How to use Google + – a quick guide and thoughts on Google Plus

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Google + has arrived and pretty much every SEO I know are already on it. Yesterday was probably a complete waste of a day for most SEOs as pretty much everyone was busy playing with Google +. I was no exception. In the words of Matt Cutts: “It’s like crack, but in a good way”.


So I’ve spent some time going through the current key features to give you a “crash course” in Google +:

Circles

This is the major functionality that although initially looks just like facebook friends, differ in one important area; categorisation! Basically, circles is a way of categorising your Google + contacts into groups. For example below I’ve added circles such as “SEO Peeps” which has every SEO contact I have added, but then I have also added a separate circle for “UK SEOs” to further categories. In addition I have separate circles for my “Friends” (you know those people you see in person) and “Family”. To me this is a very good way of social networking as I have a lot of digital content (whether it’s blogposts, videos or even images) that I want to share with one group but not necessarily with another. On facebook my mum and dad are forever asking (and worse; commenting) on my SEO related content I share. It’s just not really relevant to them.  Equally, having recently (ok so 8 months ago) had another baby and I’m sure a lot of my SEO colleagues are getting sick and tired of seeing loads of baby pictures. Most importantly the categorisation in Google + is EASY to do, you can add as many circles as you like and you can have one person in several circles. The only potential issue is for those of us that resembles Monica (in Friends) and over-organise. I still to this day can’t understand my original “filing system” of del.icio.us tags.
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