An Intro to Google+ Business Pages

Yesterday, Google Plus finally opened up its social media site to businesses. After taking a look around, there’s definitely a lot of great features. However, there are a few concerns.

1. G+ currently only allows for one admin at the moment.
This is probably the biggest concern. For an organization, company, small business, brand, etc, its best if social media is integrated throughout the entire company. Having only one admin means this person is responsible for posting, monitoring and replying to everything on the page. 

2. There are no analytics/stats.
Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, Twitter all have insights and statistiscs built into their respected social platform. Google Plus currently does not. This is a huge missed opportunity seeing that Google Plus has access to more data about its users since they could tie it in with Google search, gmail, Google reader, etc.

3. No clear distinction between following and +1 for pages
Maybe, it’s just too new. We haven’t spent enough time with the new pages, but it seems unclear why there needs to be a +1 and followers tab. The followers tab provides a lot of use, since the page admin can see who added us to their circles. Then, we can add them into the page’s respected circles. The +1 button, on the otherhand, is anonymous and I have no way of knowing who these people are. Let alone, know what type of content I should be targeting to them.

4. Lack of Notification
While the most minor, this has a lot of negative ramifications. With G+ user pages, there’s a big red box which notifies you if you have a new comment, +1, or if somebody added you to a circle. There’s currently none of that for pages.

by admin 11.08.2011