By Matthew Barker

The much anticipated and entirely inevitable has happened: Google+ profiles are now available for businesses. I’ll give some instructions on how to set up your profile here, followed by some wider thoughts on the implications & opportunities.

Creating a Google+ Profile 

Setting up the profie is a simple process, and is very similar to creating a Facebook business page. Start with the Create A Page tool. There are two main options for travel businesses: online agencies will want to place themselves into the “Company” category. Hotels, shop-front agencies, tour operators and anyone else with a physical location will want to choose “Local business”. (Local businesses will be given additional options such as maps, hours of operation, phone numbers etc. For now this is entirely separate to any Google Places profiles you may have.)

From there it’s a simple process of completing the forms, adding your tag line and logo (have some fun with the “Creative Kit”), announcing your new profile with Circles from your own personal profile, and hitting Finish. Hey presto, welcome to Google+.

OK, Now What?

Good question. Creating the profile is the easy bit; what you should do with it is a trickier question.

At the most basic level, using your profile will be very similar to Facebook. You can post photos, video, comments etc, with the aim of increasing the number of people in your business’ Circle. Circles are the Google+ equivalent to Facebook fans. You can only communicate with people who have chosen to add your page to their Circles. To do this you need to be creating interesting, valuable and useful content and sharing it via your Google+ profile, much in the same way as you would on Facebook.

The kind of thing you can be posting includes:

• New blog articles
• Cool travel photos
• Destination restaurant recommendations
• Museum guides
• … and any other kind of travel guide or resource that relates to your services

Remember, the key is quality. You will only be accepted into people’s online social life if you offer something they’re interested in. Also be sure to avoid the hard sell: use this tool to build your brand, your expertise and your reputation. Don’t use it to promote your latest tour package.

You can encourage people to visit your new profile by linking to it, or by creating a Google+ logo. This tool gives you the code you need to create your own logo.

As with Facebook and Twitter, don’t just stick the logo on your site and expect people to click it. You need to give people a reason or incentive to click. Include a Call To Action with your logos, such as “Follow Us For Our Latest Travel Advice” or “Follow Us For Exclusive Deals And Offers”.

An important point to bear in mind: if you already have the +1 button on your pages (and if you don’t you can get it here), people who click +1 on one of your pages will not automatically add your business profile to their Circles. They will still need to visit your profile and click the “Add To Circles” button.

This is a major difference to Facebook, where clicking the “Like” button on your site means they start to follow your Facebook page. My guess is that this will make accruing followers on Google+ more difficult than accruing followers on Facebook. Which makes generating and promoting excellent content all the more important.

Some interesting features

One of the things Google+ has that Facebook doesn’t is the group chat feature, known as a Hangout. This is an exciting new way of communicating with existing and potential customers. Be creative in the way you use it – you could use it as a live chat assistance tool, for holding Q&A sessions on your destination, or whatever else you come up with.

Circles are basically a way of segmenting your connections. The default groups for business profiles are “Following,” “Customers,” “VIPs,” and “Team members” but you can add as many groups as you like. This gives you the ability to customize your messages for different groups, much in the same way as you would segment an email promotion to different client groups. Every time you make a post, you can determine which Circle should see it. Think creatively about how you will use your content to communicate with different groups, based on what they want or need to know.

In summary, Google+ should form part of your wider content & social strategy. For advice with creating that strategy or with generating the quality of content that you need to succeed, just get in touch.