![bofa-google-plus](https://www.scottsanfilippo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/bofa-google-plus-300x224.jpg)
The bank America loves to hate got another slap in the face, although this time it wasn’t over debit card fees.
Shortly after Google announced that businesses could have a Google+ page, which is the equivalent of a Facebook Business Page, some scallywag jumped Bank of America’s claim and created an unflattering – yet amusing – page.
Funny pictures of former CEO Ken Lewis, a tagline proclaiming that “We took your bailout money and your mortgage rates are going up,” and a post about a company foreclosure party in house #2340087 could be found on the page before it was taken down.
Screen shots of the page showed that it already had 550 followers and 342 +1’s.
Whether you have sympathy for Bank of America or not, you have to admit that whoever did this was pretty damn creative. And sneaky, for apparently they even caught the almighty Google by surprise.
The question needs to be asked, “Why didn’t Bank of America claim their Google+ page as soon as the announcement was made that they were available?” Now I’ll ask you a similar question, “Did you claim your company’s Google+ page yet?”
About a year ago I wrote a post about a friend of mine who found out that the .co variant of their domain name was hijacked by a competitor. Sadly, she wasn’t aware this was happening and after I alerted her of it, a few phone calls to lawyers resolved the issue. But how many sales were lost because of this? It’s pretty easy to be typing in a domain name and accidentally leaving off the “m” in .com. The unscrupulous use this to their advantage, as was done here.
If you’re doing business online, it’s important that you protect your brand by not only registering the different domain name extensions for your business, but claiming your company name in Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other social media sites.
Bank of America isn’t going to suffer any damage due to the bogus Google+ page, but a small business like yours could. Imagine what a disgruntled customer could do if given the opportunity. The time you spend running your business is way too important to be spent running defense because of a simple oversight on your part.
So, did you claim your company’s Google+ page yet?