Fun Tips For Google+ Business Pages

Now that Google+ business pages have been out for almost two months, marketers are learning different strategies to make the pages a little more user friendly and fun for their visitors. Last week's announcement about multiple admins, business page notifications, and +1/follower count consolidation, has already made marketers lives a lot easier when it comes to managing their brands, but, did you know that there are some other things you can do to help make your Google+ Business Page a little more exciting?

Custom URL Generator

This first tool helps you create a custom URL for your Google+ page. Facebook allows you to create a vanity URL for your business page, however, that feature is not available with Google+, though it is expected that it will be available in the future. So, for now, you are stuck with a long URL with lots of gobbledygook in it. However, with this free service called gPlus.to, you can create a shortened URL to help make your marketing a tad easier.

1. Go to http://www.gplus.to/

2. Enter the nickname for your page. This can only be 25 characters long, so put some thought into it. It can be your business name, or it can be some keywords for your business. For example, for Page 1's Legal Web Marketing G+ page, I created the nickname "LegalWebMarketing", so now my URL to that page is: http://gplus.to/LegalWebMarketing

3. Grab your Google ID. This is going to be the long chunk of numbers in the URL of your business page. Example:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103129738146834033345/

4. Click "Add" and now you have your new URL. Add that URL to your website, blog posts, Facebook page, email signatures, etc.

Create an Avatar Storybook

This is an interesting feature of Google+. Instead of your profile image being just one static image, you can upload different images to your "Profile Pictures" folder and then when people click on the profile image, it will flip through those. You can check out this feature out on Page 1's Google+ Page here. Just click on the profile image and it will scroll through each image in the "Profile Pictures" folder.

This feature might not be applicable to all businesses, but for many, it gives you an additional opportunity for branding, service spotlights, employee spotlights, etc. Since this feature is not widely known right now, consumers also don't know to click on the profile image, however, I expect that to change as more businesses start taking advantage of this feature.

Find Conversations to Join

Google+ has an awesome search feature, allowing you to find people, businesses, and discussions in your areas of expertise. It's a great way to find companies or individuals who you might be able to build relationships or partnerships. If you support a non-profit or social cause, you can also use this search feature to find others who support the same thing and enter into discussions about this topic. Remember that this is not a time to be salesy and try to push your services. This is a time to act as an expert in your industry and share useful information appropriate to the discussion at hand. Google+ is no different than other social media sites -- people don't want to be sold to!

I hope these tips make using Google+ a little more fun and give you the opportunity to extend your reach on the social site. Google+ is adding over 625,000 users per day, and it's estimated that they will have over 400 million users by the end of 2012. It is fully expected that Google+ will give Facebook a good run for its money and become one of the leaders in the social media world. In addition, considering it's a Google product, it is suspected that Google+ will play more of a role in search results than Facebook will. All good reasons to stay active and up-to-date on Google+ news.

If you have any questions about Google+ and how it can help your business, please feel free to give us a call at 800.916.3886 or shoot us an email through our website or to consultant(at)page1solutions(dot)com.

You can also connect with us on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

~JessicaE