Check out our Google+ page for Photography Business Institute here.
When Google+ personal pages rolled out this summer, Facebook haters flocked to the site, not to mention early adopters jumped in, built up a page and poked around to see what was new. Admittedly I signed up, kicked the tires, and never really found enough to engage me to keep hanging out regularly, although I know many feel differently.
5 months later or so, they have introduced Brand pages on Google+ for businesses. The functionality appears to be fairly limited and you can’t link it to your google places page, even. But it’s easy to set up and build out a profile. It takes about 5 minutes if you have photos handy.
At this point, the main benefit is to signal to early adopters who are your clients or are prospective clients that you are a legitimate brand. By setting up your company / brand page, that signal is clear. Similar to Facebook when you keep your personal page separate from your business page, clients expect that if you are going to charge the prices of a legitimate business, that you should operate as one as well.
But I have a feeling the real benefit comes in the form of SEO, as well. I’ll be monitoring my search engine ranking on our keywords over the course of the next few weeks to see if it increases now that we have a Branded Google+ page for Photography Business Institute and am working on one for Sarah Petty Photography as well. I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, Hubspot put out a free guide to using Google+ for your small business yesterday.
It’s a great place to start if you’re interested in learning more.
And while we’re at it, share with me how you use Google+? What am I missing out on? Have you built out your brand page yet? Do you plan to?