How Google plus can help your business

When organizations start to think about using Google plus for their business, one of the first questions they ask is how Google plus can help my business and there are a number of ways that it can do so. First of all, Google plus and Google Search are directly linked and Google Search is the largest search engine in the world. When you first set up your business on Google plus, you’ll have the opportunity to verify it. By doing this, Google will now recognize it as an official business. Your contact and location information will also be easily available so that people know where they can go to find out more information.

When you post a status update to Google plus those status updates are indexed in the Google search engine and will appear in search results. So you might post a status update about a new product that you’re releasing and you haven’t written any articles or published any videos about that product yet, but your post can still appear in search results when people search something related to your product and then they can click through to your Google plus page to find out more information. Google plus also allows your customers to rate your business and those ratings appear right in the search results.

So if you have some happy customers you can let them know, hey I’d really appreciate it if you’d head on over Google plus and write a review for my business. That way you can increase your online credibility for perspective clients when they first see your business in Google search engine results pages. Google plus also offers a personalized search which greatly increases your visibility. What this means is that maybe you posted a status update about your new product and you have a follower on Google plus that gave that post a plus one.

Well, if that follower has a thousand followers of their own and one of their followers searches something related to your post in Google search, the chance that your post appears is greatly increased because they follow somebody that’s already liked that post. So the bigger following you build on Google plus the more visibility you’re going to have in search engines. Google plus is essentially a social network. So just by using Google plus, you’re going to increase your social media presence. Google plus has about 540 million monthly active users, second only to Facebook.

Rich media in Google plus appears beautifully so when you post images and videos, they’re very attractive to the user and there is a higher chance that those users are going to click through to find out more information about your business. Google plus also allows for easy interaction with your target market. You can message people directly on Google plus. You can do video chat hangouts with them. You can join communities which allow you to interact with people that you know have a shared interest, and hopefully that interest is in line with the products and services that your business offers.

It’s also a great opportunity for social branding, just like Twitter and Facebook, it’s a great place for you to get your message out there and teach people more about your organization. I mentioned Google hangouts. Google hangouts is a video conferencing platform built right into Google plus which allows you to video chat with up to 10 people at once so you can interact with all of the stakeholders related to your business, your clients, your vendors and your shareholders. Anybody that has a stake in your business you have direct access to via video chat over Google plus and Google hangouts.

There are some other advantages to Google plus as well. Communities group users with similar interests. So you can find a community that’s related to your industry and then you can start interacting with those users and you know that they’re already interested in some of the products and services that you may offer because of the community that they’re a part of. Users on Google plus tend to focus on more than just friends and I like to compare Google plus to Facebook when we talk about this, because on Facebook the users tend to be more interested in their friends and family.

Google plus users aren’t as interested in that. If they want to interact with their close net friends and family, they’d probably head over to Facebook. Google plus users are more interested in learning and exploring new things. So based on that the user base on Google plus is going to be more likely to interact with your public post as a business than they would be on Facebook.

Google my Business also increases search engine visibility. So Google my Business is directly linked with Google plus which I mentioned earlier. So let’s say you’re a pet food seller in Fresno, California and you’ve set up your Google plus page and your business is verified as an official Google my Business. When somebody searches food seller in Fresno, California, the chances that your business appears, is much, much greater than any business outside of the Fresno area, which is really how it should be because that user is searching for businesses that are right in the Fresno area and Google my Business does a great job of delivering those results right to the user.

So in summary, Google plus has a very large user base for you to interact with and get your message out. The online visibility of your business is greatly increased by using Google plus both from a branding perspective and from a search engine optimization perspective. The branding opportunities in Google plus are abundant. Whether you are just looking to increase your brand recognition by posting some videos and photos, or whether you’re looking to interact directly with users that are going to be interested in the products and service that you have to offer.