By Chris Lee

Google is asking brands to hold off developing their profiles for the recently-launched Google+ social network. The company is still working on a Google+ experience for brands which it hopes will rival the massive interest brands have shown in Facebook.

The brand experience is likely to include deep analytics and sync up with other Google product, such as advertising platform AdWords. Some brands, such as car maker Ford, already have Google+ profiles, so New Media Knowledge spoke to Andrew Girdwood, media innovation director at digital agency, bigmouthmedia, to understand what Google+ will offer brands.

What brands want

According to Girdwood, Google’s analytical data could provide a data goldmine for digital marketers keen to understand their demographics, in particular its +1 recommendation offering, which he said adds search value to those having recommendations made via Google contacts.

“This is being held back by the relative scarcity of the +1 button on websites compared to Twitter and Facebook buttons,” he told NMK.  “Once brands can be more hands on in Google+ those +1 votes of confidence in branded content should increase reveal more analytical insight.”

Girdword argues that Google+ could offer brands a number of things that would be helpful to brands but not available to personal accounts.

“A lot of Google+ activity occurs behind Circles. This is impossible for brands to measure.  Without breaching privacy concerns Google could provide simple mention metrics – a count of the number of times a brand was mentioned, or +mentioned, over time.  Google could provide the number of times a piece of shared content on Google+ is viewed as it propagates around the network,” he suggested.

User-generated content

Google now allows authors to claim their content by linking to their Google Profile, Girdwood said, but brands cannot do this. 

“It may be inappropriate for brands to claim content in this way but there is a current conflict between content written by an author but owned by a brand – such as might appear on a newspaper or magazine site – and content written by an author and owned by an author,” he told NMK. “If Google solves this issue with business accounts then it will be a pleasant and welcome surprise.”

Going Places

According to Girdwood, there is also a disconnect between Google Places and Google Plus. For example; there’s no easy way to view a Google+ profile and see the reviews the user has created. Girdwood believes it would be beneficial if Google could help close this gap.

“Hangouts seem inappropriate for brands simply because they cannot stream to a large enough audience. Any real upgrade from this, such as live streaming to very many screens, feels more at home as a YouTube upgrade,” he said.

“Ultimately brands should be on Google+,” Girdwood concluded. “It’s an easy way for them to communicate with people, share their content and build authority in subject areas that matter to them.  Google+ engagement will not just help with the brands social media presence but with social search – increasing the number of annotations in support of the brand that might appear in Google’s search results.”