Yes, after months of promising that they'd do something cool, Google has finally released Google Plus business pages and ya know what? They're pretty darn cool, fit well into the entire user interface and style of Google+ and still offer enough flexibility that they'll be a fun and interesting addition to the world of G+.

To create a page, you'll need to be the authorized representative of that particular brand or company. If it's your biz, no worries, you're good to go. If you want to create a fan page for a celebrity, a positive (or negative) page relating to a known brand or trademark or anything of that nature, however, then you're out of luck. You can create the page (as you'll see) but it'll end up being deleted by Google once they identify the page as being in violation. Save yourself the hassle and only create Google Plus Business Pages for organizations, companies and brands you're involved with.

Ready to proceed? Great!

The first stop is to log in to your G+ page. Once you've done that, go here:

    https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create

Now that you've gotten to the page creation area, first step is to decide what kind of page you're going to create:

To help you pick the correct category, if you move your cursor over one of the boxes, you'll get a bit of an explanation, as demonstrated when I move the cursor over "Company, Institution or Organization":

I'm going to create a Google Plus Business Page for Ask Dave Taylor, so that's a business page (though I'm tempted to pick "Entertainment", but perhaps you should be the judge of that, not me). I click on "Company, Institution or Organization" and the area to the right of the options column changes to request some basic information:

Page name should be your business or organization name, and if you have a Web site (you do, don't you?) it should most definitely be specified here. There are two levels of category, however, so while you've identified it as a company (or whatever you have specified), you'll also need to add a subcategory, easily done by clicking on the option to pull down the menu of choices:

I ultimately pick Computers and Hardware for sub-category.

Just below it is another pop-up menu that lets you specify the kind of content you're creating:

What's interesting about this set of options, of course, is the suggestion that Google Plus will differentiate between 18 and older versus 21 and older, but nothing younger than 18. If there were plans to allow teens into the service, seems to me that this is where we'd see a glimmer of it.

I choose "Any Google+ user", check a few boxes and click on "Create" to proceed...

Oh, that's nice! Time to build it.

But we're hardly done. There's a lot more to do.

To pair with the page name, you can specify a tagline and upload a profile photo:

Let's deal with the photo first. Click on "Change profile photo".

Drag your company logo, business facade, or whatever else you'd like to have represent your G+ business profile page. For me, it's my graphical icon, so I simply drag the image file onto the Web page target area.

Next step is to crop the image to match the profile photo dimensions. If you look closely in the below figure, you'll see the crop box and its four tiny squares:

Looks good, so I'll click on "Set as profile photo" and it's ready to go...

Done with the hard stuff. Now it's time to publicize the newly created Google Plus Business Profile Page:

A bit of a surprise, but if you click in the box "Tell your circles about this page..." then it'll pop up a standard Google+ update box:

Say something interesting and invite people to circle or "+1" your new page, then click "Share" to proceed.

Using Google Plus with your Business Profile

What's happened at this point is a bit hard to figure out without additional explanation: you now have two Google Plus profiles, not one. At this point you'll actually be using G+ as the new business page.

Google reminds you this way:

Done for now? On the lower left is the ability to switch back: "Click Finish when you're done sharing":

Confusingly, though, I am still working as the new biz profile page, as highlighted after I click on 'Finish':

Got it? Click on "Okay, got it!".

Now you know how to switch between profiles, right?

What else can you do at this point? There are quite a few options, as highlighted:

or

or another option:

or yet another option:

Finally, as if there aren't enough choices, it offers up even more:

That's it. Let's stop here, it should be plenty enough for you to get your own Google Plus business profile page up and running. How far you customize and tweak it is up to you, of course.

Oh! And if you want to check out the Ask Dave Taylor Google Plus business profile page? Here's the link: https://plus.google.com/115791840784857718050.