Google+ made its social debut last year, and though it still hasn’t reached the heights of Facebook or Twitter, it’s steadily gaining ground – particularly for businesses. There’s around 40 million user accounts currently active on Google+, meaning there is a huge scope for visibility.Back in November last year, Google launched brand pages for Google+, allowing businesses to create pages to promote their companies and interact with ‘circles’. Circles are the people who follow your posts, and the people whose posts you follow, and can be easily categorised into groups; for example, ‘Team members,’ ‘Clients,’ ‘Family,’ and so on.How many times you have been circled is the way a business or individual can judge popularity; just like ‘fans’ on Facebook or ‘followers’ on Twitter. Google has made constant changes to the layout and tools available on Google Plus since its inception, and settled on a primarily user-friendly, simple layout with maximum chance for interaction between users.There are a number of bonuses to using Google Plus. The search function on Google Plus is much more integrated and successful than on other social networking sites, with a wide range of results not specific to user or topic – meaning it is much easier for users to find your company. It is also easily integrated with other Google products; Gmail, Google docs and you can also ‘plus’ something when conducting a simple search. Google Plus is also effective in that you can exclude and include certain people and groups from what they see in terms of what you post. For example, if you are running a Google Plus account for your business and want to post something solely for your employees or other team members, you could choose the ‘Team’ circle, so only they can see the post.Google Plus posts are also now included in organic Google search results – meaning that depending on popularity, your posts could show up when someone Googled a keyword or term that related; for example, if you made a post about the construction industry in Australia, your post could potentially show up in a search for ‘construction Australia.’ Your audience are also likely to be in an older age range (as opposed to the younger target audience on Facebook), and also business and brand-based, which can be extremely effective in building up networks. Take a look at brands like Coke, Cadbury, Mashable and Intel for examples of international companies who have built up a huge following via Google Plus.You can also check out the Bang Online Marketing Google+ right here.Bang Online Marketing can assist you with creating, maintaining and building up a Google Plus profile for your company, and can even post and run it for you, depending on the level of involvement you are looking for. Contact us via email (info@bangdigital.com.au), Facebook, Twitter, or on (08) 9328 7000 to talk about your strategy.