It’s okay if you’ve been hesitant about creating a Google+ page in the past. After all, you’re already maintaining a presence on Facebook and Twitter, so who has time to add another social media channel into their responsibilities?
But as the number of Google+ users continues to grow past 80 million, brand pages are becoming a necessity for every business. Below are four reasons why you need to start a business page on Google+, and the sooner the better!
1. Google+ is essential for increasing your Google search rankings.
It’s nice to think that Google is some kind of nonpartisan entity that simply rewards good content. But in reality, Google is a business. So that means that Google is going to emphasize its own blogs, services, and you guessed it, social network brand pages.
For prospective customers that already have Google+, they are connected to “Search plus your world.” This feature of Google+ emphasizes connections and profiles in addition to regular content. To show up in these results, you need a page. Period. You will then need to optimize your profile for SEO, but I’ll leave that explanation to the experts.
2. Google+ is essential for connecting with bloggers, tech journals, and social media experts.
Even if a good majority of your potential customers aren’t on Google+ yet, this doesn’t mean you should write off having a business page. Google+ is saturated with tech-savvy, social media bloggers. These are the people who write content that gets shared all around the internet.
Connecting with these influencers opens up tons of opportunity. You could incorporate their opinions into your blog, curate their posts on your profile page, and even score some great interviews with top influencers. If they like your website or blog, they could share your content, which will make finding new customers easier than before.
3. Google+ offers benefits that other social networks don’t.
Google+ hangouts are definitely the breakout feature of the network, but it has other impressive qualities as well. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Google+ allows you to format text with italics and bold. Google+ makes it easy to share video and images without a 140 character limit, and they still support hashtags.
While you should keep many of your posts open to the public, Google+’s circles work better than Facebook for sharing specific content to specific people. Additionally, YouTube has a deep integration with Google+.
And most of all…
4. Google+ is here to stay.
Love it, hate it, or tolerate it, Google’s social network isn’t going anywhere. With more businesses catching on to the benefits of a brand page, and Google requiring new account holders to create Google+ profiles, the social network’s user base will continue to grow.
So if you want to start establishing your authority in social media, you need start a Google+ business page right now. Compared to Facebook, Google+ is still fairly empty, which means you can carve out a name for yourself. When the average consumers sign up, they’ll be impressed that your page is already established on the social network.
While I can’t promise that starting a Google+ brand page will bring you instant new business, leads, or conversions, several social media experts predict that it will be vitally important for businesses in the future. Get a jump on your competition: start a page today and start circling.
Mandy Kilinskis works as a content developer for Quality Logo Products, a leading distributer of promo items like personalized water bottles. She writes content for the website, promotional products blog, and helps maintain the company’s Google+ profile.
"You’re such a smart boy!" were his first accolades heard. So, it’s no wonder that this phrase became the title of his business, Smart Boy Designs.