1. Creating a Google Plus business page
What are the advantages in creating a Google Plus business page and what can you do that is
different than a Facebook fan page?
Facebook Fan Page
Applications and advertisers: exclusive deals for liking a page
Both Google and Bing take Facebook and Twitter into account when they rank your site.
Fan pages are public. For people to see your Page, they don’t have to login to Facebook
or be your “friend” to have access to it. Pages are actually the only part of Facebook that
are totally public.
Google Business Page
Hangouts feature: video chats with Muppets
Google pages still very post based and not very interactive.
Ability to be able to target specific audiences will help marketers. (Britney Spears was
asking her followers what country they are from. She circled them into different
countries).
Brands can bombard info that pertains to different niche markets without annoying other
fans.
Great place for social media savvy, early tech adopters, photographers, food bloggers,
but lacks “regular” people.
Inevitable with Google Analytics integration you won’t need to ask your fans for info to
circle them. Analytics will create the circles for you.
Google+ Pages will have the edge in terms of SEO. Google supercharges its ranking
algorithm - Google+ Pages to be on the top of the SERPs.
Google Plus business pages can now have multiple admin (up to 50)
Google+ hangouts
Google+ hangouts: It’s a feature of Google+ that allows conference video chats (like Skype) but
quite a bit more. You can collaborate on blog posts. Other key features:

2. Face time: Seeing people face to face and hearing their voice in real-time is so much
more intimate, personal and impactful – than any other communication. Chat with
donors, clients, volunteers and more – saving travel expense an time.
Staff meetings – in a tight economy, small nonprofits can struggle with rent and office
costs. Skip them both. In Google+ you can collaboratively write notes and use a
sketchpad like a whiteboard – all while still seeing up to 10 people face-to-face.
Document revision/editing – how many times has someone in your office sent an email
to 4 people asking for reviews on an attachment. You can open a document and see
everyone’s cursors and real time updates. Pretty cool.
Broadcasting knowledge – Apparently live broadcasting is coming soon which would
allow organizations to host info sessions, give topic speeches/presentations and more –
via a public link beyond the 10 person limit. It’s like each one of us getting our own
TedTalks channel.
Mobile – Log in to a hangout via mobile as well. Can you imagine taking your
smartphone into a food pantry in Detroit, a jungle in the Amazon, or a girl’s school in
Afghanistan, interviewing service recipients, giving tours and more – all live?
Tips
Create an awesome “About tab”: Make it useful, compelling and memorable for visitors. Many
Google Plus users decide whether to put you in their circle based on your About.
Use an attractive main image: It goes without saying that your main image on your Google
Plus business page is what will create the first impression for visitors. So make it count.
Turn your avatar into a gallery: You can upload multiple photos for the main avatar. This
creates sort of a photo flip.
Seek to help your clients/customers/donors: Don’t just promote your own
organization. Honor your community.
Search for conversations around your cause: Comment on those conversations as
appropriate. Support other people’s agendas before your own.
Hangout: One of the best Google Plus features is Hangouts, where organizations can connect
with fans, volunteers and donors in a video conference. Hangouts allow up to 10 people at a
time and you can collaborate on shared documents or just have a casual chat. Combine on a
post or document while in Hangout mode.

3. Search: The search features in Google Plus are extremely robust. You can search public posts,
posts shared with you, personal profiles (the parts that are public or shared with you), Pages
and Sparks. You can even use Google’s Search Operators when searching Google Plus. This
allows you to fine-tune the results and save time. When you do a search on Google Plus, you
can also save the search in your left sidebar, under “What’s Hot.”
Discover: A common way to use Circles is to categorize people you follow based on their area
of expertise. I have a circle that includes nonprofit techies, where I’ve discovered useful articles,
ideas and discussions. What makes using Circles different from using search is that Circles
allows for off-topic discoveries that could never happen with “pre-meditated” searches.

4. Collect: When we think of Google Circles, we normally view them as a tool to organize people.
But why not create circles for storing content that you’ve discovered on Google Plus? You can
do this by creating a circle and adding only you to this circle. When you do this, anything that
you share with this circle will only be seen by you. This stream is located under your profile
image with all of your other circle streams.
Create: When you create a private circle as described immediately above, you can add notes,
links and even draft ideas for your content piece. Remember that no one can see any of this
because you’ve shared the circle with yourself (you also don’t need to lock the post).