Google Plus is a social media platform that surprises. It has survived predictions of demise to grow to 100m active users. But how can it be used as a comms channel? Look at the UK’s Foreign Office which has more than 130,000 users.

When Google Plus was launched in July 2011 the FCO’s Digital Team began tracking this new social network. Some members of the team eagerly adopted Google Plus and reported back. This was a time when people, not organizations and brands, could have a presence and Google Plus pages were not an option.

Over the past year the perception of Google Plus has taken many turns, both negative and positive with some questioning whether it would survive. However one year on Google Plus has not only survived it is on the up. The latest stats show the network in just one year has 400 million users of which 100 million are ‘active’.

When Google Plus launched organisation pages like many others the FCO set up a page and began distributing content on its new Google Plus page. This has paid off, the Google Plus page has 133,374 people from around the world have added the FCO to their Circles.