
1. Fragmented marketing
2. Recommendations that lack staying power
3. Comments, not conversations
4. Impersonal messages
5. Limited insights
The company considers Pages to be a place that Google has never had before, where you can connect with all of our customers and directly communicate with them. They are designed to foster customer recommendations that have staying power, since all of your +1’s can be tied together, across your site, your Page, your search results, and your search ads.
Circles, he said, provide brands with a way to deliver the right messages to thre right people, as opposed to the same message to everybody. In terms of insights, he referred to the recently launched Ripples feature, which lets you track the social life of a post.
Now on to the tips. Here’s a bonus tip: You can search #pagetips on Google+ and get even more tips from people.
Google has its own “Google+ Your Business” page, which I’d recommend adding to your circles. Google’s Kristoffer Sorensen shares the following tips in a post on that:
1. Engage, engage, engage
“Google+ is about engaging with friends, family, colleagues, people who share your interests, and now customers, clients, and companies,” he says. “This is a great opportunity for you to share with your clients news, product launches, campaigns, and promotions. It’s also an awesome way for you to talk to your fans, learn about them and get feedback from them. In short, it’s a great opportunity for you to engage.”
He says to be responsive, don’t be afraid of negative comments, and post relevant, interesting content, but don’t spam your followers.
2. Hangouts are awesome!
“As a brand and a business you should be thinking about how hangouts can add value to the way you communicate with your followers. You should also be thinking about who should be hosting them on your end – it’s a great opportunity for you to show the human face of your brand/company. Host them from your page by clicking the “Start a hangout” button on the right side of your home page.”
He suggests using Hangouts for product demos, customer service office hours, discussions with people in the company, sharing financial results, Q&A for product/service feedback, or tutorials/classes.
3. Manage your Circles
“Managed right, circles can be a great tool for ensuring that you get the right message to the right follower,” says Sorensen. “For example, a clothes brand might want to send one message to their fans interested in soccer and another to their fans interesting in running. It allows you as a brand to tailor your message and increase relevance in your messaging.”
He notes that Google is working on ways for users to manage Circles better, but in the meantime, he sugggests creating a post that you reshare regularly. “Have it say something like ‘we want to make sure we get the right messages to our fans, so +1 the comments below to let us know what circles you want to be part of,” he says. “Comment on your own post with a comment for each potential circle (for instance, football, soccer, running, tennis, dodgeball, and barrel rolling). People can then indicate what circle they want to be in by +1’ing that comment – you can follow up and add people to circles based on their choice”
The regular Google+ Page offers “5 cool tips you should know about Google+ Pages”. These include:
4.You can +1 a Page to show support or add them to your Circles.
5. No Google+ Page can follow you until you follow them.
6. Google+ Pages can’t even mention you unless you’re connected. “No +mention spam.”
7. Google+ Pages automatically unfollow you if you unfollow them.
You can actually do this by just typing “+” and the Page’s name, so this should be a good way for users to easily find brand page. This is what Google calls Direct Connect:
9. Pay attention and responded accordingly.
Thomas Morffew of Ren Media says, “This is how you do Google Plus,” and shares the following screen cap:
10. Connect your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaigns.
Google+” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/createapage.jpg” title=”Create a Page” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”445″ />
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.
As you may know, Google announced today that it’s finally rolling out Google+ Pages for businesses, brands and products. Fortunately for businesses using Google Apps, it’s integrated there as well.
It was actually just less than two weeks ago that Google+ itself got integrated with Google Apps, so it’s good to see they’re launching Apps integration right out of the box.
“We wanted to help you get your business, school or nonprofit on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today,” saysGoogle+ Pages Product Management Director Dennis Troper on the Google Enterprise Blog.
“A Google+ page is your organization’s identity on Google+,” says Troper. Your business, school or nonprofit can post updates and news, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and engage in conversations with customers and followers.”
While it’s been pretty well established that Google+ would play a significant role in a business’ search performance based on various factors, especially +1’s, part of today’s announcement is that businesses will be able to tie their +1’s from their Pages to those of their site, to create one number. So it stands to reason the bigger number that is, the bigger the signal it sends Google when it’s deciding how to rank your site.
Also part of the announcement is the Google+ badge, which businesses will be able to place on their sites to allow users to easily add them to their Circles.
Google announced today that it is finally rolling out Google+ Pages for businesses, brands and products. That’s worldwide.
It’s not quite yet available for everyone, but will be “soon” according to Google. Here’s the URL where you can go to create one when: https://plus.google.com/pages/create.
“For you and me, this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour,” says Google SVP of Engineering Vic Gundotra. “Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.”
“For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you,” he adds. “Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.”
There are a number of Pages that are already available for viewing For example, here’s one for the Dallas Cowboys.
Of course there’s a search benefit to having a page. Users who find your page in search results, will be able to add it to their circles right from the search results page.
Google also announced “Google+ Direct, which lets you automatically add Google+ pages to your circles from Google Search by adding “+” in front of the page you’re searching for. That explains why they got rid of the “+” operator.
“Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town,” says Gundotra. “In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.”
Google says that while Direct Connect only works with select pages right now, many more are coming.
