Planning To Create A Separate Business Profile On Google Plus? Probably, You Should Wait

Sine the day Google Plus was launched, many blogs and web based business have jumped right over to create a business page on Google Plus. This is quite similar to Facebook pages for business or having a separate Twitter account for your website, service or brand.

Having a separate business profile for your website has a couple of advantages. First, your customers, readers and fans can quickly connect with your website without having to follow your personal profile. They can get all the updates from your business page on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus (coming soon) and know the recent updates or services you are offering.

The second advantage is that you can easily manage your personal profile and business profile, without mixing them together. Almost every web based company or business has it’s own business page which is justified for branding reasons.

Now that Google Plus has arrived, should you create a business profile on Google Plus? How about the idea of creating a separate Google Plus profile for your webiste or blog and posting all the updates, links, promotions and deals on that Google Plus profile?

Sounds like a good idea but in reality it isn’t.

Google Will Soon Shut Down Non User Profiles on Google Plus

Google engineer and product manager Christian Oestlien posted an update on Google Plus where he says that business and brands should not create non user profiles on Google Plus. In fact, Google will shut down or completely remove any non user profile on Google Plus, since separate profiles for business and brands are a work in progress.

In the following video, Google engineer Christian Oestlien says some  future plans of Google Plus and how Google is shaping up a separate profile for brands, so that they can do social media promotion

Christian says

It’s a fact that users react differently with companies and brands, when compared to their reaction and interaction with friends. We are well aware of that and Google wants to create a smooth and optimal experience for both users and businesses. Our team of engineers are already working to create a separate solution for companies and brandds and you should be able to create your business profile on Google Plus, within a couple of months going forward.

At this time, we don’t want people to create non human profiles on Google Plus. Hence, we will be actively communicating with profile owners in order to shut down any non human entity on Google Plus they have created. If you represent a “non-user entity” (e.g. business, organization, place, team, etc.) and would like to apply for consideration in our limited program (and be amongst the first to be alerted when the business product launches) you can sign up here.

Too Much Self Promotion Will Harm You In The Bigger Picture

It is a general rule of the thumb that people don’t like stuff which are robotic in nature.

If a profile looks too much self promoting or has a very loud marketing pitch, it will likely drive people away. Over the past couple of years, I have seen many bloggers and business do this mistake over and over again. Here is an example.

There are some users who use Twitterfeed and other RSS services to post updates to their Twitter account every half an hour. These updates never stop and are purely automatic in nature. A typical case is when the person adds dozens of reputed blogs to his automatic tweeting list and continues pouring updates every other minute. The person never responds to mentions or direct messages and neither participates in any conversation.

Guess what happens? Users not only hate such behavior but they will also tell their friends not to follow this specific Twitter account. Bad reputation, once established is way more powerful than good reputation and once you lose respect and reputation from your fans, it’s going to be way difficult to regain it.

Google Plus is no exception.

I have observed quite a few websites and reputed blogs have setup their official Google Plus profile, which makes no sense at all.

Don’t you think it’s too early to create a business page on Google Plus and spam your followers for nothing? Why are you doing this? If your website or blog is really useful, people will automatically connect with your profile and add you to their circles, their is practically no need to spam them with your business page and dump their timeline with updates and blog posts.

From my observaion, I have noticed that interaction in Google Plus is a completely new thing. Google Plus is still in it’s baby stage and current users are early adopters, who are probably 1000 times smarter than YOU. Spamming their timeline with your blog posts and updates from your website is not going to help.

If you really want to promote your website, take part in the conversation and build relationships. When you genuinely help people and engage with them, you are building something which is going to stay and prove to be more effective than an autonomous business profile.