You’ve been hearing the rumblings for a while and it’s finally official, Google launched Google+ Brand Pages just for businesses to smack the big FB in the Face and well…I think it’s pretty cool. I was able to setup a page in a very short amount of time-actually most of the time was spent thinking about how to describe Dynamic Page Solutions in 10 words or less.
Here’s a quick rundown on getting your real estate brand page setup.
1. Sign in to your Google Account; if you don’t have one you need to create one, it’s fast and easy here www.google.com/accounts.
2. Once you’re logged in go to http://www.google.com/+/business/
3. From here, you’ll need to choose which category fits your business purpose best. For real estate agents, you can choose Local Business or Place – it makes sense to keep it local since most agents market in their immediate area. If you are a brokerage owner, you could choose Product or Brand but it’s ultimately up to the individual. There is a sub-category requirement that follows this step. To curtail any rule changing in the future – I would choose the categories that truly fits your services.
4. Next – Identify both your brand name or real estate services and area. Since this is brand spankin’ new, I don’t know the issues that might come up but I would surely recommend something along the lines of a keyword. You have to make a decision between true product branding or keyword optimization here. For individual real estate agents and teams you could call your page something like [CityName] Real Estate Services but not understanding the potential rule changes in the future, you might get booted if it’s not a valid business.
5. ADD YOUR WEBSITE ADDRESS!!!!
6. Now come up with a tagline and upload a photo. If you have logo, you can use that, whatever you put in the tagline will be posted directly below the name of your page.
7. If you know other people or businesses using Google+, you can then tell those people that are in your circles about your new page.
8. Next, you can go into your business profile and add some extra information about your business and services, add a phone number and email contact.
9. On the left hand navigation of your page, you can see a link for ‘get started,’ from here you can grab your Google+ URL and also the code you will need to add to your webpage or any other page you would like to have linked to your Google+ page. Just send the URL and code to your web developer.
No vanity URLS yet, so your address right now will be something obnoxious like this: https://plus.google.com/106230471700561137116/?prsrc=3#106230471700561137116/posts but hopefully that will improve in the near future. You can post, add links, photos and video so Google+ for brands promises to behave much like Facebook or hopefully something even better.
Swing by and take a look at our page and add us to your circles – Let’s get it moving - we’ll add you back!
Google launching Google+ Brand Pages is really awesome. I think this is especially great for Business. In these days social media has become so important for increasing business in the industry. Using social media, we can reach maximum people and promote our product. Google+ is a great example of advanced internet marketing.