OK, you finally come to realize you are going to have to get on Google Plus (G+) if you are ever going to see your Facebook friends again, or be found by your target market. Now What? How to I go about getting a few people to Follow?
Don’t feel alone. All these questions are natural and are exactly what every newbie to G+ experiences. If you are one of the million’s of people now flooding into G+ to set up shop …or one of the 100’s of millions all ready on G+…here are a few tips on gathering a good community of Plussers from accepting Circles.
Shared Circles
Accepting other people’s Circles is one way to go about gathering people to socialize with. However, there are a number of things you need to be aware of before accepting just anyone’s Circle.
There are two basic ways of building your G+ community.
- The most effective way to build a solid Circle of followers is to search G+ for your friends by name..real name…then place them in your circle.
- For a Faster way you can accept the many Circles people, places and things will offer share with you.
Since over 95% of the people online for social media purposes are into FAST…let’s take a look at the PRO’s and CON’s of accepting someone’s Shared Circle.
So what is a Circle and how are they created..and Why? Good questions.
A circle is what G+ has named their form of Groups. G+ creates a few basic circles for you when you sign on to G+, however you can create your own circles if you like. The Circles allow you to communicate to just the people, places and things in that Circle…or you can communicate to all of them by posting updates to the PUBLIC circle G+ has created for everyone. You can place and remove people in circles as you like and only have some people in a circle and not in others. It is a great way to communicate privately to these people in the circle.
For example:
You are a guitarist and are from time to time interested in being involved with that community. You create a Circle for Guitarist and place new people you meet who are Guitarist into your Guitarist Circle.
Say you own a business and you want to put your customers in a Circle and your employees into another. You naturally can do this by creating different Circles.
When it comes time to send information you feel is pertinent ONLY to Guitarist you would choice the Guitarist Circle instead of the PUBLIC circle to send that information. If you wanted to sned your customers information only they would appriciate, that could be done by sending it your Customer Circlel. If you wanted to send your employees a note on a meeting you having or invite them to join you for a round of golf..naturally that can be done sending a note to their Circle.
Note: You can designate the updates to a circle as private and lock it from being shared. There are other features of Circles you can read up on here. How To Use Google+ Circles
What’s The Deal on Sharing
The first thing to realize is the Circle of people, places and things someone else has accumulated is their interoperation of a friend, acquaintance, business associate, family member, place, thing or whatever is of interest to them.
Not everyone or thing in their circle they are recommending to everyone add to their Circles…or Sharing…is going to be of interest to you. Then again, if someone is sharing their Circle of Guitar Artist and you are a Guitar Artist then this circle could be of upmost importance to you to accept. Just be aware, some people may say they are a Guitarist just so they can hammer guitarist with tons of promotions..thank goodness for the Block Button.
Also, be aware of is who is Sharing the Circle. If it is someone you know or a close friend you are confident the people they put in their circle are Really going to be of interest to you.
If the person sharing the Circle is not someone you know well then accepting their circle could lead to a lot of work of culling out people, places and things that post a lot of stuff….a whole lot of stuff… you have no interest in reading or seeing.
What happens if I accept a Circle full of Knuckleheads?
Again, another good question and a real likely possibility if you accept a Circle from someone you really don’t know.
I realize this attitude of being weary of strangers goes against the grain of every social butterfly who resides in all of the social spaces, but even they have to realize what happens to their stream of updates when they gather up a few hundred photographes who seemingly have their camera set on auto-feeding everything they shoot all day long to the G+ stream. Or accept a Circe full of bored cubical rat who hacked their company’s firewall and have every site that creates .gif animated file bookmarked and posts animated MeMe’s to the G+ like they were getting paid to do so.
This is what could happen and has happened to me a few times when I took a chance and accepted someone’s Circle who I did not know well..or was someone I had a few conversations with and felt they might have a Circle of a large number people of general interest to me. Turned out their definition of what interests them was not even close to what I was interested in. As a result, I got to learn where the MUTE button was and how to Delete a Circle.
It’s All About Social
It is a good idea and is the main drive of everyone in the social spaces..G+ included..to gather up people to talk to or socialize with. How to go about getting a large number of New Friends quickly is done by accepting someone’s Circle. The risk factor is when accepting Circles from unknown sources will more than likely throw you into spending a lot of time learning the long list of management tools G+ has developed.
Once you accept a Circle that is filled with, or has a large number of, people posting content of no interest, the choices of corrective action to take is to either:
- Delete the entire Circle
- Or go thru one by one to see who in that circle is really of interest and who is not.
This leads back to the need to trust your sources. The recommended thing to do is to reach out to someone you have found to trust and ask them if they have a Circle they could Share with you.
Close Friend’s Circles Rock
What you are going to start seeing on G+ soon from the people who have experienced what happens when you accept a Circle full of knuckleheads and wasted time managing that Circle, is these people are going to stop accepting or sharing Circles.
Circle Sharing was, and in some cases still is, one of the major growing pains of G+.
Most people who are only out to gather as many people as they can usually do not care who the people are in their Circles or what they post. To them the game is to gather as many people they can to create a sense of popularity or a market to bombard the residences of the Circle with promotions.
They then, in an effort to create a sense of community, will share their Circle of hundreds of people with unknown interests in hopes that action will encourage others to share their Circle so they can accept more people into their Circles. Will the number game ever end??..only Google can tell us that.
Guiding Light of Hope
These people who have been around G+ for awhile and have experienced the darkside of Circles more than likely have built up a soild list of A Listers..or in my case, My Posse Circle…of people they know for certain offer up some kickass information or content. More than likely the people a close friend has in their Circle would be of interest to you. So asking them if they could share a Circle could be the way to go to building up a quality Circle of followers..that is if your friends are willing to Share.
Fear of Sharing
There are a large number of people who have a fear of sharing Circles.,, especially to the public. Giving someone their Circle takes away the safeguards they have placed for those people they placed in their circle. There are even more people on G+ who have a fear that someone who has them in their Circle will Share that Circle to the Public.
Many times the people in their Circles are not interested in being Shared with people they do not know since that opens them up to getting a lot of the less desirables adding them to their Circle and then Sharing their Circle with even less desirable
Circles Etiquette
The polite thing to do is from time to time ping (or send an update) to your ‘A Listers’ telling them that you are going to Share the Circle they are in and instructing them if they have objection to being Shared let you know so you can place them in another circle you are not sharing.
Yes, there are a large number of people..more like a growing trend of people…who are starting to become guarded with who they socialize with. This is not to be confused with being Ainti-Social. It has more to do with maintaining a quality of Life, securing a professional image and to be safe.
The internet is still…for now…a Wild West and everyone interested in their personal or professional image should be aware of the need to safeguard that image. You do this by who you associate with which on G+ deals with the people in your Circle. Who others see in your Circle will either excite them or turn them off. The Goal is to go for exciting them and not to run them off.
G+ is the place to be and learning how G+ works is a must. Most of it comes with time and learning come faster by asking for help from people using G+. Let me know how I can help.
