You finally started generating some real interaction on your company’s Facebook page, and your insightful, witty Tweets are furiously retweeted by an ever-growing group of followers. By now, you’re feeling pretty comfortable with your social media savvy. So naturally, Google has just announced the general availability of Google+ Pages, changing up the social media game once again.

Perhaps you heard about Google+ Pages, the new profile especially for businesses, and thought: Great, that’s just one more profile for my company that I have to create and maintain. Here at grasundsterne, though, we thought: Great! Another platform where we can share ideas and chat with our friends and colleagues. We already set up our profile on Google+ Pages, which you can check out here.

And we came up with a pro/contra list to help you get started with Google+ Pages:

Pro:

• You can organize your customers, potential customers, colleagues, partners, and business contacts into different circles and publish individualized content for each group
• It’s easy to conduct face-to-face meetings with partners or customers via video Hangouts
• Picasa pictures and YouTube videos are integrated directly into your profile
• You can search for topics and themes on Google+ using a hash tag (e.g., #Social Media)
• All Google+ Pages features  work in the mobile app
• Google search optimization: If you are active in Google+, your content will be ranked higher in search results on Google
• If you enable Direct Connect, people who search your brand on Google with a “+” (e.g., +YouTube), will end up directly on your profile and will be prompted to add your company to their circles

Contra:

• It’s only possible to authorize one administrator per company page*
• You can’t set up contests or offer promotions
• You can’t add people to your circles until they have added your company to their circles
• Hidden pro: No spamming
• Smaller audience (there are only 40 million people on Google+ as opposed to 800 million on  Facebook)
• Visually and in terms of features, Google+ Pages isn’t any different from the personal profiles on Google+, which makes it seem like Google just didn’t put much effort into it

*Google did come up with a roundabout solution to the one administrator problem by collaborating with six social media companies (Hootsuite, Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Involver, and Virtue). You can use these tools to manage your company’s Google+ profile.

Curious? Set up your own company profile on Google+ Pages here.