As Russell Working describes in great detail below, Google+ opened itself up for businesses this past Monday, triggering the Great Google+ Land Rush of 2011. Thousands of businesses have already set up Google+ pages, however serious questions still remain about the effectiveness of the fledgling social network. Sure, Google+ already boasts over 40 million users, but when you compare that to Facebook’s 800 million or even Twitter’s 200 million, the numbers aren’t overly impressive.

Yes, Google+ pages benefit from being hitched to the 400-pound gorilla that is Google’s powerful search engine, but the jury is still out on just how impactful Google+ will be over the long haul.

Google+ now open for businesses—and the rush is on
Social media site opens to organizations, drawing mixed reviews but respect for the power of a site backed by Google’s search engine.

By Russell Working, Ragan.com

Google+ opened for business Monday, and not since the Oklahoma Land Rush has there been such a stampede to occupy a territory.

Companies from Pepsi to The New York Times have staked their brand pages in the search engine’s social network after months of watching individuals occupy the space.

“Businesses are scrambling all over themselves to get pages up,” says Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. “It would be conspicuous to be absent.”

Industry watchers had little doubt that Google+ would shake up communications, integrating the all-seeing eye of the search cyclops with the sorts of pages that once were limited to places like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Wired headlined a story, “Why Google Plus Pages (Will) Beat Facebook. And Twitter.”

Disagreement about its effectiveness

Some debated how well Google—which had been shooing brands off the pages until this week—had pulled off its new platform.

Social media strategist Jay Baer finds Google+ “pretty underwhelming,” saying the site resembles a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn—with fewer features. Still, he adds, there’s no denying its importance.

“They could make a turd and still make it extraordinarily important, because it’s going to tie to search,” Baer says. “That is their hammer. It doesn’t even matter if it’s any good, because they have Google search, and LinkedIn doesn’t and Twitter doesn’t.”

A Google spokeswoman declined to reveal the number of brands on Google+ on Tuesday. Google accounted for 65 percent of search engine traffic in October, versus 16 percent for Yahoo.com.

Google launched the Plus project four months ago, rolling out more than 100 features, several of which will enable different kinds of connections, says spokeswoman Andrea Faville.

These include circles, in which page owners can target messages and send special offers to loyal customers. And there are hangouts that will enable organizations to have real conversations with people through video chat. The New York Times says it plans to use video hangouts to interview sources and hold reporter roundtables.

“Imagine a band being able to jam online with their fans or the owner of a business being able to directly answer customers’ questions,” Faville says.

Organizations seeking to get started on Google+ can click here.

Direct Connect creates incentives

Odden says the site’s “Direct Connect” feature creates incentives for businesses by distinguishing among search results, but only if a company links from its website to its Google+ page. This can confirm for the Google bot that there are connections between sites, helping it sort through billions of pages and improving search display, he says.

“Imagine as a business person,” Odden says, “how desirable it would be for your contributed articles out on the Web to show your photo—or a photo of any kind—next to your search result when all the other search results don’t have a photo.”

Customers will also go straight to a Google+ webpage if they type a plus before a name, as in +Google, +Pepsi, +Toyota, and +Angry Birds, Google says.

In an article, Peter Stringer, director of interactive media for the Boston Celtics, dismissed comparisons of the size of the Google+ user base. (Wired pegs Google at 40 million, versus 800 million for Facebook.) Unlike Facebook fan pages, Google+ pages will generate traffic, he says.

“The size of the Google+’s user base is irrelevant with regard to brand pages, because after all, Google is a search engine, not a social network,” he writes. “And Google is the undisputed king of search.”

This could help the Celtics pull in direct ticket buyers who might end up going through a broker if they just typed in “Boston Celtics tickets” on a search engine, he writes. Tweeting to Ragan.com, he added, “It’s all about what G+ could mean to brands and to us.”

Another advantage for brands—at least for the moment—is that Google+ streams generally contain non-frivolous information, and “a company’s message isn’t lost amid a sea of random pictures and cat videos,” Wired says.

Google+ may be big news for companies, but don’t listen for cheering outside the editorial offices of Business Insider. Writer Robert Scoble warns that “Google+ brand accounts are woefully inadequate for public companies’ needs.”

Limitations in the platform are manifold, he says. Only a single person can “own” or post to an account, preventing a social media team from splitting up the duties, he writes. Similarly, if the owner were to keel over, it’s not clear how ownership of the account would be transferred.

Scarily, he adds, “It is extremely easy to post something by accident to your company account if you are the owner.”

Case in point: Google employee Steve Yegge, who wrote a mea culpa last month after he “accidentally posted an internal rant about service platforms to my public Google+.”

Luckily, his bosses just laughed, but some hard-charging managers will not be so forgiving.

Faux plus?

Google+ also drew fire from Webmonkey writer Scott Gilbertson for allegedly making it easy to impersonate a brand. He set up a Webmonkey page without once being asked to verify that he was associated with Webmonkey, he says.

“In fact, had I not already done it, anyone could have set up a page for Webmonkey and claim to speak in its behalf, which does not bode well for businesses that are slow to create Google+ pages,” Gilbertson writes.

But Google’s Faville says the search giant provides verification badges for brands that could be subject to impersonation. There’s also a “report page” link at the bottom.

“Users are also free to create fan pages,” she says. “However, they should not purport to be that entity or use solely the name of that entity in their Google+ page name.”

Original article at Ragan.com

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