Part 2: What You Need To Know About Google And Google+

If you’re still looking for an invite, ask on Twitter or among your techie friends; post your request on your Facebook wall. You’ll soon be swimming in them.

Then what? First off, edit your profile page. Click the red “About” Link, click the blue “Edit Profile” button in the corner. Put in a photo. Add some information to your “introduction.” Add some links to the links area to the right, but don’t overdo it.

Probably the most important part of profile editing that people don’t know much about is to go to where it says “Employment”, and write something REALLY interesting in the “current” one. Your writing needs to let people know who you are, what you do, and where. Why is it so important? Because when someone sees your name anywhere on Google+ and they hover their mouse over that content, that’s what they see as the representation of you. That little bit of text explains who you are to them at a glance. Don’t write a novel, but don’t leave it blank or put something lame there. It’s a power move; first impressions count!

Everything else in your profile section is up to you.

Circles are how you group and organize people on Google+. The first thing most people do is rename the circles into something more useful. Name as it makes sense for you and your business and interests; everyone thinks differently. But make sure you do this step. Organizing people LATER is painful, and it is important to put people into lists that match your interests and needs. Editing circles is reasonably easy.

Now, find interesting people to connect with on Google+. You can go to FindPeopleOnPlus.com. There’s also group.as. Those are great for just striking out into the wild to look for people.

Once you add a few interesting people, go to THEIR profile page and see who they’ve added to circles. Now, you’re finding some interesting people.

To be an active participant, post interesting things. You can create 4 types of posts in Google+:

1. Link posts.

2. Video posts.

3. Photo posts.

4. Location posts.

You can write a post and offer a link to something interesting (like your latest blog post). You can upload a photo and write something to go along with it. You can point to YouTube videos or upload a video. And you can post location information, if that’s your thing.

The other thing you can do is share other people’s interesting posts. There’s a “share” button below most posts. That lets you find the good stuff and share it with your growing community. One point: If someone else has shared something, and you see it in your stream, and then you decide to share it, it’s nice form to credit the person who shared it with you via the text above the share. (So, if Chris posts a funny photo, and Dave shares it, and then Margie finds it in Dave’s stream and decides to share it, Margie clicks share, and says “found via Dave” in the text). Make sense? It’s a nice thing to do.

The advantage that Google+ has over Twitter is the comments. People are having really great time contributing to really good conversations in the comments sections. Comments on photos are just amazing, and in other forms, it depends on what you’re putting out, but people seem to really enjoy the back and forth. Try to be the #1 commenter on your account. Respond as often as you can.

Video Hangout is basically Google’s group chat feature. Instead of directly asking a friend to join a group chat, users instead click “start a hangout” and they’re instantly in a video chatroom alone. At the same time, a message goes out to their social circles, letting them know that their friend is “hanging out.” Friends can then join the hangout as long as they have been placed in a circle that was invited by the person who created the Hangout. You can do some fun things with them. Michael Dell (yes, THAT Michael Dell) does all kinds of conversations with his. It’s really a great way to see what Google+ might be able to do for you as a platform.

The reasons to love Google+ are that it’s clean, it’s fast, it’s useful, people are very engaged, and it’s got a strong boost to you being found in web searches.

Sources: Chris Brogan, chrisbrogan.com