A guide to Following and Engaging With Your Fans on Google+ Business page

So what’s the difference between a Google+ page and a Facebook page? The big one I’ve noticed so far is the fact that you can follow your page’s fans back and add them to Circles.
To find out who has added your page to their Circle, you can check your Notifications under Stream in the left sidebar. You can also look under your Circles > People who’ve added you area by clicking on the Circles icon.

In this screen, you can drag your fans into one or more of the four default circles.

• Team Members—The people you will share the inside scoop with. This could be a great way to share company news with only the people you want to see it.
• VIPs—Your most loyal customers and closest partners.
• Customers—All the people or organizations you want to build deeper relationships with. You could possibly use this Circle to send out special discounts and promotions!
• Following—People you don’t know personally but whose posts you find interesting.

Just as you can with your personal profile, you can also create new Circles.

There are a lot of ways you can successfully use your custom Circles for marketing and messaging, such as creating Circles of fans in a specific location and sharing updates with them about geo-specific offers.

Universities can create Circles for professors, alumni, undergraduate, graduate and prospective students and then share updates with them about news related to their current status with the university. The possibilities are endless.

This also means you can follow your fans’ updates, comment on your fans’ status messages, and +1 their updates as your page. The functionality for a Facebook fan page to interact with a personal profile on Facebook isn’t there, but it is in Google+. Your fans will even see your interaction with their updates in their notifications!



This, in my opinion, is going to be a very powerful way for businesses or brands to communicate with their audiences.

For example, if there is a complaint, the Google+ page can reply publicly on their page, and then privately to the Google+ user by sending a status update directly to them. With Facebook pages, the page can only reply on the wall update but not directly communicate with the Facebook use



 Connecting Your Google+ Page to Your Website
You can connect your website to your Google+ page using the Google+ badge configuration tool. Currently only the icons are available, but official badges are coming soon.