Brands were rather unceremoniously tossed from Google+. Now, however, Google has announced Google+ Pages which gives brands, business, and other organizations a public presence on the social networking site and a way to connect with customers and fans.
“The people who we kicked out and have been waiting in the wings—the brands and bands and organizations and entities—are now welcome back in our system,” said Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product for Google+. “We did something rather rude, we kicked these brands off 100 days ago. We noticed that they were taking up residence in the user space and, rather abruptly and rudely, said, ‘We have something else in mind for you. We didn’t anticipate this much interest this fast, please wait.’ We’ve developed something that we think is good for the brands and good for the users.”
Using Google+ Circles brands can target customers at various levels of activities. The Pages can also exist on mobile and can use Hangouts to host conversations with customers and brands.
However, Brands can’t add people to Circles until their pages are added first and have a +1 button and can’t be shared with “extended circles.” Brands can notably place new icons and badges on their websites to help direct traffic to their Google+ Pages.
Google+ Pages also links up with AdWords search and display campaigns, so that helps brands manage their overall Google integration. To make sure that Google+ Pages are genuine brands, Google has also created a verification program, primarily for select brands.
Brands can also use the Direct Connect feature that lets users simply type in a brand’s name after the “+” sign in a Google search box to get a direct path to its Google+ page. This will be available to a handful of brands at first but eventually expand them out.
Source: AdWeek
