Introduction to Google Plus

So the other day, I was talking with some blogging friends at our favorite lunch place and, as it always does, the topic of social media and our strategies came up. Google Plus being one of the newer social platforms was a hot topic among newbies and old school folks alike! I thought I would do a quick overview for my readers since it can be confusing to keep up with all the different social media tools that are available today.

Let me start with the basic of the information.

• What is Google Plus? – Google Plus is Google's own social media platform, built to compete with the giants of the field like Facebook and Twitter.
• How does it compare? – Google Plus integrates all of its products into one concise network (Maps, YouTube, Gmail, etc).
• What are the top features? – This is a great platform for communities, marketing, and blogging. You can create “circles”, meet in “hangouts” for chatting via text, voice, and even webcams; you can also share photos and posts that you find interesting or important.

Okay, so that's a very high level view of Google Plus as a whole.

Now let's discuss the most basic “piece” of Google Plus if you will; the post.

 

This tells you who wrote the post; in this case, this is a post about a review article I posted on my blog.

 

This tells you the date and time the information was posted; it will also give you the post's URL if you click on it.

 

You can see any hashtags that were used to categorize the post. This allows you to “filter” posts to a particular topic; in this case, it is listed under #food.

 

This is the +1 button; consider this the “like” or “favorite” feature on Google Plus.

 

This is the Google Plus share button. If you think the post/information is relevant to your audience, this will put it in their stream.

 

Finally, this is where you can leave a comment on the original post. Once you comment, your Google Plus profile is also linked to your name which helps others find you if they like your comments. You can also “tag” the author or another friend in your comments which is similar to linking your comments on a blog post. To tag someone, +friendsname

 

 

This was only meant to be a brief explanation about Google Plus and the anatomy of a post. But if you have any questions I didn't answer, feel free to leave your question below or contact me and I'd be happy to help if I can!