Tips for New People on Google+ - Getting Started (part 1)

There are lots of excellent Google+ guides out there about the basics of how to be on Google+, what to do and how it works, but what I would like to share with you are my useful tips. 

Firstly the most important thing is to fill in your profile.  You can add as much as you want but remember that a blank or minimal profile with no photo as your avatar will guarantee people will NOT add you to their circles.  Try to add a few Public posts as well so that they can be seen on your profile.  These can be about anything that interests you, an article you have seen or even some YouTube songs.  You can also add some Shared items from your Posts but make sure there is no more than about 50% of shared items to start with as people will think you only share things and have not posted anything yourself – this also puts people off circling you.

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Start your circles straight away.  Decide what types of circles you will have which are of interest to you so that you can add people straight into the circles rather than just in one big circle.  For instance if you are interested in Reading, Photography and Needlework then label those circles ready to add people.  As you go along you will find interesting people who don’t fit into the circles you already have, so start a new circle for that category as you go along rather than just adding them to a circle you already have or they will get lost in it and you wont remember their name to move them to another circle later (you only need to get a few like that and your circles end up a complete mess).  It then becomes a huge headache later on trying to go individually through everyone’s profile and posts to decide which circle they should be in.  You will want to put some people into more than one circle depending upon if their posts overlap your different circles.  You may find some people would fit into a Tech and a Cooking circle for instance, so add them to both.  You can add someone to as many circles as you want – you could put them in every circle if you wanted.

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You can name your circles whatever you like as no-one but you will know what they are called – all the other person sees is a comment that says they are in your circles.  You can change the names of your circles at any time and move people from one circle to another easily (or un-tick them from a circle in their drop-down list).  You can delete a circle completely and you can start new circles at any time.    If you circle someone you are unsure about you can always un-circle them at any time too, so don’t worry about adding them to your circles in the first place.  Google+ will suggest people for you to add (on the right of your page) and you can also add anyone that you see making comments on posts in your stream.  The point though is not to add everyone you see but people who interest you, as you will soon build up a huge circle base anyway.

  

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The main stream of everybody in your circles is your default stream.  But you can click on any of the individual circles in the list on the left to see the posts by the people in that circle in your stream instead if you want.  Or you can just view your main stream until you find it gets too busy, which is often very quickly.  The circles on the left of your page though show in the order that you started the circle but on the main circles page you can move the circles around, by dragging and dropping them, to be in the order you would like them to show up on the left of your main page.  This is helpful if you started a new circle quite late, which you would like to see often, so it is better to have that circle showing near the top of your list.

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If your stream is looking a bit slow when you first start on Google+ you can look for people with the same interests as you.  Also there are often circles already shared of people you may be interested in.  Just search for shared circles and you can just add the whole circle which will give you loads of posts in your stream to see.  You can give it a name as you save it and remember you can always move these people around later to other circles or you can un-circle any of them if you wish.  You can join in and add comments at any time to the posts in your steam and you will find people will gradually add you to their circles too.  BUT I wouldn’t recommend adding a shared circle until you have filled in your profile and posted a few public posts or you will be wasting possible chances of being circled by the people in your newly added circle.  When you circle someone it shows up in their Notifications and so if the newly circled people check out your profile at that time, they need to see you are interesting enough to follow, so just wait until you have filled it in and added some public posts first.

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If you have any queries at all about how to do any of these things I have discussed then please just ask.  Most things are easy when you know how but often hard to work out the first time. My Google+ link is at the side of the page if you want to contact me there or you can leave a message on here if you prefer.

I hope this has been helpful.  Please let me know if you have found it useful as it is good to get some feedback.

I will be blogging some more tips tomorrow as there were too many for this one blog.


Here is the link to Part 2 if you want to view that as well:
Tips for New People on Google+ - Getting Started (part 2)