Google+: user guide, business pages & communities

Google +
User Guide
Business Pages & Communities
Cristina Juesas
Euskampus Fundazioa
November ’14

Google + User Guide / Business Pages & Communities
• What’s Google +?
• Integrating Google Tools
• What are Circles?
• How do you post in Google+?
• How do you mention someone in a
post?
• Hashtags
• +1
• General posting tips
• Share other people’s publications
• Formatting the text
• Official pages
• Photo albums
• Communities
Contents

What’s Google +?
• Google+ is a social network “on steroids” by Google.
• The beta version was launched in June 2011 and it opened to the public in
September that same year.
• It aims to be more than a just a typical social network like Facebook or
Twitter. Google wanted to create a place that included all the interactions
with its other sites: gmail, gTalk, YouTube, Google, Photos, Sites, etc.
• Relationships on this network are based on circles.
• You can follow people without them necessarily following you back. It’s an
asynchronous network.

Integrating Google Tools
• All Google’s tools (the search engine, YouTube, Gmail, Gtalk, Photos, Calendar,
Sites, etc.) are integrated into Google+.
• This integration affects future searches on Google.
• Sharing on Google+ from Google sites is as easy as clicking a button and
everything that appears on Google+ is indexed better on Google.

How do you open Google+ user account?
• If you have a Google account, it is practically automatic. A Google+ account is
generated automatically when you fill in your profile information. If you are
already a Google user, visit www.plus.google.com
• You don’t need to have a Google email address to sign up for Google+,
although it is recommended.
• It’s also best to fill in the required fields on the profile, like the photo, short
bio, etc. It can be as comprehensive as we want, and with the viewing and
indexing limitations and restrictions that we want.
• (For example, we can fill in our entire CV, but only enable people from a
certain circle to view it)

Profile settings
• You can edit your profile by uploading a photo, adding contact information,
website or blog, and other information you want.
• http://www.google.com/settings/personalinfo
• What you will be required to update:
• Profile and cover photo
• Contact information
• Website link (only if you have one)
• Introduction
• Tagline

Profile settings

Profile Settings

What are Circles?
• Circles are a way of organising your Google+ contacts. Circles by default are:
family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances, but you can create new ones.
• Circles have been created so that we can share our contents bearing in mind
who is going to read them, but also
• how we want to read other people’s contents. So, we can create a circle for
official accounts from different universities, or for people working at the UPV/
EHU, or users we want to learn from, the Media, etc.

What are circles?

+1
• Google+’s “+1” is equivalent to “Like” on Facebook.
• When someone posts something we like, we click on “+1”.
• We can also “+1” on any webpage that has this button installed and it will
automatically be shared in our public list of “+1s”

What can I post on Google +?
• Text (no character limit)
• Photos and videos (in both cases we can upload them from our computer or
via a link)
• Positioning (using Google Maps and Google Sites)
• Events
• Polls
• And, of course, links.

Photo albums
• We can create albums and share them with various circles (photos of the
family with the Family Circle, photos of friends with the Friends Circle, and so
on)
• Thanks to the positioning of the photos given by the search engine, and its
excellent visibility, Google+ is a powerful tool for the mass media.

How do you mention someone on Google +
• Like on Twitter and Facebook, where you put @ in front of someone’s name if
you want to mention them, on Google+ you mention someone by putting “+”
in front of their name.

Hashtags
• They are used when you want to tag a conversation or a post with a certain
topic.
• They are used in exactly the same way as on Twitter -with a # in front of the
word or tag-.
• Google+ gives us suggestions with the first few letters of the most popular
hashtags.

Sharing other people’s posts
• When an account posts something, we have the following options:
• +1
• Comment
• Share

Searches
• We can search for people
(profiles), pages, or just
mentions in people’s
posts. It works as well as
the Google search
engine.

Formatting the text
• Google + supports basic text formatting with the following commands:
• Italics = put the _underscores_ around the words
• Bold = put *asterisks* around the words
• Strike = put -dashes- around the words

Hangouts
• Hangouts are video calls and chats
• They can include up to 100 people at once in text hangouts
• They can include up to 10 people at once in video hangouts. 15 in some
accounts.
• A convenient way of holding meetings
• Great for answering questions
http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=es&answer=2459411

Official pages
• Multi-administrator, with different levels of permission
• Analytics and search engine interaction with “parent” websites
• Same functions as the profiles, although they can’t follow users that don’t
follow them, but they can mention them in posts
• Cover photo
• They can create communities or groups to interact better with the users

Official Page “Profile”

Communities
• They can be public or private.
• You need to fill in certain information:
community name, “profile” photo, about,
tagline, etc.
• Communities have one or several
moderators.
• Members have to be selected. A box opens
and you chose from the circle you want to
invite to the community. You can also insert
text.

Communities
• The community administrators can create different categories for posts and
different conversations.
• The environment is asynchronous -it offers a place for work and reflection
that is not immediate-.
• Notifications can be configured, from a sound and alert to nothing at all.

Communities
• Events can be created and tasks
and comments can be added -it’s
very useful in order to organise
in a collaborative way.
• It can be completely integrated
into Google Drive, so documents
can be added to the discussions.
• Like with other messages on
Google+, all posts in a
Community can be edited.

Tips for posting on Google +
• Never post anything that you wouldn’t want on the front page of a
newspaper.
• The posting rate is more like Facebook than Twitter (although you can post
more frequently by playing with the circles).
• General tips: Post positive messages, don’t feed the troll!!, don’t post personal
opinions on business pages, it’s ok to joke (careful, irony is hard to catch on
the internet), answer when someone mentions you and thank people when
they re-post awhat you share.
• Watch what people who know how to use the tool are doing, and ask if you
have any questions.

cristina.juesas@euskampus.eu
The End

Google+: user guide, business pages & communities

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