Google+ Marketing Blueprint-3

2. Set Up Your Google+ Page in 5 Easy Steps

While Google indicated that Google+ Pages wouldn't be immediately accessible to all, they're actually becoming readily available.

You are probably also eager to create a Google+ Page for your own business. The process isn't difficult, and in this section, we will walk you through it step by step.

Before you start remember this:

·        Your page name will be the title ( the name in the browser tab).

·        Your page name + tagline will be the META description of the page.

1. Choose an Accessible Gmail Account

If we learned anything from creating our own page, it's that Google+ Pages' administrative capabilities could use improvement. Avoid creating your business page through just any old account, such as a personal Gmail account.

Instead, choose a Gmail account that is accessible to multiple members of your marketing team (e.g. companymarketingteam@gmail.com), and use that account to create your page.

Because Google+ Pages' administrative capabilities currently aren't as sophisticated as say, Facebook's (which enable you to assign multiple page admins regardless of the page's origins), you'll want to choose a host account that makes your page as accessible to multiple contributors as possible.

The 'Google+ Your Business' Google+ Page has indicated that Google has already started working on multi-admin support and ownership transfer. For now, we recommend making your account as accessible to other team members as possible.

2. Create a Page With the Desired Account

Visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create, and if you see the option to create a Google+ Page, get started! Follow the wizard (it's much like Facebook's Page creation wizard), and choose the most appropriate option to classify your business.

The following screenshot shows the 'Create a Page' section of Google+.  As you can see, there are five categories to choose from:

* Local Business or Place

* Product or Brand

* Company, Institution or Organization

* Arts, Entertainment or Sports

* Other

Local Business or Place – These are pages specifically designed so users can interact with a businesses physical location.  Local businesses can add a phone number, opening hours and a map of their location will be automatically added to their business page.

Think this sounds awfully familiar to pages on Google Places?  Well, it does.  The key difference however is that G+ pages provides additional ways for businesses to interact and engage their audience, and this is really the point of social media marketing.

Product or Brand – These are pages specifically for products or brands such as cars, electronics or financial services for example.  Administrators can choose the 'Page name', choose a category for their product or brand and define who the content is suitable for (18+, 21+, all Google+ users etc.).  These pages can also be linked directly to the business homepage to help users find the G+ page more easily.

Company, Institution or Organization – This is the same as the 'Product or Brand' create a page option, except it applies to companies, organization, institutions and non-profits.

Arts, Entertainment or Sport – Again, the same options available except these pages are for films, music, TV, books, sports, shows etc.

Other – These can be used by businesses who don't feel their page fits into one of the other categories.

The process of page creation is a fairly straightforward process, as can be expected from Google – but a key question is how can companies use their brand pages as a marketing tool, and specifically why would they use G+ pages over Facebook business pages?

After selecting your classification, fill in your basic information, including your page name (i.e. your company name), your business' website URL, your category (i.e. your industry), and the classification of your page's content (i.e. any Google+ user, 18 years of age or older, etc.).

      All the Best

         M.T