Hello what I wanted to talk to you everybody about today was Google plus for business. This is something that was just launched two days ago and it is something that we have been expecting for a longtime. It is something that Google has said was coming and for those of you who just aren’t familiar with Google plus with it’s backup, Google plus is just Google search in Facebook. It is their answer to Facebook. It is their own social network.
It hasn’t got all ton of traffic yet, hasn’t got whole ton of users, it is not really competitive, it is not a valid competitor to Facebook yet. It is populated by earlier adopters. It is populated obviously by tons of Google employees. Millions of people use it but it doesn’t compare in size with Facebook. Facebook is still the dominant search, I am sorry, social media network that we need to be concerned about and it is the one that most people are on. Probably everybody is watching us as a Facebook account and that is the one we gave the most attention to. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t ignore Google plus. It is going to become a more and more important. Google analyzes the value of having our own search engine for a lot of different reasons. I have gone over some of those in past videos and it is going to play a much and much bigger part in search in the future. So that is what Google plus. Google plus is their *version of Facebook. And so what they have recently is they have just launched Google plus for businesses, which is just the same thing as a Facebook page for new businesses. It is the same thing. It is Google’s version of that and you know a lot of, a lot of you who have company already set up on Facebook business pages, community pages, same thing. It is a very good feature. It is the, quality of it and the features that it has are somewhat linked in but just kind of go over with you guys to know what it is. so you know about it if you don’t know about it and kind of, I will tell you some things and what you should do kind of, what we are going to do with our own clients, what you should expect in the future. So that is what Google plus is so Google plus for business, let me just give you, let me just show you what it is. This is a Google plus page for the actual Google plus itself. they have created Google plus page own social network for the actual service itself. that is what it looks like. Again very similar to Facebook, lay out is very simpler and you know it has got typical things. You have got your circles, which is Google plus’s version of you know friends, different friends list. It has got a lot of different things you can share the page, you can like the page which is in Google plus terms is called +1, same thing as a Facebook like, like. You have photos and stuff up here, you have new feed, they have about page, all these different things. Again, very similar, I mean they are knocking off Facebook. They are doing their own attempt at a viable social network so they are basically copying Facebook here. So that is what a Google plus page looks like so let’s go into, let’s go into the next page on how to actually set up your own Google plus for your business. So the first place you go obviously is going to be Google plus, I am sorry google.com/+/business that is going to take you to the main page. it is going to have information about the product. It goes into some different details when we, the sections that I found were pretty interesting was the upcoming feature about the matrix. The way that you can measure the traffic that is coming to your Google plus page and some of the, some of the features that they are so clear, are going to be some pretty interesting demographic data but I am not going to at the moment. So this is our main signup page. So this is where you go first. Once you go up here and create your own Google plus page, it is going to take you to the main Google plus login page. this is where you would actually sign up for Google plus account. If you don’t already have one, sign up here for the Google plus account or if you do, you can just your username and password and sign up for it here. Something to keep in mind though is Facebook pages, this is kind of the negative things about Google plus for business so far, again it just launched a few days ago, so this might very well be a feature they are going to have or assume they would *. Currently there is not a equivalent of the Facebook admin system.
When you create a Facebook page for your business you can assign multiple friends as administrators on that page. I mean they can go on to that page change any of the information, add photos, make posts as your business and do those sorts of things. Here, you can only sign in and signed up as yourself, one person, you can’t sign multiple admins so who ever sign up on the Google plus page, whatever account that they sign in with that is going to be an account that you are going to use to update your Google plus business page so keep that in mind. You might want to create, you might want to create a brand new account just to manage this. If not, you know, use, don’t have your employees do it, use an account that you the business owner controls so keep that in mind because so this is the main *. Once you are through that it is going to take, once you login it is going to take you to the next screen and here is just *some basic information. What we have over here is different categories that you can create in the business apps. You have local business * most of you guys are going to like that, it is going to ask for address and different things like that, some of the other products is brands you know if you are Coca Cola, Pepsi and you are watching, this is the one that you want to choose and next you have company institution or organization. Arts, entertainment, sports and there is a section for other, most of you are going to choose, company, institution, organization or local business are plus and this slight difference is in that and the features that you have, that might be very slight. So but most of you want to go with local business and I will just kind of set you through the signup. It is very easy to setup a place page. so once you choose that, open your * for your company name. If it is linked to your website, this is going to be your main domain URL and it is going to be choose a category, main category and you know some simple, yes I agree to your terms and conditions, stuff like that. next page, it is going to take you, you are going to enter your tagline for your business, it will be your slogan, your model whatever and then you are going to choose the main profile image and on the next page you are going to enter contact info, enter in your main company phone number. The number that is featured on website, number, if you have Google local or Google, I am sorry, Google local or Google plus. A Google local, a Google place page, you would enter that same phone number here, that is very important that you keep that *. So contact info goes here. On the nest page after you have done that, you have done the previous setup, you are on to your page and this is what your page looks like. I set one up for lawn care marketing expert and again it is very simple, phone number, fax, website, any information about our business, it will only go here to share this page, photos up here on the top and then you go in and have more photos, videos all that different stuff and then you can go in and start adding your page to your friend’s circle and different things like that, you are suggesting your friends to add you to their circles. And this is very easy after you have signed up, it just prompts you to do some additional things, connect your website to the page. Again, you enter in your valid URL and domain name and then there is different links down here to give you a link to your page. it is not a unfortunately the, the, the Google plus page for businesses unfortunately is a long trail of numbers, the URL that assigns you is a long series of numbers, it is not a friendly URL yet, imagine they will add something when it will get much like Facebook where you are choose sort of a username for your business. I am sure they will do it in the future. Next, this is just a pop up that you get, if you share a page on your friend on your view stream, this is what you get and you know it is much, it is very similar to what you see on Facebook and you share a link on there. You have an image and you have text and a description about what you are sharing and it helps with sharing, a lead to our Google plus for business page. and then, this is just stepping you back to the image, I am sorry, this is just stepping you back to the beginning, you can see if you choose the local business or place, then I just want you guys to just to see kind of the difference on that profile. If you choose a local business or place, the difference in the profile that we have seen so far, it is really minor, it is all the same features, everything is the same, except of only here, you have a map and there is a pin dropped on to the address of where that business is located, this is a business in Miami and here is another local business for some reasons I think they changed the, this one doesn’t have a map on it but that is only when we, so choose the location, it shows the address.
And kind of that is an overview and one other thing that we should talk about is, let’s talk about some of the, some of the advantages that it has over Facebook. One of the things, one of the things that I liked is the way that things got *likes is kind of a problem for the SEO companies in online marketing agents like me. For instance, I am going to give you an example, if you like, let’s say you have a like button on your website, if you click that like button, that is going to show up on your own personal Facebook page that you like that website. If you go to that website, face corresponding Facebook page. let’s say you are a company that sells widgets and your website is widget.com. you go there and hit like on that website, what is going to show up on your news feed Facebook is you like wedget.com okay so if you go to the Facebook page for widgets.com this is a different page, Facebook page and click like on that Facebook page for widgets.com what you are going to see and you are going to see that you like the Facebook page for widgets.com. two different things, it treats the website as one entity and it treats the official Facebook business page as a separate entity so those likes, those numbers that you see where you have eight hundred and thirty people like this company and then you go to the Facebook page and it is two thousand people like this company, they are separate, those numbers are separate. It is a pain, it is really annoying and but currently Facebook does not connect the official Facebook business page with the official website. It is a pain in the butt and what it does is it causes the number of likes to be different from your Facebook page and your actual website page, the like button on your website, it is a pain in the butt when the cool feature is, one thing that a lot of people have mentioned, Google plus for business, it is not just that, it ties your Google plus business page together with your website so whatever website URL, this is why I say it is so important here whichever website URL you enter in for your official business on your Google plus for business page, it is going to, if you don’t put a Google plus for business badge, a plus one button on your website, you get plus on there, it is going to show on the same number of plus ones on your Google plus for business page which is really cool. That the way Facebook should have done it but they didn’t do it that way for whatever reason and but fortunately Google plus for business is giving the right information. And so they think, that is one other thing that I actually do like about Google plus for business. The other thing, what I mentioned earlier I think, the analytics that are coming, they are not enrolling on yet but supposedly the * that you are going to be getting for Google plus from business are going to be much more depth and more detailed in comparison to what Facebook currently offers. It is supposed to tell you, it is a pretty detailed information about the demographics of the type of users that are visiting your Google plus for business page. it is going to tell you anonymous information about their plus ones and their Google plus likes, their shares, their comments, it is going to tell you some more in depth information about that Facebook tells you about visitors who are visiting your Facebook page.
Some of the negative things that I don’t particularly like about Google plus for business is and this is a big one, your Google plus for business page is not connected to your Google local place page. it is moronic, it blows my mind that Google didn’t came out of the gate with a Google plus for business be same thing as a Google local place page, they should be the same thing but they didn’t do it for whatever reason. Maybe at some point they are going to merge it too but right now you are managing two different Google place pages essentially. You had your Google place page, your local page which shows up in the search engine results listings and then they have the Google plus page so they are completely different, separate things, they are not linked at all, it is a real pain in the butt, it is, I don’t understand why Google has done that. Maybe at some point they are going to merge the two, I can only imagine and hope they will because it is moronic the way they have done so far. So that is the other thing. The Google plus for business page doesn’t show on search engine result page like a Google place page does. So you are sort of managing two identical place pages at the moment. We can only hope that Google changes that, and I imagine they will.
Okay so one of the other cool things that you can do with the Google plus for business page is there is a thing called direct connect and they haven’t rolled it out completely, I couldn’t get it to work in certain circumstances but what they are doing if any of you have ever tried to do, use Google as a calculator and two three plus four equals seven in Google search engine’s result page and get you know, you know get a, get the result from that, something that they have done with plus sign at the beginning of your search engine result, at the beginning of your search query in the form fill on Google and then type in the name of the business that should take you directly, hitting enter should take you directly to the corresponding Google plus for business page. it is not working on all brands right now, it is working on all the main ones, Coca cola, pepsi, Google plus obviously and here is what it looks like. You see here, this is just entering in a search for plus Google and what you see here in the drop down is you see links direct links, direct connect links that go directly to the Google plus page for Google, Google maps, Google plus, Google chrome, so these are all different Google, Google plus for business pages that have been created and this how you directly connect to them. You enter a plus symbol first and then the name of the product or business. Again it hasn’t been fully rolled out and is kind of a cool feature. People can jump directly to your page, again why would they not just go directly to your website, I am not sure but it is kind of interesting new feature that you should be aware of and kind of that is it. So, it is really basic, really simple illustrate forms we are making a couple of recommendations to our clients. We are telling them they should go out and claim their pages. It is always good to claim your page now even if you are not actively using them. I am saying the same thing up here you know unless you are really going to go hard with Twitter campaign and take it seriously and you know hold off some of these things. Spend your time where you can justify a return on your investment of time and so go and claim your page. it is easy to do just make sure you enter your information correctly, enter in the domain, the domain of your main website, enter in the exact same phone number that you have on your main website, enter in the exact same business address that you have on Google place page again on your website. We really think it is, Google plus is going to become more important in the future and a lot of it has to do with Google slopping down the search engine what really matters in the industry and another thing that we do recommend is that you start using plus one buttons. Go ahead and start integrating Google plus one buttons and Google badges on your website and page and on all of your important pages. These will be, these will be such signals that will help to boast your rankings over time, boast the rankings of your websites of your internal pages and also it will share information about your business to your clients. So ahead and create those on your website that is important for you, it is easy to do. we go ahead and recommend that you do that, obviously the longer do you have the plus one button on your website, like the Facebook like button, the more likes and plus one you are going to get over time and it is always good and makes you look more like a more professional company and more company that people like and respect your products if you do have quite a few people who like your page or product or your service. So keep that in mind and get started on that but that is, that in a nut shell is Google plus for business, a new product you know, just launched a couple of days ago, go ahead and do it. Just keep in mind you are not going to see a whole lot of new business from it, probably none at that outset, not many people know about it and again there is not many users on the Google plus social network yet but you should be aware of it and you should keep that in mind especially when it comes to your long term plans like I said there is some stuff that you should go ahead and do now. It can’t hurt, it won’t take you a whole lot of time and go and get started. Thanks a lot.
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