Dentists: Is Your Dental Marketing Plan Ready for Google Plus?

Google+ is in limited field trial and being tested with a small number of users, but it won’t be long before the Google+ project is the next big trend in dental marketing.

You might be thinking it’s just another Facebook.

Google hopes to convince you otherwise.

Google+ intends to set itself apart from Facebook by limiting the type of sharing that happens in Google+ to small groups — like a local photography group, your immediate family or the people you work with directly — instead of how it is on Facebook where what you share is shared with friends, friends-of-friends and the Internet at large.

Google+ users can be selective with how they share information within their social circles.

Rumor has it that once Google+ has worked out their beta launch tweaks for the user-side of Google+, they’ll be introducing brand pages for businesses. Google is promising that the business pages are going to be worth the wait because they will be integrated with both AdWords and Analytics.

Here’s a video Christian Oestlien, one of Google’s product managers created to help explain what’s going on with business identities on Google+:

Some dental practices may want to rush getting on Google+ by setting up a business profile as a personal profile on the user side of Google+. Don’t be tempted to do this. Google has warned that they will be deleting businesses who set themselves up in personal profiles.

Google already terminated the Google+ accounts of Mashable, Ford and Search Engine Land who attempted to create a business presence on Google+.

It’s not a smart dental marketing plan to risk getting banned by Google.

Instead of tempting your online fate with the Gods of Google by trying to launch a business presence, instead begin to prepare for the coming launch of Google+ business pages by making sure you, your employees and your favorite patients are signed up for user profiles as Google+ expands.

You might even consider holding a contest to see who the first dental patient is who receives a Google+ profile and invites you to join their circle.

The point would be to get on to Google+ as a person and begin building your circles so that when you launch your Google+ business page you can ask those in your circle to promote you to their circles and so on, and so on.

What are you thoughts on Google+?  Are you planning to use it?

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