Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [64]
Coming Soon (or Already Here)
A few features that didn’t come out in the initial rollout bear discussing because they will come out soon and might be out by the time you read this book. The danger in writing about what isn’t yet there is that it will change. But as the majority of this book isn’t a log of features and services, I hope you’ll forgive any changes.
Google is working on Places integration for brands that have physical locations, such as Starbucks or McDonald’s. Places integration will give businesses the ability to post more details about specific locations, such as hours of operation, reviews, and more. I believe this will be a powerful addition to business pages on Google+, especially for smaller local businesses because it will help better integrate search and discovery.
Speaking of search, if you go to Google search (http://google.com) and put in the term “+nike” instead of “nike,” Google now recognizes that + to mean that you’d like to find a branded business page on Google+ for Nike, and not Nike’s primary website. Thus, if you want to connect with someone at Kodak on Google+, simply enter “+kodak” into Google search, and information would come up. This is new and a significant change to the Google search engine. It also speaks to how Google wants even more traffic to flow through its system, with the external goal being to help people find what they’re seeking.
Another feature that business page administrators can expect soon is an integration to Google Analytics. If Google expects businesses to spend more time working and populating its Google+ business pages, it must deliver analytical value. This feature should be out in early 2013, if not sooner in some rudimentary form. I haven’t seen how the analytics tie into your previous Google Analytics efforts, nor whether it will seamlessly track a user from Google+ to your site, and back again. Google will do everything it can to give administrators a great deal of data in this regard.
How Businesses Might Use These Pages
In thinking through how businesses might use Google+, I’ve placed emphasis on how people can connect and find other people of interest. Using the search tools inside Google+ and third-party services such as findpeopleonplus.com, you have many opportunities to seek out the kinds of people who might be potential buyers of your product. Following are a few ways to interact with people:
1. As an education tool: Use your business page on Google+ to give people information about your products and services to help them better determine whether a product is a fit for them. Imagine hosting live video hangouts a few times a week to answer questions about specific features that might have otherwise held someone back from buying.
2. As a customer service channel: Use your business page to help existing customers with issues. Field problem issues and get them resolved. Update the community as a whole of any larger problems or outages. Provide resolution videos and how-to information in video format to clear up frequently asked questions.
3. As a community platform: Make your customers a place to hang out and talk about the use of your products and services and other related products and services, such that you contribute to their success. If you sell health insurance, maybe that means a wellness-minded community. If you sell homes in Louisville, Kentucky, perhaps that means you keep the local calendar updated. You can make your platform successful in many ways.
4. As a media center: Create and share interesting videos and audio and ebooks and whatever other media. Source and curate the best of the user-generated media that represents your product and service. Build interesting content from other sources to augment the experience of people in your buying community. For instance, if you’re the brand manager