Having been in the pipeline for a long time, the highly anticipated brand pages have been launched on Google+.

According to an article published by New Media Age, Burberry, O2 and Save The Children are amongst some of the first brands to create a page on the social networking site.

Users on Google+ will be able to recommend brand pages to friends via the +1 function; whilst brands will have the opportunity to use Google+’s Hangouts feature to hold conversations with customers in the social-sphere.

The promise of newer functions such as Direct Connect – which will allow users to follow a brand automatically, simply by typing + before the brand’s name on the site – is expected to draw more brands to the platform – providing them with a platform to implement social media marketing campaigns on.

As one of the first brands to take advantage of brand pages, O2′s UK head of social media, Alex Pearmain spoke about the function.

He said: “We’re always looking to get closer to our customers, and share more with them. Google+ has kicked off with a nice looking user experience, and it’ll be more interesting to see if it becomes a mainstream route for customer engagement.”

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Tags: brand pages, Google, o2