The hubze squad has been all excited about Google+ and how it opened its doors to businesses just recently.  If you have not yet created a business page at Google’s social networking site, why not start now?

Here are six tips that you might find useful in setting up your business presence on Google+.

1. Check out what others are doing, and see what’s working and what’s not.

You may want to see other Google+ profiles to check out what they are doing right or wrong.  There are a lot of top brands that are already on Google+, so there are a lot to choose from.

Make sure that you study these pages to see what you could use and adopt for your own page.

Cheat sheet:

You might want to check out the Google+ Business Pages of the following:

Angry Birds

Pepsi

Toyota

2. Create your profile.

You would need a personal account to create a profile at https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create.  You could also access this link by clicking on the Create a Google+ Page.

Make sure that you fill out all the fields there.  It’s not necessary, but it is a good way to put up your information on Google+!

3. Mind the little things.

Always have a profile picture that represents your company.  For small businesses, you might want to have a profile picture of yourself or a human face so that it would be easy to interact with your customers and engage them.

You might also want to have a banner for your profile.  Each page is allowed to have five window panes.  Take a look at all the suggested pages above and you will see that each window pane image is related to the others.  You can easily create banner photos by using this tool: http://gpluspic.com/banner

Also, make sure that you have a great tagline.  This is basically how you introduce your company to your customers and you only have 10 words or less for it.  The tagline is important because it comes out when people search for your business.  So make sure that you have your keywords there.

4. Advertise.

You should always advertise your Google+ page.  Put it up on your business cards, websites, marketing materials.  You could also put up your link on your Twitter account or Facebook page.

5. Aim for interaction and engagement.

As with all your other social media properties, your primary aim on Google+ is to engage your customers.  You are not there to sell, although selling is what pays the bills.

Always initiate discussions and reply to questions posted on your site.  If you are given the opportunity to do some customer service on your site, react and respond promptly.

6. Help your search results.

One of Google+’s weak points is that it does not allow you to have a vanity URL.  But it does have Google Direct Connect and it does provide for your Google+ Business page to be properly indexed.

First, you would need to put up a link from your website to your Google+ page and vice versa.  This signals to Google that your Google+ page and your website are relevant and could help you come up in search results.

You would also need to confirm your Google+ page by adding a snippet of code to your website, very much similar to what you do for Google Analytics.  Learn more about these codes from Google itself: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1708844