So, need some help creating your new Google Plus Business Page? We’ve created this step-by-step guide just for you (and we even included pictures to guide you along!). Feel free to post a link to your new G+ business page in the comments below as soon as you get it up and running. We’d love to check it out!

 

First Thing’s First

If you haven’t yet created a Google+ profile, I’m sort of confused as to why you’re even reading this, but nonetheless, take care of that first! Join the increasingly popular social network that is sure to be to Facebook as Facebook was to MySpace. Just go to https://plus.google.com and sign up, create your profile, etc. When you’re ready, move on down to the next step!

 

Creating Your New G+ Business Page

First we must follow Google’s link here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create. That takes us to the standard G+ home page but if you’re already signed in (which you should be), you’ll see a page like this:

From here we see similar options as Facebook:

• Local Business or Place (hotels, restaurants, places, stores, services…)
• Product or Brand (apparel, cars, electronics, financial services…)
• Company, Institution or Organization (companies, organizations, institutions, non-profits…)
• Arts, Entertainment or Sports (movies, TV, music, books, sports, shows…)
• Other (Use if your page doesn’t fit in another category.)

Since we’re going to create a page for Coldfire Promotions, let’s go ahead and click on “Local Business or Place.” We are then prompted to “Locate your business or place.”

With fingers crossed, this should be a breeze since I confirmed my listing in Google Places several months ago.

Sure enough, both of my businesses show up. So I’ll go ahead and click on “Coldfire Promotions LLC” and we’ll move on…

Easily enough, the last step in the process is to add/confirm your business info. This will not only help your users find and connect with your new business page, but it leaves another door open for old, current, and new customers to get in touch with you.

 

Customizing Your New Google Plus Business Page

The next step in creating your brand new Google+ Business Page is, of course, choosing your profile picture! Google has designed a very intuitive yet easy to use tool for uploading and cropping your profile picture. The tool is actually a bit nicer than Facebook’s uploader – they provide you with a “Creative Kit” (basically a mini version of Photoshop) in which you can swiftly edit your graphic before completing the upload.

However, you have no choice other than to make it a square graphic. I personally do not like this since the Coldfire logo is more horizontal, but I’ll deal with it for now.

 

Get the Word Out!

To be honest, I wasn’t at all expecting this to be the next step. After only “creating” my page and uploading a profile pic, Google told me my next step was to tell my circles about it!

While I would normally check to make sure everything is presentable and give my new business page a quick look before making it public, I figured… what the hell. I’m an early adopter and this is a bit of an experiment so let’s go ahead and trust Google on this one.

 

“Congratulation on Creating your Google+ Page!”

Yay! We did it! The page has been created (check it out here: https://plus.google.com/112812759919806207585)! Now we get to really get our hands dirty and do some of the real work… customizing the page!

 

From your brand new G+ business page, you’ll be able to “Start the Conversation” in which you can post updates, share photos, videos, links, and basically everything you would be able to do with a Facebook status update. You can also “Connect your Website” which gives you the opportunity to place a Google+ badge on your site (much like the Facbeook Like Box). I’m looking forward to that but unfortunately it looks like some of them aren’t quite available yet. For now we’ll use this one:

 

That’s All Folks!

That’s really all there is too it. I’m sure we’ll be back soon with more information and updates as they are release. But until then, make sure you join us on Google+ and don’t forget about Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, too! Looks like we’re going to need someone just to handle all 4 at once! Don’t forget to post links and updates about your Google+ business page below!

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