Circles, a key feature of Google+, may seem like a fun thing for just people to use at first so you are able to keep your groups of friends and family separate. But if you take a moment to think about the possibilities of using it for your company, you can use Circles to separate employees, clients and business contacts, and then directly target them with different updates/posts content.

This is kind of like using our virtual office solution to manage and micromanage all information/tasks and maintain all of your company data in an accessible online network.

Hangouts, the Google+ video chat technology, supports up to 10 people at a time having a video conversation with each other. Think of it as a video version of virtual phone systems and you’ve got the basic idea. Not only can employees use these to communicate, but you can also reach out to customers as well.

Hold employee video conferences to introduce new strategies or discuss breaking business developments, or host live online tutorial/how-to workshops to educate your clients on your products/services. There are myriad unique and creative options open to you and your business when you hang out.

Perhaps the most useful part of Google+ is the fact that it can be integrated with your business’s SEO efforts for higher search engine rankings. When customers “+1″ your website, it works into Google’s search engine algorithm as to how they rank pages. +1s equal a higher search engine ranking, which is great for you and your virtual offices.

You should also include targeted keywords in your posts/updates, as well as in your About section. In the latter, also provide links to your business website so people (and Google) can access you more easily.

With a Google+ account you can directly seek out customers who are talking about your business or one of your products and engage in a conversation with them, which shows all consumers that you care about them, and that you’re always listening to their feedback. In addition, it allows you to get more fans, and more +1s.

To set up a Google+ business account can take as little as five minutes, which is an extremely short amount of time, particularly for the return that you can experience from setting one up.