Google+ Tools, Resources & Brand Pages: Top Picks Resource Center 

The feature most worth copying on Dell's Google+ page is its helpful "About" tab, one that many other big brands populate with boilerplate copy or ignore altogether.

Dell's "About" tab:

• Avoids corporate-speak in its mission statement
• Provides essential contact info
• Invites visitors to connect with the company on its many social networks (multiple Twitter and Facebook sites, Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn as well as the Dell blog and company website).

This Google+ only directory is your express lane for finding people you'd like to follow ("circle") or for finding people likely to be interested in your business.

Browse categories such as location, gender and employer, or type in your own keywords to find matching people. You can also browse their recent posts right in the search results, which will help you decide whether you want to "circle" them.

Another handy feature: When you find people you want to add to your circles, you can do it without leaving this website.

This review links to a post on the "Think With Google" page on Google+ to demonstrate how Google+ Ripples works.

Ripples, while not a comprehensive analytics package, shows you which followers are sharing your posts and how far outside your network those shares eventually go.

You can use this information to identify and interact with your influencers and to learn which posts resonate with your readers.

The Google+ Badge is an easy, visual way to link to and promote your G+ page on your company website. Use it to allow visitors to go to your G+ page or "circle" your page without leaving your website. You can also brag about how many users have circled your page, too.

This review points to Google+'s detailed instructions for webmasters and IT admins on the technical aspects of connecting your website and your G+ page along with the coding needed to create it.

Be sure to "circle" this page for a steady diet of tips, advice, news, best practices and how-tos. It's the official G+ page for Google+ Your Business, the website that tells you almost everything you need to know to build and run a successful page.

The content comes from the Google+ Pages team so it has the authority lacking in many third-party "how-to" G+ pages.

Mashable's Google+ page is a model for anybody in the information-sharing or content-marketing business because it combines a robust collection of fresh content and thoughtful exploration of just about every service or tool Google+ offers.

Page admins post content frequently and usually add a bit of fresh copy to introduce material recycled from the Mashable website. The page also takes creative license with the "scrapbook" photo strip across the top of the content well and includes plenty of pictures on its Photos tab.

The first thing you'll notice about Red Bull's Google+ page is the animated "scrapbook" photo strip across the top of the page, which shows a cyclist spinning slowly in midair, perhaps amped up on the company's signature energy drink.

That feature makes other name brand pages look almost stodgy, but the rest of the "Posts" page keeps the energy flowing with frequent posts, many of which embed videos of company-sponsored high-adventure events, which no doubt is exactly what its page fans want.

This specialty retailer offers a good demonstration of repurposing standard catalog photos into something fresh and useful on a different site.

Many of the photos accompany short Google+ posts that feature recipes using food or kitchen products the company sells. It's like having a virtual recipe box on a single web page.

We wish the recipe links in the photos were clickable, but you can copy the URLs into a browser address form to reach the original content on the website.