Google announced today that it is launching a project that will let owners of Google+ brand Pages manage their accounts through third-party apps. Immediately, the program allows six companies early access to the Google+ API in order to let business owners manage their Pages. The six partners included are HootSuite, Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Involver, and Vitrue. According to Google+ Pages Product Manager, Sara McKinley, “These companies will offer a subset of their clients the ability to manage Circles, publish to Google+, and monitor usage.”

The functionality between each company will vary, but HootSuite also announced the partnership today via blog and seems like one of the big ones so far. The partnership with Google+ will allow HootSuite Enterprise clients to share to different Circles, search public Google+ posts, view recent user activity, and manage Circles membership. HootSuite also offers analytics for tracking the performance of an individual Google+ Page.

Google+’s decision to allow third-party companies access to the API for Google+ Page should be a big boost for brands’ interest in having a presence on Google+. According to Google, form their press statement, the six companies named as Google+ partners were chosen “based on their extensive experience helping brands and businesses manage and analyze their presence on social networks.” Like HootSuite’s Google+ management offerings, which are only available to HootSuite Enterprise members, Buddy Media is also rolling out features slowly

to beta clients. Hearsay, on the other hand, has made its Google+ service available to all customers immediately.

There are a large number of businesses already using management systems for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms, so this new integration with Google+ should bring more companies in to the newly introduced brand Pages. Currently, brands that have a presence on Facebook and Google+ both are faring much better on Facebook, but that is to be expected considering Google+ is only five months old and Google+ Pages have only been available for a few days. For example, Pepsi has 18,865 followers on Google+ compared to more than 6 million on Facebook.

We’re pretty excited about this new announcement from Google. We have had our Orange Collar Media page on Google+ since it was available. Check Orange Collar Media out on Google+! Or, if you’d prefer, we’re on Facebook, too. And who could forget the Orange Collar Media Twitter account?

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