How to Use Google+ for Higher Ed

Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 1:30pm -- Holly WrightBookmark and Share


Since joining Hannon Hill, I’ve learned quickly that the Higher Education community is a very social, very tech savvy bunch. So, if you’re reading this post today, then you’ve almost definitely heard the news (from Tuesday) that Google+ has opened up its service for brands and companies to create pages. This has been long coming, and some say well overdue. We’re not sure if Google+ will be able to continue its signup momentum from when it first launched and garner the interaction level needed for it to stick around longer than Google Buzz, but there’s one thing we do know: With 40 million users, Google+ is definitely worth testing out.

Yesterday, we retweeted a link to a Google spreadsheet that Mike Petroff (@mikepetroff) of Emerson College started for colleges and universities to share their Google+ pages. Already, over 40 schools have entered their page URLs, and from what I’ve seen, these schools have readily adopted the platform. Most of these pages already have several photo albums, videos, blog posts, updates and over 100 followers, if not more. 

How create a Google+ for your college or university

For those of you who have been checking it out and are just about ready to dive in, here are our tips for making the most of your page:

  1. Be strategic about how you set it up. At this time, each Google+ page can only be accessed by the individual who set it up. If you need multiple people to be able to contribute to the page, create it using a common email address and password that you can share with others in the organization.
  2. Share lots of photos and videos! The advantages of Google+ over other platforms are its ease of use in uploading rich content and its clean interface with very large images.
  3. As with other channels, be sure to use your page to provide value to your followers--don’t just tell them about the stuff going on at your college, but use it to share community events, local news and interesting articles from other sites as well.
  4. Share your page with your followers on other platforms, on your website and with your Google+ followers from your personal account. Google+ doesn’t allow pages to start following individuals who haven’t started following them first, so you’ll have to look outside Google+ to gain that initial interest.
  5. In this early stage, don’t be afraid to ask your followers to share updates that they think others will find interesting. This will help spread the word about your page to your extended network within Google+. Just don't abuse this tactic.

Need some examples?

Here are some pages we think have done a great job of this so far, but check out the spreadsheet above for more examples (and to add your page to the list):

We recently went live with our own Google+ page, and we’re starting to get the word out. Let us know what you think of our Hannon Hill - Cascade Server Google+ Page, follow us, share it, comment on our photos. We want to hear from you.

Finally, if you disagree with our take on Google+ for Higher Ed or have other suggestions for how to use pages, please put your comments below. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.


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