Google+ was released last summer with full forces, ready to compete with Facebook. Despite having more than 100 million users, Google+ has failed to slow Facebook’s growth. But don’t dismiss Google+ just yet. The network is becoming the social networking tool of choice for savvy business owners and office workers.

A recent Forrester study reported that the market for enterprise social collaboration is projected to increase tenfold over the next four years as more traditional services like video conferencing decline. In this new era, the tools that succeed will combine communication and collaboration services with social features in a way that Google+ does. The following are some of the features that make G+ a great tool for social enterprise collaboration.

Circles – The Circles feature of G+ allows users to segment their followers into groups which are a very powerful concept in enterprise. This feature allows companies to create Circles for specifieddepartments, clients, referral partners and more. The ability to compartmentalize helps G+ users to save time and share content and a targeted fashion. To make things easier on everyone G+ allows users to share Circles so anytime you have a new hire he or she gain instant access to ones client base.

Hangouts – Hangouts can help any company cut costs if used for an impromptu meeting with your office or for a customer demo. All G+ users should consider eliminating pricey web conferencing services and start implementing Hangouts for company-wide web meetings. Now all Google needs to do is integrate Google Voice with Hangouts and the ability to dial into a Hangout via a phone line.

Google Docs – In addition to providing word processing and editing capabilities, Goggle Docs allows you to share your work and collaborate with co-workers in real-time. On top of that, Google Docs has been integrated into Hangout allowing users to update documents with co-workers from around the world with the felling of being in the same room.

Search Functions – The Search Plus Your World feature that was added to Google’s search function has a lot to offer a brand from a marketing perspective. G+ allows workers to brand their pages with the company’s image. Every time an employee page is shared or +1 it creates another impression for your business. What Google should consider now is giving users the ability to easily switch back and forth between a personal account and a work account using the same login. This is a feature that Facebook has adopted well.

Organic Connections – G+ provides a platform to organically build meaningful connections for your business and career. Employees can easily adopt the same connections as other co-workers and follow important influencers in their company and industry. At the moment, creating and maintaining Circles can be tedious. A helpful addition by Google would be an auto-suggest service to assist in populating and creating new circles.

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