Google announced two new features that might make the +1 button more useful to users and marketers.

It’s a good day for content marketing. Google has announced that the +1 button now enables users to share content from across the web directly with their circles, and shared content will be accompanied by a snippet of context (which can be provided by the sponsoring site).

Google made the announcement this morning, explaining that it hopes to continuously make the +1 button “more useful for users and publishers alike.”

Now, when users +1 web pages, they will have the option to “Share on Google+.” They can choose the circles they want to see specific content. Additionally, they can add comments to the content to give it appropriate context.

Publishing sites will also have the chance to contextualize their content for Google+ sharing. When users +1 a page, Google automatically adds an image, a description and a link to the sponsoring site in the sharebox. Marketers can craft the snippet that they would like to appear by using schema.org markups, according to Google’s related Webmaster Central blog post.

These two features will roll out in the next week, and this should be good news for marketers hoping to encourage social advocacy of their content campaigns. Google says that +1 button appears on more than a million sites, with over 4 billion daily views. Plus, as Brafton has reported, Google+ membership is on the rise so content shared with circles reaches an ever-growing audience.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.