I heart Google+. Why? It combines the best features of Facebook with the ability to be non-mutually exclusive, like on Twitter. This means that you don’t have to confirm friendship, and can create a nice little newsfeed for yourself, enhanced with Facebook’s awesome rich media features. They’ve really taken the best of both networks and created something new from it. (See the bottom of this article to find out my personal favorite Google+ feature).
Yesterday they finally announced an option for businesses and organizations to have profiles, or “pages,” on Google+. Here are step-by-step instructions, with screenshots, for setting up a Google+ page for your business or nonprofit.
1. Go here: https://plus.google.com/pages/create
It’ll look like this:
2. Pick a category on the left.
3. Fill in your company name, your website, and choose a category.
I didn’t find what I was looking for in categories – describing a video production and online marketing company as “professional services” is a little too broad for me. So I just scrolled beneath all the categories and chose “company.” Also broad and not phenomenal from an SEO perspective, but it is what it is.
4. Click “create your page.”
5. Fill in your tagline with a specific description of what your company does, and who your clients are.
If you have specific keywords that you’ve researched and found to have a high traffic rate versus a low competition, this is the place to use them. Remember, this is Google! It’s a free SEO boost!
6. Upload a photo.
This is key. Do not skip this step! And do not save it for later or it’ll never get done! Try to use the same one that’s on your company’s Twitter account and your Facebook page. This will help people recognize it when they see it.
7. Hit “continue,” and tell your circles about your new page.
Type in a status update and it will post on your personal wall. Once you click “Share on Google+,” you’re finished.
The next time you log into Google+ you can use it either as yourself or as your page.
Now you can start sharing on your profile! For now I’ll probably use our new Google+ business page like I use our Facebook (fan)page. But there’s nothing worth sharing until there are followers! So announce your page on your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook networks and ask for followers.
BUT – people like to browse when they check out your page and see the kind of stuff you’ll post, so it’s best to have some status updates there to give people an idea of what they’ll get out of liking your page. Hopefully Google+ will roll out landing page options in the near future. Till then, instead of telling people what they’ll get out of following your Google+ page stream, show them by putting some status updates on there.
The coolest part? You now don’t need to upload videos “by hand” to a status update. You can just click on the video icon in the status box here:
Then click on Youtube, and you can search Youtube for the video you want to post in your stream.
Write your little blurb to introduce your video
Click “share” and it’s live!
I love the simplicity.
Are you on Google+? Please post your +URL in the comments below so that we can follow! In the meantime, follow our new Google+ page here: https://plus.google.com/b/101137870708015580859/101137870708015580859/posts
See you there!
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. It’s so inspiring me to save more then 50% of my time. We waste a lot of time on being super unproductive. I have made a list of the most interesting things that I learned from the book, and I’ll apply them to my own workflow.
