Google Plus for small and medium-sized companies
From Flowtown's Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet:
Google+ is a social network operated by Google with profiles, status updates, circles, hangouts and sparks.
- Pros: easy way to interact with clients and customers. Can be integrated with other Google applications.
- Cons: Administration is difficult and some small business owners find most clients don't use Google+
How to begin:
- Google+ provides a step-by-step guide to setting up your Google+ pages with the ability to customize your page's public profile.
- Add team members, VIPs, and customers to separate Google+ circles to organize your news feeds.
- Connect your Google+ page to your website using the Google+ badge.
- Begin posting content such as status updates, videos or photos to your Google+ page.
Top 10 Belgian Google+ Pages
Czech tech start-up ZoomSphere just published detailed statistics for major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or LinkedIn. They also compile the rankings of the most popular sites for each country. It's still too early to draw any conclusions - especially if being "circled" by a few hundred Google+ users already lands you in the Belgian Top10. But it's interesting to see how mainly geeky topics get most attention on Google+.
By the way: if you're on Google+, make sure to check out Conversity.be Google+ Page, sharing information, best practices and news about businesses and organisations on Google+.
Google+ Belgian Top 10 pages
Source: ZoomSphere - local social statistics for Belgium.
- Mobile internet provider Mobile Vikings
- Community based Linux Enterprise Computing Centos
- Daily electro, industrial music news magazine Side-Line Magazine
- United Nations Information Centre Pretoria (in South Africa)
- Open source content management framework Drupal
- Site francophone d'information en BelgiqueLesoir.be
- Travels, pictures and experiences website TravelWithUs.be
- Terminal based IRC client for UNIX systems Irssi
- iPhone info site belgium-iphone.lesoir.be
- caregraphic // graphiste web & print
Facebook Belgian Top 10 pages
For the sake of completion: ZoomSphere also has a top 10 of Belgian Facebook Pages. I left out Ferrero Rocher (is Italian) and MPokora from the list (he's French). And here, too, Jean-Claude Van Damme is the top Belgian brand on Facebook in terms of Likes.
- Actor/director Jean-Claude Van Damme
- I Love Techno festival
- Cartoon character TinTin
- Shoppingville.be's Shoppen Page
- Tomorrowland festival
- Brewery Stella Artois
- Jewellery/watches Ice Watch
- Stand-up comedian Philippe Geubels
- Actor and comedian Benoît Poelvoorde
- D&B producer and dj Netsky
How to customise a Google+ Page
Ever since Google opened up the Google+ platform to business, companies (including Belgian ones) have been creating their own pages.
Here's the conversity Google+ Page, sharing useful information about how companies can use Google+ effectively:
From "Creating, Using & Promoting Google+ Pages properly" by Gabriel Vasile:
To go from your personal profile to one of your page, click on the small down arrow under your name.
Edit your page profile by adding an ‘introduction’, contact info and website. To do this simply click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button.
Your bio allows you to put in your entire service offering. Make it count. It even has a full rich text editor so you can bold, underline and italicize your text, input hyperlinks, bulleting and numbers.
Add Scrapbook Photos. To add images to create a ‘photostrip’ effect, click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button and then click ‘Add some photos here’. See how to make the photostrip effect
If you want to show geo location information in newly uploaded albums and photos, be sure to check the box under the ‘Photo’s’ tab when editing your page.
Set up a short URL or redirect of some kind that’s memorable. For example for my +Creative Web Design page, I will create www.creativewebdesign.ro/+. That will be easier for everybody to share.
By the same author:
Google Offers: competition for Groupon and Facebook Deals
From Google Offers @ Wikipedia.org
Google Offers is a deal-of-the-day website that will be localized to major geographic markets in the United States and abroad. Google confirmed the website in January 2011, after an attempted buyout by Google of established competitor Groupon for a reported sum of US$ 6 billion was turned down.
