UPDATED 13:30 EDT / DECEMBER 21 2011

Google+ a Preferred Tool for Brands, Supplementing Facebook Pages

A recent report from BrightEdge reveals that Google+ page creation has increased at a rate of over 50 percent month-over-month.  And as hoped, Google+ is becoming a promising network for businesses.  Within a month, page creation for world’s top 100 brands jumped from 61 percent to 77 percent, and the number of people in circles increased over 50 percent from 147k to 222k.  Some of the popular brands jumping on this bandwagon include Starbucks, H & M, and Pepsi.

BrightEdge, a leading search and social management platform for global enterprises, reported that Google continues to have the largest fan contingent of any brand, with more than 77k fans.

“Google is embedding their popular new product with its dominant search marketing position, replicating the tie between social and search channels, just as Facebook’s Open Graph tied sites and search together earlier this year, blurring the lines between social and search engagement,” said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge.

“Top 100 brands are realizing that they now need to address both channels. Now the real work begins, if they want to extend their social presence on the Web from Facebook to the new Google+.”

Following in Facebook’s footsteps, Google Plus started their business pages just two months back, and received a whopping response. This nascent social network has its own potential, thanks to Google’s extended and integrated network of Apps and services, with frequent updates in its attempt to catch up with the competition.

Google+ has been making some headway as of late,  reaching 25 million users relatively quickly. Dubbed as “Google Plus Pages,” the service helps businesses create a presence on the social network platform for connecting with their users locally and worldwide.

Google Plus has also introduced some updates for businesses, along with Circles and Photos. Here are some of the update’s highlights:

• You can now delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a page.
• A new notification flow will ensure that these managers stay in the loop on all the activity that takes place on a page, giving managers the ability to stay involved in page conversations.
• We’ll now show an aggregated count of users that have engaged with your page, either by +1’ing it or by adding it to a circle. This way, both you and your page’s visitors can get an at-a-glance summary of who is interacting with your page.

If Google is aggressively working on updating its social platform, how are Facebook and Twitter faring? They’re both actively appealing to businesses to market brands on their networks.  Facebook recently added sponsored story integration with feeds, and introduced Private messages for business pages.  It’s an update that’s better for one-on-one communication, enabling businesses to better attend to their customers.

Even as Facebook and Google battle it out for user adoption, brands leverage both networks for their own promotions.  BrightEdge found that 93% of top brands have a Facebook presence, and Facebook still dominates business brand interest, reaching some 300 million fans compared to Google+’s collective 148k brand followers.


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