10 Important Tips for Google+ Beginners
1. To get the most rewarding experience on Google+ begin by circling at least 300. I picked 300 since it’s a manageable number. Circle too little of a number of people and your stream will be dead, circle too many at the beginning and you might overwhelm yourself with an overload of information, most of all you’ll have a hard time making solid and lasting connections.
Don’t just circle blindly or you’ll get bored. Do searches for terms you like reading about, if you’re interested in physics do a search for “Einstein”. The search results will bring up a ton of posts relating to your interests. Go through them then click on one that catches your eye. Check the users profile out, do you like their content? If so circle them! Keep doing this until you've got a good amount of people circled.
2. Pay attention to the What’s Hot posts/section, some of the posts that get in the What’s Hot section come from hightly active engagers. Connect with them! You can learn a lot from watching what goes on in their threads. I haven’t met an active engager who wasn’t friendly, so don't be shy.
3. Once you’ve started connecting with people who you share the same interests with and begin experiencing just how wonderful the community is you’ll start to realize that it no longer makes a difference if your real life friends and family move over from Facebook.
Google+ is much different than Facebook in a sense that here you make new friends, friends who you will probably have a lot more in common with than your family or real life friends over on Facebook. Making new friends or connections seems like a daunting task but actually comes quite easily and naturally once you begin engaging with other people and find your place among a group with similar interests. Right now you want your friends and family here to fill a void, once that void is filled you wont give it much thought since you’ll be wrapped up in fun and interesting discussions or sidetracked by all the yummy information that fills your stream.
4. Everybody wants comments and shares, that’s natural. Give it some time, once you begin actively engaging with other users you’ll notice more action on your posts so long as others find your content interesting. Google+ isn’t Twitter so posts that contain just a sentence or two will probably be overlooked. Look around, find out what other people are commenting on, pay attention to the topics that get attention. Provide users with content that will benefit them in some way. If you’re an expert at something write a post on tips and techniques. Be helpful, people will appreciate you for it!
5. Post original content. Reshaing posts is a great way to spread something interesting but be interesting yourself and create unique content. People who only reshare the content of others probably won't have many people following them. We want to get to know YOU, not just them.
6. Over time you’ll begin to make friends with other users by replying to their comments on a regular basis. If you jump all over the place and don’t become a regular commenter to a handful of people you follow then it’s kind of like you’re just passing by. When you become a regular commenter people will notice you, they’ll see that you’re an active engager. Engagers follow other engagers. Post helpful or interesting stuff and you’ll begin seeing an influx of comments and shares on your own posts.
It takes time to grow your circles and a bit of skill in learning what types of posts get the most action. Don’t give up! Engage, engage, engage!
7. One of the reasons users follow other users is because they’ve read a comment they wrote that was well thought out, helpful, or inspiring. One of the things I look for in following someone is their sense of humor. I love being around people who will make me laugh! So funny comments tend to grab my attention.
8. It’s never too late to “click” with a group. Normally “clicks” are considered a bad thing, they remind us of high school. But here clicks are formed by people who share the same interests not people who flock together thinking they’re better than everyone else and don’t care to let anyone else join their “club”. Here everyone is open to connecting with new users, the more the Google+ community brings us, the better. So don’t feel like you can’t find a place to fit it, trust me there are thousands of places for you to fit in. We’re all very accepting here, we love connecting with new people!
9. If you have questions, ask them! I don’t know one person here who wouldn’t take the time to answer a question from someone who is new. We were all new at one point and had our own questions. Heck... I still have questions! Don’t feel intimidated because you’re just learning when it seems everyone else is already an expert. We’re not, there are new features coming out all the time, we learn new things from people every day. We’re ALL learners. In fact, I think that’s why we’re here, to learn something new!
10. Have fun! What could be more simpler than that?
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