Should you bother to create a Google Plus Business page for your brand? Google may rule the roost when it comes to search engines, but the company has struggled when it comes to building a social media platform that can hang with the big birds.
You may already know about the failure of Google Wave, or perhaps you’ve never heard of it at all (we certainly wouldn’t hold it against you). Released in May, 2010, this attempt at merging Gmail with instant messaging and other hallmarks of social media fell flat, discontinuing a mere two months after it had launched. Although Wave managed to endear itself to a small but enthusiastic base of users, in the end, there just weren’t enough people paying attention to the product to justify its ongoing development.
However, from the ashes of Google Wave rose a phoenix, spreading +1 joy across the web. Wave introduced an array of innovative features, including Circles (organize your friends and contacts into groups), Hangouts (spots for organizing video chats) and Sparks (akin to Alerts, acts as a search feature allowing users to discover content to share with others).
Moreover, Google introduced Google+ Business Pages, allowing all manner of business entities to build custom pages to broaden their digital presence. Unfortunately, the pages built by the nation’s biggest brands can’t begin to match the amount of followers they’ve been able to amass on Facebook (read our basic Facebook marketing tips to learn more about that platform’s possibilities).
However, one shouldn’t count out Google Plus business completely. Although the product’s current user base can’t contend with Twitter or Facebook, it is over 40 million strong to date, according to Google CEO, Larry Page. What’s more, recent studies show that Google+ profiles may hold some influence over search engine rankings, translating to more traffic to your website (if not your Google+ page).
Ultimately, it simply cannot hurt to create a Google Plus business page. We know that businesses which utilize various Google properties tend to earn favor with the almighty search engine giant. Creating your own business page is easy and could very help you out in terms of SEO.
