I haven't played much with G+ brand pages but have to now for a client - however if you search their brand in Gooogle+ their page doesn't come up
when I have this on pinterest etc I just kick in a couple of hundred followers and it springs into life - is it the same on G+ ?
I have a fairly painless way which doesn't involve spam or paying for followers to achieve a reasonable minimum number, I think, but it'll take some time to get it explained to all the right people and get things signed off, so no point doing it if that isn't the answer!
The page isn't expected to be a major social channel, just a brand guardian, so I don't especially need to achieve any KPI's aside from 'being there, in answer to the obvious question!
TIA
If you're trying to rank in the mappack/7pack it's just power links and citations.
Is their local listing (Google My Business etc) completely set up, claimed and optimized?
Do they have schema.org postal address on their main website?
Those are two things you can do that might help.
If you mean appearing in the internal search of g+ (rather than local results - which I think all of the above relates to), then it is largely about the number of follows. There is a big geographic skew on the results though. Likewise "proximity" comes into play (people I know, know people who follow that page), as do influencers. I use it a lot, but haven't tested it too much (as no-one really gives a sh## if they rank!). My hunch is that the geographic and proximity come into play more on keyword than brand searches.
If the plan is just to be brand guardian that a modest number of follows from active accounts should be fine unless it is a hotly contested name. Make sure the profile is linked to the my business listing and youtube channel - particularly if they are also verified. If it is for a recognised brand then there might be some argument of echoing stuff to the page for a while and pushing for more followers so that you can get "verified name" status. At that point you can pretty much guarantee you will appear for the brand search. This seems to be manual selection, so following, activity and friends at G might help. This is not the same as "verified local business"