Last week I was invited to an event at the Google offices in London -to say the least, I was beyond excited. The morning event had guest speakers from various businesses, one of them was a Google+ employee. He spoke to us about the benefits of using Google+. On the train back to the office I was full of ideas and excited to have a play with my new found knowledge.

What are the benefits of Google+?

Not only is it good for your online presence, having an account on another form of social media is very good for SEO. It’s good for your SEO plan as it creates more links to your website – which Google loves. It also provides more information for the Google search engine to eat at – helping your Google rankings. At the event the Google speaker was asked if having a Google+ account will help your Google rankings that much more over other social media websites. The speaker replied “Unfortunately I cannot answer this question as I do not know, however I do believe Google is fair with its search findings”. Truth be told the number of people that understand the Google search algorithms is just over a handful, so I doubt we’ll find out the answer.

I would definitely say that Google+ can help your business with communication. Have you ever used conference calling software or a service? If so how much did you pay? If you have a Google+ account you can use host conference calling with live webcam viewing as well. What I found most impressive about the conference calling (or hangouts as Google has named it) is that you all members of the call can view and edit documents in real time – how useful is that!

Another really useful tip is that you can use Google+ on a business front and personal. You can assign your contacts into groups (or circles). When you are posting an update you can choose to post to everyone or a specific Circle. When setting up my account I have created two circles, business and personal and I post between the two.

I have created my Google+ account and look forward to spending a bit more time using it. If you ‘re already on Google+ then please add me. Alternatively if you would like any more information of advice on Google+ then send me an email.