In Part One, we talked about circles.
In Part Two, we tackled profiles and privacy.
In Part Three, we discussed finding friends and people to follow.
Today I want to share an assortment of Google+ tips I hope you’ll find useful. Like everyone else at this brand-spanking-new social network, I’m learning as I go. The more I settle in at G+, the more I love it.
1. Fill in the “Occupation” field on your profile.
I talked about this in the profiles post, but it’s such an important tip I’m going to mention it again. The text you enter in that box will pop up whenever a Google+ user hovers the cursor over your name. Think “bio note,” not “occupation.” A descriptive entry will help the people you follow decide whether to follow you back, and what circle to put you in.
2. Use email notifications as a searchable archive.
When you first sign up for Google+, you may find that your email inbox is quickly flooded with notifications of comments and followers. If you’re like me, your first impulse may be to turn off email notifications (which you can do easily in your G+ account settings). But I’ve found a better tack is to filter these notifications into their own folder in my email account. This way, I can search my Gmail any time I want to find a specific post.
3. Don’t put people in more than one “reading” circle.
In Part One of this series, I talked about the difference between “reading” circles and “sharing” circles. Reading circles are the people you want to read (I know, it sounds obvious). Sharing circles are groups of people you want to send certain kinds of posts to. These grouping may certainly overlap—some of your friends might fit into many of your sharing circles. For example, my friend Phoebe is in my Homeschoolers circle, my Special Needs Parenting circle, my Meta circle (where I yak at length about G+ itself), and my Pix Recipients circle, where I might share photos of my kids that I don’t necessarily want on my public profile web. All of those are sharing circles.
But Phoebe—like everyone else I follow—is in only one of my reading circles. This is my time management strategy. I’ve created four main reading circles with no overlap between them. When I want to read posts at Google+, I don’t click on my Stream—it’s too overwhelming. I check my reading circles one at a time, responding to posts as I go.
My reading circles are grouped by relationship: what context I know someone in, and how well we know each other.
Read the rest of Melissa Wiley’s post over at GeekMom.
