Monday, August 15, 2011

Google+ 411 for Beginners & Intermediates – Part 1

Posted by Leah Ludwig

You may remember reading Amanda Walsh’s Google+ intro post just last month. Well, now there’s more from ThePRLawyer. Mashable writer Amy-Mae Elliott recently posted articles “Google+ Tips & Tricks: 10 Hints for New Users” and “Google+ Tips & Tricks: 10 More Ways To Make the Most of Your Account.” I found them both very helpful in navigating and finding how to best utilizing this new social media tool.

Here are the take-aways in a nutshell from Amy-Mae’s post for new users:

1. Add More Info to Your Profile Pop-Up Window – Your pop-up window is an easy way for people to quickly learn more about you, similar to your Twitter profile window. You want to grab others’ attention with this and make sure that this is filled-in with your name, profession and company.

2. Organize Content with Circles – You can create empty circles and use this space to create bookmarks and a notepad, save links that you want to read later or use it as a place to test things out without alerting your followers.

3. Click on Profile Pics to Scroll Through – You can scroll through a user’s uploaded profile photos directly from the profile or post page. Some companies have utilized this space in a really neat way – for example, see graphic design company Phouthong Luong and how they feature a creative avatar image that winks and an action image that you can scroll through.

4. Disable Sharing on Posts – Unlike other social media tools, Google+ allows for limited sharing with your friends. You can share a post with one person or your entire network.

5. How to Find Post’s Permalinks – This is simple. Go to the drop down menu arrow in the top right corner of the post and select “link to this post” – a separate window will open where you can access the permalink.

6. Drag and Drop Content to Share – If you maximize the size of your share window, you can drag and drop any type of content into it.

7. Change the Visibility of Your Circles – You have control over which individuals from your circles are displayed on your profile by going to the “Edit profile” and then click the circles box on the left hand part of your screen. A box will pop-up where you can choose which circles you want the world to see and whether to display people who have added you to circles.

8. Notify People About Posts – You can specifically notify those in a circle about your post without having to add their Google+ name. To do so, simply click on the circle that you are sharing with and select the box that pops-up and says “notify about this post.”

9. Add Special Photo Effects in Google+ – You can easily edit your photos by clicking on the individual photo and choosing the Actions tab in the bottom right hand corner, then choose Edit photo. Google+ offers some really neat photo editing features here.

10. All the Google+ URLs – Another interesting tidbit from Amy-Mae is that Google+ has a wide array of URLs from http://google.com/+ to http://plus.google.com and http://google.com/plus.

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