• by Janet Driscoll Miller , January 3, 2012

Google+ pages for business launched about six weeks ago now, and since that time, the most common complaint I’ve heard is that the pages lacked the ability to have multiple administrators, as Facebook pages allow. Well, all of that changed just before the holidays when Google announced that business pages have now been enhanced to allow for up to 50 administrators!

Why Multiple Administrators Are Needed

When Google+ pages for business were launched in early November, as a search marketer, I immediately made sure that my company’s page was created. However, without the multiple administrators functionality that Facebook boasts, it became cumbersome to update our Google+ page since only one individual account could make the update. Multiple administrators ensure three important things:

1. Continuous ownership of the account. Because a personal Google+ account must be associated with the business page, prior to allowing multiple administrators, if the business page owner left the company, the page potentially was lost with that employee. The multiple administrators capability ensures that even if one administrator leaves, others can then maintain the company’s Google+ page.

2. Allow multiple individuals to make updates. Depending on the size of your organization, regardless of the social media channel, you may have multiple individuals making social media updates for the company. Having the ability to update your business page by multiple individuals likely will mean more usage of the Google+ page by businesses, since multiple employees can assist with the proliferation of content on the page itself.

3.Maintain personal account security. When only one person owned the Google+ page for the company, that meant that if other employees wanted to assist with updates, they would have to know the Google account login for the page administrator. And because Google requires that a page be associated with a person’s account, it was difficult (or required a workaround) to create a page with a separate login for others to share. It’s also common practice that Google+ users use their personal Gmail logins for their Google+ profile pages. So in essence, if the administrator shared the Google+ business page login with others, the administrator would have also been allowing access to a Gmail account, a personal Google+ profile, and any other Google applications associated with that Google account ID.

How to Invite Others to be Administrators

If you are the administrator for your company’s Google+ page, you can easily invite others to be administrators by following these steps:

1.     On your Google+ business page, click on “settings” in the upper right corner.

2.     Click on “managers” in the settings menu.

3.     Enter the email addresses of the managers you wish to invite. Ideally, use the same email address that person is using for his/her personal Google+ profile.

Note that only the page owner can transfer ownership of the page to another manager. So if the current page owner leaves the company, be sure that the person transfers ownership to another manager before leaving.