Why your brand needs a Google+ Page and how to get it

Below is a guest post by Reggie Bradford, CEO of social marketing software startup Vitrue. The company was recently selected as a launch partner by Google to help brands manage their social presence and engagement with Google+ Pages.

There has been a lot of anticipation about the launch of brand pages for Google+ and its APIs, and today we can say that it’s officially here and open for business. As a partner in the Google+ Pages trial, I have been looking forward to this day for a while, and now that I can talk about it publicly, wanted to take a chance to highlight why brands should get on board.

Brands Need to Engage through Multiple Platforms

Why should you, as a brand or marketer, adopt and publish to yet another social network? Because you have all sorts of audiences: partners, customers, future customers, media and friends of your customers … the list goes on. Each audience is unique and companies need to make sure they are engaging with them on their platform of choice. For the vast majority, it’s Facebook, for others it’s Twitter, and the latest – with 40 million users – is Google+. But, increasingly, it will be a combination of them all.

Your brand should be connecting with social consumers where they are today… as well as where they might be tomorrow so you need to use a variety of different networks and social technologies to reach these different audiences. Although Facebook is clearly the primary platform, and should be the fulcrum of your social marketing efforts, each network is uniquely different, with different yet effective ways to reach and engage with consumers. Consumers own social media and they will be the ones who decide where and how they engage

Connecting with Today’s Power Users & Influencers

Now, most brands’ social consumers are everyday folks. And increasingly these consumers are turning to social media as mainstream, everyday communications platforms. But brands need to be strategic about engaging with all types of audiences, from power users to brand champions to every day consumers, through multiple social channels. And Google+ should be the new one to study on your list.

Let’s consider how the power users of social technology are communicating via  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+, Quora and other services to communicate with their social circles. Think about the Robert Scobles, Mark Cubans, Arianna Huffingtons and Leo Laportes of the world. Or what about the celebrity power users like Kim Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher? And more importantly, think about the influencers that are the tastemakers for their communities, families and peers – and they have immense followings across multiple social platforms – with unique ways to keep their audience up-to-date and engaged.

Discover: Search Integration, Direct Connect and +1

One of the unique characteristics about Google+ is its tie in with Google search. In addition to layering Gmail, YouTube, Android and Chrome together with Google+, Google is creating a bridge from the social web to the real world, letting brands get their “social” side discovered by people who might not already be on a social network or might not have considered to follow or engage with a brand via social media. That is a huge opportunity.

Google+ could be poised to enhance the relationship and between search and social media, and elevate the importance of social signals in search. Combined with the use of +1, Google+ could be a driver of greater synergy across bought, earned, and owned media and consumers could be able to easily find your official brand page on Google+ from the natural and engrained behavior of using Google search.

Targeted and Highly Personal Engagement: Hangouts & Circles

Circles can give brands granular targeting and engagement from one brand page, which is good news for both consumers and brands. For example, Ad Age illustrated just how effective circles could be for a brand like BMW, creating unique pages for each car model.

Another feature is the video chat tool hangout. Hangouts have tremendous social potential for brands wanting to reach and engage with their consumers in a highly personal and direct manner.  Brands can control invitations to these events so an exclusivity factor can be created and uses could include sneak peaks of new products, real-time focus groups, live chat with experts, celebrities, spokespeople, etc.

Looking Ahead

If there’s anything certain about this industry, it’s that change happens constantly and smart marketers need to keep their eyes open and stay ahead of trends.

Clearly, it’s still early in the game for Google+, and only time will tell the success of its adoption and importance with consumers, but it does have tremendous potential. Think about the resources Google has to incorporate with Google+: search, Gmail, YouTube and Android, to name a few.  And already with unique tools like Circles, Hangouts, Direct Connect, and the +1 button, Google+ is bringing new ways for consumers to discover, engage and participate.

Google+ brand engagement is unique and has opportunity for a broad reach. And of course with Google+, partnering with third-party platforms, it opens up the potential of many other sophisticated and innovative social marketing capabilities. I won’t speculate here, but the future marketing opportunities via API can bring brands even more tools and technologies to engage and build relationships with consumers.

Reggie Bradford is the founder and CEO of Vitrue, the leading provider of social marketing software, offering SaaS solutions to help brands and agencies harness the potential of social media on Facebook, Twitter and other social communities. Hangout with Reggie and Vitrue on Google+.