G+ Personal or Business page?

[Jason Rogers]

I have a client whose personal G+ profile is serving as the business profile. Is there any way to change the profile type? It has a few followers that I don't want to lose. Also, the GMB locations are under the same profile. What's the best course of action? Does it even matter? -- Thanks!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Jason,

There is no way to convert G+ profile to a GMB page. Advise your client to start using the GMB listing as the canonical business listing. It has all the reviews, ranks in the pack and local finder where you can get directions..etc.

If you see a benefit, you could reach out to the G+ followers and ask them to start following the GMB listing.

 

[Jason Rogers]

Thanks Colan. There are 5 locations, each with their own GMB, reviews etc. What I need is a G+ brand page, not a location. There is a personal page that is current acting as the brand page, which is not ideal. The brand is not a male born in 1973 ;-) I assumed that we can't change a personal profile to a brand page. So, what should we do? Create a new brand page? Keep things status quo? Thoughts?

 

[James Watt]

Create a new brand page if G+ is on the list of things to invest in. This might also be a good time to re-evaluate your social media mix though. Have you gotten any value from G+ so far with the personal profile? For some industries G+ can be a useful social platform, and a good enough presence there can even impact rankings I've heard. That said, for most small businesses, time would almost certainly be better spent elsewhere.

 

[Jason Rogers]

Thanks James. We're not planning to invest time in G+. Really I'm just trying to clean house a bit and hoping for a simple solution. It looks like the best course is to leave it as is. Thanks!

 

[BenFisher]

Jason,
The main thing to consider here is time and effort for return.

The personal profile is doing nothing to assist the business. A brand page can be leveraged fairly easily if the page will be updated.

A simple blueprint for success:
1. Update the local pages once in a while, focus on quality content in posts.
2. Do the same with the brand page.
3. Share local posts from the local G+ pages on the brand page.
4. Grow the followers on the brand page, to get engagement.

What James is saying is spot on, as a social network G+ can be excellent for engagement (as high as 600%) but the real gold is in the semantic SEO effect.

When you have an engaged G+ page that has content which is relevant to the business and also to search queries, then local and organic results are lifted.

So, therefore, if Local SEO is what you are after then you may want to give this a shot.