Tips for New People on Google+ - Getting Started (part 2)

I suggested some tips yesterday for building your circles and how to get people to circle you.  Today I want to give you some tips on using some special circles to help you with Google+.

As I was one of the Beta Generation on Google+ I muddled along and learnt as I went, but there were not many people then so it was a lot easier.  Then suddenly there was a gush of new people and I had to try to organise my circles better so these are a few more of my tips.  They work well for me so I thought I would share them to any new people who would like to try them.

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As well as the normal circles for adding people into your own categories, I found it best to make 6 special circles too.  If you decide to make these you can obviously call them whatever you prefer. but for this exercise I will call them what I have named them.

1                   Private Message

2                   Main Stream

3                   Later

4                   Save

5                   New

6                   Leaving

I also changed my Following circle to say Favourites and add the few people in here who I always want to see their posts so that I don’t miss any of them in the other busier streams.  So I suppose you could say this is number 7.

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The 1st circle is for Private Messages.  As there is no record kept of Private Messages on G+ once you have sent it you may still want a copy.  So you can share to the Private Message circle as well as to the +person on the post when you send the message so that you have a copy of it too.

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The 2^nd special circle I have is for everyone I want to see in my Main Stream (which doesn’t mean everyone in all my circles which is the default one).  Your default stream will get very busy as you add more people and so by adding who you want to this Main Stream circle you can keep it separate and can scan it quicker.  Add people into this circle as well as whatever other circles you have them in if their posts are important to you.  You may like to see the posts from say the Photographers or Artists but haven’t got time to see them all day and you prefer to just look at them when you have time, so this new circle acts as your main stream and cuts out all the other posts you haven’t always got time to see. 

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The 3^rd special circle I made is for looking at posts Later.  When your stream gets busy you don’t always have time to read an interesting post thoroughly or you may wish to comment on it but haven’t got time or need to look something up first.  If you Share it to this circle then it will be there for you to read later.  As your stream gets busy you will find it very hard to go back and find the post later so it is well worth having this circle and sharing these posts to it.

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The 4^th circle is for Saving posts.  Sometimes you will see such a useful post that you want to save it.  Or you see a particularly lovely photograph or a great article.  There may be a link on a post that you want to check out later.  So anything in this category can be shared to this circle.

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I use the 5th circle is for adding New people who I am either unsure about or not sure which circle to put them in.  Sometimes I circle them when they write an interesting comment on a post and I want to check their profile later before deciding which circle to put them in.  If you add people to this circle you can then keep an eye on the posts and then move the people to circles when you know where to add them or you can un-circle them if you feel they are not right for you after all.

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Lastly the 6^th circle is my Leaving circle and is the one I use when I find someone just posts too much or doesn’t seem right for me so I put them in here to keep an eye on their posts (a reverse of the New circle really).  I still leave them in the original circle I have them in but add them to this circle as a sort of probationary exit circle.  If they still aren’t right after a while in this circle I then un-circle them completely.  There are too many interesting people coming in to worry about holding on to ones that aren’t right.

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

If you have any questions then please just ask and I will try to help.

Please not that none of these things I discussed are essential and are only my tips for you to follow if you want.

If you also want to read Part 1 here is the link:

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