Google Plus Tips & Shortcuts

Tip #1: Adding Friends from Suggestions. On the right hand side, there’s a Suggestions area highlighting friends you can easily add

Tip #2: Adding Friends from Yahoo Mail. This option is available when clicking the circles icon on the toolbar. If you are a Yahoo! Mail user, go for it.

Tip #3: Adding Friends from Hotmail. In the same “Circles” view, next to the Yahoo! option. Bring all those Hotmail users in to your designated circles, more on that in a moment.

Tip #4: Blocking Friends. The folks at Google could be more creative in naming this. If they are friends, why block them, right? Maybe Enemies, Not a Friend? Block People? Picky I know.

Circles

When adding friend you’ll be able to specify a circle to put them in. When doing so there is also an option to create a new circle when adding a friend. Circles are used to organize friends. Many ways to think of these circles. Based on affinity, like work, church, family, and extended family. Or you could go a little more military as De Niro and Stiller’s in “Meet the Parents”. Either way, circles make it pretty easy to put friends in order fast in Google Plus.

Creating circles allows you to quantify who see’s what you publish in your stream updates.

Tip #5: When you add someone to your circle, you are saying, “I wanna see your stream updates.”

Tip #6: When someone adds you (more on notifications later), they are saying, “I want to see your extended circle and public updates.”

Tip #7: Creating circles allows you to quantify who see’s what you publish in your stream updates.

Tip #8: Creating Circles. You can see how to create a new circle above, when responding to suggestions, or mousing over a plus user.

Drag and Drop Convenience of Circles

Tip #9: Managing Circles. The drag and drop interface makes it really simple to populate circles. Click the circles icon, start dragging and dropping into your newly created circles. Don’t have a circle created yet for a contact? Drop your new friend on the “Drop here to create a new circle” circle. Name it, you are done.

Tip #10: How I’m managing circles. A the moment I have about 12 circles. The circles fall in the following classifications.

Personal contacts: Friends, family, people at church, etc.

Professional contacts: These are people I know in my industry, other industries, politicians, and celebrities.

Utility circles: more on this in the ‘somewhat’ advanced tips section below.

Considering relevancy. I’m particular about these circles, goes back to my Sage ACT! certified consultant days. I chose to organize contacts in circles with two things in mind.

Tip #11: How can I easily share my stream updates with those I think have the most interest in what it is I’m saying? If I post a question about recent email marketing delivery rates, I want to select a circle of those who are most interested in that stuff, professional contacts. If I have a personal update about something one of my children did, I want to share it with the appropriate personal contacts.

Tip #12: How can I get up to speed with what is going on with specific people? With circles setup, I can quickly click a given circle under the “Stream” on the left hand side of the home page, to get up to speed on members of that circle.

Photos in Google Plus

Tip #13: See photos of those in your circles. Click on a picture and you are brought to a screen that looks like this one.

Viewing Photos of those in your Google Plus Circle

Tip #14: A useful feature is the ability to see the photo while commenting or reviewing comments. At this time, there is no circle-based filter available like the main comment stream. I can see the need to see photos from members of a specific circle.

Tip #15: Have a friend in the photo? Tag them by using the Actions option just below the photo.

Mobile photos: Not a whole lot to say here. My Android phone, while cleaner than ever and germ free, has not yet recovered from going through the washer, nor has it been replaced (soon).

Tip #16:  Once you have Google+ installed on it, uploading to your Google+ Photos account is instant. My understanding from Android users, uploaded photos can optionally include Geo data of the photo (disabled by default). More on that in the a word about photo securitysection of this post.

Your Google Plus Profile Page

Important word about Google Plus profile photos:Your usual avatar won’t cut it. Find a higher resolution photo. Otherwise you’ll be sharing a grainy version of yourself on plus. Not nice.

Tip #17: This is important. Fill it out as completely as possible. Not only is it your brochure to the masses about who you are, it is also something that shows up in the SERPs, specifically:

• The Title comes from your Google Plus Profile name.
• The Description is from the introduction field on your profile page.

Tip #18: Find out more details from Dana Lookadoo’s excellent post on Google Profiles in the SERPs.

Security in Google Plus

Securing Sections of Your Google Plus Profile

You can specify security settings on your Google profile page, one section at a time.

Tip #19: Many sections of your Google profile can be secured quickly and precisely.

» Click to see sections

To get there, view your profile, and then choose to Edit Profile. This takes you to the about page of your profile with the ability to select and edit security settings per section. The sections you specify can be visible in any way you like, public to the web, specific circles, extended circles, or not at all.

A Word About Photo Security in Google Plus

Tip #20: Photo security in Google plus is handled differently. As per the screenshot below, at this time, users can specify whether to include photos on your profile, photo tag approval settings (when you are tagged in a photo), and whether to display geo settings (where the photo was taken, if available) for newly uploaded photos and albums.

Tip #21: Geotagging is powerful allowing you to share your journey’s with friends, however for the security conscious, having the ability to disable these functions is a must. For more about Geotagging in photos go here.

Tip #22 (old): This functionality disappeared shortly after the service launched. Google chat security settings. Below the stream section on the left hand side, there is a Google chat area. Click the small arrow next to “Chat” (credit to friend Linda Lawrey for sharing this nearly hidden option). Selecting Circles takes you to a box to select the circles you wish and enabling chat for Google+. The notice there states:

People in these circles who also enable chat will be able to see when you’re online and chat with you.

Tip #22 (NEW!): Resource to learn of the latest changes to Google Plus. To stay legit and keep this at 40 tips (since the previous #22 isn’t there any more…) here is where to go if you want the latest on Google plus from the makers of Google plus.

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