Hooray! Google+ for Business is now open. This is good for a few reasons– the most obvious is the social sharing, and now we’ve got examples of g+ links being indexed (what!)? Let’s do it!

One of the websites I’m a part of, Scarves.net, is expecting a big change in January, and we want to go ahead and start building it up a little bit. The site is already active and gets good traffic, but we’ll be adding an e-commerce platform to it. In anticipation, I’m going to get our Google+ page up and running before the e-commerce launch.

You want to make sure you set up a page rather than a profile, because profiles are personal, and not for organizations. So don’t just go to plus.google.com and expect to set up a Google+ page. Go to the Pages for Google+ to set this up.

Unless you’re the only one that’s going to be getting into your business page, use a gmail account that multiple people have access to. Make sure you’re logged into that email when you go to set up your page. In the future, multiple admins are said to be supported.

Create a Page 

Pretty self explanatory here. Pick which category you are from the left and proceed. For Scarves.net, I chose “Product or Brand,” because we’ll sell apparel and we’re working on our branding. Fill out the necessary info then hit CREATE.

You’ll be taken through a series of pages to input data for your profile, such as your tagline, company information, and profile photo.

That’s really it. Your Google+ Business page is made! Now comes all the fun stuff, like setting up and monitoring your circles, filling out more info, adding images, starting hangouts, and so on.

What all can you do on Google+?

Set up and monitor your circles. Make separate ones for customers, employees, competitors, etc. These are like twitter lists, but a whole lot better and much more visual. Take the time to get to know your actual customers instead of guessing and creating personas for them. If you know what they like to buy, give them what they want. Listen to their criticisms, respond to everything, and give them a better experience.

If you’re an e-commerce store, create a hangout whenever you’re launching a new product or highlight some new arrivals. For Scarves.net, we’re planning to do this with some fashion bloggers we’ve been building relationships with. They’re a pretty tight-knit community, and quite respected, so the sharing will take off. Or just hold general hangouts. We can make some fashion related hangouts to talk about upcoming trends, what’s going on in the fashion industry, etc…

Another tip for e-commerce, add +1 buttons to your product pages! Even if your store viewers don’t have Google+, they can +1 things if they’re logged into a Google account. Find out what people like the most and build on that. Hold a contest or giveaway with a theme something like… “This scarf got the most +1′s, so we want to give it to YOU and your favorite +1!” Don’t be afraid to give your products away, people love it. Maybe even throw out a coupon code just for visiting.

Get creative with your scrapbook photos, the ones that show up on your main G+ page. One of my favorites is the Burberry scrapbook with the falling snow.

So simple, but I LOVE it. We have one better planned for Scarves.net, though :p

These are just a few different ways you can start to build up your business Google+ page. What is your business doing?

And add us!