Since it began on September 20, 2011, Google+ still continues to gain market share, build consumer drive along with overall activity, and is definitely on nothing but an upward curve. This increase in growth demonstrates that brands are definitely using Google+, and working to gain recognition from the increasing amount of Google+ users.
There has recently become a large gap between the top 22 brands versus the rest. As time goes on this gap will only widen, and continue to do so if other companies don't step up their online efforts. It may also be difficult for those companies without a presence to catch up to the rest. Social Media is all about presence and the sooner companies start building theirs the better and faster the results will be.
What makes these online presences most successful is content engagement. Multimedia content (photos and videos) continue to drive the majority of engagement. People want things fast and visual, especially with the rise of social media applications and programs such as Twitter where you are limited to exactly how much you can say at a time.
Google+ pages can be created for anything including businesses, books, albums, and anything else you can pretty much think of. Google is inflexible when it comes to creating a personal profile for a business or brand so make sure you are not doing so otherwise these profiles will be removed.
With Google+, you have the option to add your followers to circles as you do on your Google+ personal profile which means you can target your messages to people based on many variables like location, and their role within your business (such as: contractor, partner, employee, customer) just to name a few. The possibilities are endless, and the ability to send targeted messaging has proven to result in higher social media conversions. With Google+ pages, once someone has become a follower of your page, your page is able to interact with the Google+ user's public profile. This makes it very easy to engage with them in a way that shows your interest in each of your individual followers. This program is so advanced that even your followers will see notifications of your page's interaction with them. Not to mention you can now also go to a certain follower's profile and comment on their posts, just to send them a little reminder about your brand via your Google+ page.
One aspect that I really like about Google+ pages is that they can be managed by multiple administrators. This comes in handy when you have a few people looking after all of your companies online profiles, making it easy for more than one person to login and take a look at what is going on.
Ever wanted to know how active your brand is right from search results? This program makes it possible by directly connecting your website to your Google+ page, that way when someone searches for your brand, they will not only see your website listing, but also your latest Google+ activity making it extremely important why this activity should be updated on a regular basis. This can be a huge addition to your brand's domination of search results as it will push anything past your Google+ listing further down the first page. As an added bonus, searchers who are logged in to their Google+ account can add your brand page to their circles directly from search results.
Google+ is improving their Hangouts to include extras such as screen sharing, Google docs integration, and shared notes and sketchpads. This means that business pages can have special video chats on their pages similar to webinars with a small group of their fans, or even company employees. This is a much higher level of interaction than any of the other networks out there thus far. It could be used as a great promotional tool to get more followers to the brand page, simply by offering the first people to get into the Hangout a special discount or other incentive.
With all the positive feedback and continual increase in users, Google+ is here to stay. I especially recommend jumping on the bandwagon (if you haven't already) because it easily provides you with captive audiences, who are eager to engage with their favorite brands, all in a very simple and convenient way. Google+ is evidently becoming a key player in the social media space and this is one space you don't want to be left out of.
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