The big news today is that Google+ has finally announced their long-awaited brand pages with a blog post here. The top line, from Google:
For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.
A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization will soon be able to join the community.
A few good examples of brand pages can be found here: Examples of Google+ brand pages
While the overall brand page implementation is new, it is still imperative to secure your organization’s presence on the Google+ platform, if nothing else to prevent others from infringing on your organization’s brand. The brand signup page is located here: https://plus.google.com/pages/create (Do note that Google is incrementally letting new brands onto the system, so it may take a short time before your’e able to successfully log in and secure your organization’s name.)
For a deeper dive, here are the differences between individual profiles on Google+ and Google + brand pages: http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1713824&topic=1710599
