Google+ for Business Part 6

Pause for a moment and go to http://findpeopleonplus.com. This is an unofficial third-party site that sc.r.a.pes publicly visible data from Google+ and organizes it into interesting categories. This might help you find locals, at least if some of those people have identified their location for you.

Following are a few other ways to potentially organize your circles-the first of which we just explained in a use case: * Local: If you're in Boston or Mumbai, include a circle for people who are local to your area. This helps with prospects for your business and can give you more local news to keep current on what happens in your area.

* Thinkers: No matter what you call it, there are people you'll want to follow who have ideas that are different than yours and who make you think. This kind of circle is where you go for inspiration.

* Compet.i.tors: I personally don't do a lot of compet.i.tive a.n.a.lysis for my business, but that's me. If you're from Apple, maybe this is Dell employees. If you're a photographer, maybe you name this Colleagues but secretly think of them as compet.i.tors. It's your decision.

* News: I have a Journalists circle so that I can read what they're doing, comment on what they're talking about, and get myself generally known. Although this is partially so that I can appreciate their work, it's also so that they might get to know me, and then think of me, should a story arise that I could help with. You can do this in other ways, having journalists get to know you, but that is covered later.

* Potential Employees: Think about that. If you want to hire people to run community development for your great new software platform, maybe this is a way to keep an eye on them.

* Vendors: A lot of web design and WordPress people follow me, and I'm often asked for people who do that kind of work. Putting together a circle of people who do something that pertains to your business might be useful. It's like keeping a little directory handy.

* Personal Pa.s.sion: I have a circle of comic book artists, writers, and professionals in that industry. This has no direct business value to me. I just love comic books and have since I was 5 or 6. Feel free to make a circle about something you care about, even if this is your business account and even if the bosses might frown on it. Know why? Because it's out of these serendipitous connections that can bring you other connections. That was how I interviewed Greg Pak (a writer, currently doing interesting stuff for Marvel Comics, among others) for this book.

* Prospects: Okay, so adding people to this circle is difficult at present. People don't exactly line themselves up and say, "I'm really anxious to buy what you're selling." But if you do a little searching and a little thinking, you might start to find ways to add people to a circle like this. Just realize something important: Just because someone looks like your prospect doesn't mean they're all that interested in you selling something to them. Tread gently.

Who Should You Follow?

As stated before, you can check at http://findpeopleonplus.com to see if any particular occupation, locale, or some other identifying factor helps you determine whether someone is interesting to follow. You can also search on Google.com by adding site:plus.google.com to your search, and then adding in a search term that you think might prove useful in finding someone of interest. If, for instance, you want to find people talking about yoga, you can type the following into Google: site:plus.google.com yoga.

If that doesn't narrow it down enough, you can add more search terms, and you can use a -term type of search to filter even more. For instance, I used the word "Boston" after "yoga" and found people talking about yoga and having something to do with Boston. It's not perfect, but it's one way to find more potential people of interest.

Friendsurfing.

In the early days of using Google+, one way I found interesting people to follow was that I friendsurfed. By this, I mean that I would find someone whom I followed or found interesting, and I would click into that person's profile. From there, I'd see who he or she had chosen to add to his or her circles, and I would sometimes add some of the same people.

For instance, I just went to Greg Pak's profile, and I looked at who he was following. I found Evie Nagy from Rolling Stone and decided to follow her. I also found Christopher Yost from Marvel Studios and Adam Koford from Disney Interactive. I don't know any of these people, but if Greg finds them interesting, I thought I would give them a try.

By doing this, you can often find interesting new people to connect with, and there might be even more connections after following someone's content and information that they've shared. To me, friendsurfing becomes a potential way to make new connections of value. I wouldn't exactly attempt to sell anyone anything simply because you've chosen to add someone to a circle, but making a preliminary relationship is certainly not effort lost.

Do I Know You?

Often, you discover that people have circled you, but you aren't sure who they are. An easy way to tell is to hover over the name of the person, and you can see who you have in common at the bottom of the box that displays. I find this useful when determining whether someone might actually know me, or whether they're following me because I fit a certain "set" of people they're following. In my case, if I see people in my corner of the industry, such as Seth G.o.din, Brian Clark, Guy Kawasaki, and Robert Scoble, I know that someone's collecting a certain group of voices. Seeing this means that the person might be a "collector" seeking to gather up "top marketer" voices or something of that nature. I don't often circle these people back because they don't often communicate as much as they just read and share.

Again, these are personal choices, but when you see who you might have in common with someone, you start to understand whether this is someone you might choose to follow. Now, let me tell you a bit of a "hack" about this. If you're in business and you want to connect with someone specific (potentially someone of influence) in an industry, it is useful to connect with other people connected to that influencer. Meaning, if you want to connect and win business with Michael Dell, it wouldn't hurt to have a handful of people in common with him already circling you.

How you go about using this tip is up to you. If you stretch too far outside of your circle of "known" people, it's not likely that this can work. That said, I thought I'd mention it because it can be useful.

Should You Circle Celebrities?

There are, believe it or not, quite a number of celebrities (and their publicists) on Google+. I've seen Taylor Swift, 50 Cent, William Shatner, and many more celebrities using Google+. To me, this is a personal preference. If you're interested in following celebrities, feel free to put together a circle of them. Will they ever be useful for your business? It's not as likely that you can make a meaningful connection with a celebrity via this medium, with a few exceptions.

Observe how certain celebrities use these tools, and you can "smell" rather quickly who's having their publicist post for them and who's doing their own work. Wil Wheaton, famous in the past for Star Trek: The Next Generation, but relevant for so much more than that, is a power user of this platform and is fun to follow. You are likely to have a conversation with him. Ditto for Alyssa Milano. Ditto for a few other celebrities. But these are often the exception to the rule, sadly.

If you hope to do business with celebrities, I can't yet recommend Google+ as a useful tool for this. Use it to stay up on their comings and goings, but you should seek another venue for connecting. At least that's been my experience. It's not that there's any specific negative to circling celebrities, but you'll probably get their publicist's news stream and no real interaction to speak of, in lots of cases.

More About Outbound Circles.

I've talked a few times in this chapter about outbound circles. By this, I mean that you have the opportunity to group together people in a circle so that you can send them specific information, while not sending it out to others. For instance, I have a marketing circle, where, if I want to talk specifically about marketing, I can target a post to that circle, and none of the other people who choose to follow my posts will see it.

This can be useful in a few ways. If you want to group together company teams into circles, you can. Imagine making a "project team" circle, and putting the specific employees and contractors in that circle, and then advising them all to do the same. Pow-instant, reasonably private communications and sharing. (I say "reasonably" because I wouldn't yet trust Google+ with specific company proprietary data. It is a public site.) You can also use outbound circles for personal interests, obviously. Maybe you're into fitness and nutrition and you want to share recipes with a group of people into similar things. Perhaps you're a car enthusiast and like to share photos and videos of cars. If you're not interested in sharing with the general public, by all means, this is the way to do it.

Circle Tricks.

You can put people in more than one circle. Simply hover over their name with your mouse, and you can see where you've listed them; then decide if you want to move these people to another circle by unselecting the old and selecting the new, or if you want to add these people to more than one circle. Just select the new circle or circles you'd like to add them to, and make sure those boxes are checked, too.

I have a few friends I've put in Close because I want to share specific things with them. I have a few of these friends also placed into Marketing because they opted into receiving information that I share with people about marketing. I have a good friend in four circles and counting because our interests relate in matters of health, marketing, and Buddhism. Plus, she's in my Close circle. You can do the same with select friends, work colleagues, and customers, if it makes sense to you and your business.

Another trick: If you want to copy everyone (or most everyone) from one circle into another circle (maybe you're promoting people from Not Sure to Interesting), simply go to the Circles page, and then click the circle you specifically want to copy from. When it displays, click the View Circle In tab. Then, go to the upper-right part of the screen, click More Actions, and choose Select All. Then, click and hold the mouse b.u.t.ton down and drag everyone into the new circle (below) that you want to move them into.

Want to do all but one person? Hold down Command (on a Mac) or Control (on a PC) and click the person you don't want to move to the new circle. Easy as that, you've moved all (but one) to where you want them to go.

Circles Aren't a One-Time Thing.

Organizing and re-organizing your circles is an ongoing kind of thing. For example, I find that sometimes people I've chosen to follow because of where they are employed doesn't always work. One employee of a large retail chain was in a marathon to post as many potential reshares of other people's content as humanly possible, so his reshares constantly showed up on my screen. I removed him from the circle after a bit, and things went back to normal.

As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, setting up circles wisely can save you a lot of time, but you need to make some adjustments along the way. Don't make managing your circles a "job." When you have the occasional 10 minutes, slip into your circles to decide if you need to further define them. For instance, I have a circle that's built just for larger name-brand companies. I might go back and make a Tech Companies circle and separate them out from all the other interesting companies I follow. An ounce of prevention keeps you from having to rebuild your circles too often, though.

Wrapping Up.

We covered a lot of ground here. Think of this: Consider whether to have inbound and outbound circles; remember that adding someone to your circles doesn't mean they see what you've posted until they add you back; know that you don't have to circle back everyone who chooses to circle you; and remember that you'll have to touch your circles more than once.

In the next chapter, we talk about what to post, how to post, when to post, and more. It will all tie together as we go along. You'll see.

6. Posting in the Stream.

After setting up your profile and deciding who to follow and how to organize your circles, what becomes the lion's share of what you do on Google+ is most likely a blend of reading other people's posts, sharing and commenting on those posts, and creating your own posts. Sure, you might also do your share of hangouts (live video chatting), but for the most part, consuming, connecting via comments, and then creating new content of interest are the bread and b.u.t.ter of what you'll do.

There are personal ways to post and business-minded ways to post. From the outset, you need to think about and create material from both perspectives because people who choose to follow you as a representative of your company also need to connect with the human side of you. People connect with people. Even if you represent Pepsi, and you want to be the "voice" of Pepsi, people want to know about you.

This chapter talks about various ways to post information, including sharing other people's posts and commenting on posts, but mostly how to create and build business value with your own creative information. Also covered is video, photos, text, links, and more, and this chapter discusses how each post might be best used to build relationships with your prospective buyers and the community at large. However, first, start with a position and perspective that makes a specific strategic point.

Google+ Isn't a Blog, and It's More Than Twitter.

In the early days of Google+, some people immediately announced that they were sc.r.a.pping their primary web presence and using Google+ as their main blog/communications platform. While I understood their perspective (more interaction with more people potentially visiting more often), I felt that it was a bad choice. To me, the difference between your primary website or blog and something like Google+ is the same as the difference between a home and a hotel room.

Even if you put down an oriental rug and bring in a few lamps and some Van Halen posters for the walls, if it's not your own home, it's still a hotel room. There might be more people visiting Google+ than your blog in the aggregate, but that doesn't mean they're sticking around, and it doesn't mean they're getting the same interaction on Google+ as they can get on your primary website or blog.

Building anything on another company's platform is giving it the equity and taking away a lot of your potential capabilities. Google+ doesn't enable you to choose themes. It doesn't enable you to embed other technologies (unless already integrated by Google). Google+ doesn't make it easy for you to convert people from being a visitor to a prospect (such as inviting people to opt into your email newsletter). You need to consider countless more reasons. Suffice to say that I'm opposed to the idea of throwing away your main website and living primarily on Google+.

I've taken this same strategy/perspective a bunch of times, but it bears repeating. If your main website or blog is your "home base," Google+ is an outpost. As such, it's a place to connect, communicate, listen, and interact with people. This is actually where you'll spend a lot of your time because people frequent the outposts much more often than they visit your home base.

Your main site is where your primary transactional wish occurs. For instance, if you're a car dealership, perhaps your goal is to encourage people to come in for a test drive. Most dealerships do this by attempting to convert the web browsing prospect into someone who calls a salesperson or who fills out a contact form.

By contrast, people on Google+ might not be looking for a car, and if you're Aaron Manley Smith, owner of Motorphilia, a virtual car dealership (and the guy who sold me my 2010 Chevy Camaro SS), you're listening and building relationships on Google+ so that, when the time comes, people will know how to contact you and how to visit Motorphilia and start a transaction.

The goal of your work on an outpost (like Google+) is to build a relationship and nurture your prospects and community. The goal of your work on your home base is to convert people to an action, be that a sale, a membership, or something else.

One last point about this: This means that the goal of a home base is far more static and specific, whereas the efforts of being on an outpost (which is what I'm calling Google+) are far more nuanced and require a lot more effort and interaction. This is how it's meant to be. My goal in explaining this in detail before talking about posting is so that you understand where this fits into your larger business efforts and strategies. Hopefully, we're in agreement.

Posting on Google+.

To post on Google+ from the web, click the Home link (which is the little House tab with the three dots and lines below it). This displays a Stream view, and a box that displays the text Share What's New in light gray (see Figure 6-1). Click anywhere in the box, and you see what is shown in Figure 6-2.

Figure 6-1 The Google+ Stream view.

Figure 6-2 The Share What's New box.

Following are the elements you see: * A place to type in text.

* Four icons that enable you to choose between posting a photo, a video, a link, or location data. Note: you can share location data and post a photo, video, and obviously text.

* Sharing options, which are listed under the main post box.

* The Share b.u.t.ton, which is how you execute your post.

In Google+, you have the option to type in text, select one of those four icons, and then determine with whom you'd like to share your posts. After you post something, you have a few more options, including the following: * Editing your post * Deleting your post * Linking to your post * Reporting or removing specific comments, which is helpful if people spam your comments section * Disabling comments.

* Disabling reshare.

It's a little odd that Disable Comments and Lock This Post aren't visible until after you post. If you post something to the stream, you must then rush and click either or both of those options quickly before someone decides to do either. Perhaps this will be fixed in future versions, because it seems a bit awkward in practice, but you'll get the hang of it, if either of those functions is important to you.

We'll get back to how we use those later, but I wanted to bring them up because they're part of the posting mechanism that doesn't show up until after you click Share.

The Sharing Options Under the Main Post Area.