The Quick-Start Guide to Google+
Here’s my best pass at showing you how to use Google+. I will be making a quick video of this presentation shortly. Enjoy, join us on Google+, and get out there.
click to view full presentation on Slideshare.net
This presentation was published on Slideshare.net on June 24, 2012: The Quick-Guide to Google+
Here’s the participant list of the hangout that I used to capture the Hangout images above.
The contents of this deck are free to share under creative commons license, if you use an image or idea please share my URL and/or name with that presentation. And with that we keep the wheel of creative commons and open source content going around.
@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/06/guide-to-google/
Get all the Uber.la GOOGLE+ posts here: The Complete Google+ Page
Some more for your LEARN box of social media:
- Metrics & Learnings: Little-Blog Analytics – 2012 Mid-year Reporting
- Going Global and Going Virtual: Are You Ready for What’s Next in Agency Models?
- There is Never Enough Time To Get Everything Done: So… What’s Your Plan?
- You Don’t Have To Start Learning Google+, But You’re Gonna Fall Behind
- Social Media is Only Part of the Online Marketing Mix
- Authority and the Speeding Train of Project Leadership
- Positive Momentum: How Do You Generate Your Forward Thinking?
- White Boarding – Learning To Think with Your Hands
- Truth, Transparency, and Trust: How Do We Establish Our Connection?
- Positive Forces: Delayed, Deflected, Divorced, Distracted, But Not Deterred
- Plussing or Dividing: How Are You Showing Up in the World?
- Dear Graduate – a Toolkit for Learners and Job Hunters
- Expert Not Found – Social Media is About Being a "Student" not a "Guru"
Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)
Metrics & Learnings: Little-Blog Analytics – 2012 Mid-year Reporting
Not much has changed in the fundamentals of little-blog traffic for me. Let’s look at a couple of my number for 2012 y-t-d.
- 28k visits since Jan 1, 2012.
- 80% New Visitors (first-timers)
- 20% Returning (readers)
Here’s the overview of my traffic sources.
The fundamentals are the same.
- 34% Direct traffic
- 24% Organic Google (SEO)
- 5% RSS Feed
- 38% Social and Misc.
The Top Social Tools:
- Twitter 8%
- LinkedIn 4%
- Google+ 4%
- Facebook 4% (adding 1% from mobile)
- StumbleUpon 3%
- Reddit 2%
Deeper in the social numbers:
- Mashable: 177 referrals (I had a high-rated comment on a Pinterest post)
- Pinterest: 132 referrals
- Paper.li: 82 referrals (being included in someone’s paper.li publication)
- SopaStrike.com: 44 referrals (participating in the SOPA protest)
- YouTube: 18 referrals
- Digg: 16 referrals
- Slideshare: 11 referrals
- Even while Digg continues to attempt revival, the numbers are not getting any better. (I add every post to Digg.)
- I’m not a fan of Paper.li, it is good to be curated from time to time.
- Commenting on a high-profile site like Mashable can drive a bit of traffic.
- Slideshare has a significant volume of traffic to my slides, but the traffic doesn’t often make it back to this site. (Hmmm.)
Overall learning:
Keep working it like your working it. Keep growing your Google+ base as that does show promise. And StumbleUpon and Reddit continue to be hot social sharing sites.
I’ll update you at the end of the year, or sooner if anything cool happens.
@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/06/mid-year-metrics/
Some more for your LEARN box of social media:
- Going Global and Going Virtual: Are You Ready for What’s Next in Agency Models?
- There is Never Enough Time To Get Everything Done: So… What’s Your Plan?
- You Don’t Have To Start Learning Google+, But You’re Gonna Fall Behind
- Social Media is Only Part of the Online Marketing Mix
- Authority and the Speeding Train of Project Leadership
- Positive Momentum: How Do You Generate Your Forward Thinking?
- White Boarding – Learning To Think with Your Hands
- Truth, Transparency, and Trust: How Do We Establish Our Connection?
- Positive Forces: Delayed, Deflected, Divorced, Distracted, But Not Deterred
- Plussing or Dividing: How Are You Showing Up in the World?
- Dear Graduate – a Toolkit for Learners and Job Hunters
- Expert Not Found – Social Media is About Being a "Student" not a "Guru"
Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)
How to Play and Learn Along the Journey: The Three Boxes of Life
More than likely you have come across What Color Is Your Parachute? the seminal career and life-finding book by Richard N. Bolles. But he wrote another book which may be even more important in learning what it is we (you) want to do.
This book, The Three Boxes of Life, talks about the three major periods in our lives as we grow up, and the roles we play during those periods. They are pretty obvious: 1. Student/Learn; 2. Worker/Earn Money; 3. Retiree/Play.
The problem with this model, that we buy into early on in our journey, is that it sets up the longest and most potent part of our lives to be drudgery: work work work. In the Bolles book he begins to explain that often our path is not as linear as we might think it is. And as a model, the three boxes are actually a trap.
All along the path of life, we will find ourselves in moments of play, or learning, even during the ever-long period of work. The trick, as I see it, is to recognize those moments when we’ve escaped the boxes for a moment, and to celebrate the variety of play/learn periods. Of course, being in my mid-career period, I am diligently striving in the middle box. I’m having some success and some setbacks, but along I go.
And then there are moments, opportunities, to hop right out of the box and play my ass off. I certainly know how to work my ass off, why not apply the same focus to play, escape, joy, and learning… EVEN WHILE IN THE WORK BOX.
Here’s what I mean.
Today I am up and at it at 5:00 am. And by 9:00 am I will be packing the kids into the car, on a Friday, to head out to a nearby wilderness part for a day hike. And we’re taking two friends along with my two kids. Sure, I understand your "so what" reaction to that activity. But here’s the difference between my vacation day and my regularly scheduled vacation days: I’m going to do this escape act every Friday this summer, while my kids are out of school.
So as I quest on to unlock the potential financial stability of self-employment, I am conscious watching for the opportunities to jump into the PLAY and LEARN box more frequently. In Bolles book, he explains that this often happens during periods self-discovery, and job loss is his most famous example. But we don’t have to toil on inside each of the boxes and let the rigid ideas of their "responsibility" and "progression" rule our lives.
There is less opportunity to look outside the box when things are not going well, when we are hustled along by debt, work deadlines, and other responsibilities. But it is up to us to recognize when we have a chance to jump out of the box of work and into LEARN and PLAY. There is no one else who is going to look after this for us. And with a little planning, we can take Fridays off to be with our kids.
This breaking of the pattern does a cool thing for my kids as well. It demonstrates for them, that work is not drudgery, that inside the role of WORKER I can make PLAY and make connecting with them a priority.
I love my work. I’ve planned, learned, worked, and managed to get here by working with purpose. Today, I play with purpose as well.
@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/06/three-boxes/
Reference: The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life/Work Planning
Richard N. Bolles
Some more for your LEARN box of social media:
- Going Global and Going Virtual: Are You Ready for What’s Next in Agency Models?
- There is Never Enough Time To Get Everything Done: So… What’s Your Plan?
- You Don’t Have To Start Learning Google+, But You’re Gonna Fall Behind
- Social Media is Only Part of the Online Marketing Mix
- Authority and the Speeding Train of Project Leadership
- Positive Momentum: How Do You Generate Your Forward Thinking?
- White Boarding – Learning To Think with Your Hands
- Truth, Transparency, and Trust: How Do We Establish Our Connection?
- Positive Forces: Delayed, Deflected, Divorced, Distracted, But Not Deterred
- Plussing or Dividing: How Are You Showing Up in the World?
- Dear Graduate – a Toolkit for Learners and Job Hunters
- Expert Not Found – Social Media is About Being a "Student" not a "Guru"
Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)
What’cha Drinkin? Let’s Share a Coffee Tomorrow Morning
Yeah, so I haven’t been advertising my Thursday morning virtual coffees. But if you’re in one of my extended circles on Google+ you’ve gotten the invites via Google+. Only problem is, you have to be online to see them. But I’m still doing them.
Tomorrow’s coffee hangout will be at 7:00 am – 8:00 am (CST) here’s a timezone conversion table (No reservations necessary, but I’d love to hear from you if you WANT to come, or would like these to be at a different time.) Only the first 7 other participants can get in, but I’ve averaged 2 – 3 folks, so don’t worry.
Just show up and hangout. And enjoy your coffee and tell us about what you’re working on.
I’m having less luck these days with PUBLIC hangouts. There seem to be a lot of trolls from foreign countries, commonly men lying on their beds. They don’t speak (perhaps they don’t understand English – that’s okay) they sometimes wave, but often they have some odd loud noise in the background, TV or radio, and it disrupts the entire hangout. You mute them, they unmute, and then you block them. Oh well, just like in real life, there are trolls and there are lurkers.
Overall, my experience with Google Hangouts has been fantastic. I’ve experienced a few processor load problems when several people are sharing their screens, or if I am sharing my screen. But then I’m trying to push a lot of pixels though the stream.
I think the Google+ experience is complex. It’s not Facebook by any stretch of the imagination. And I can say a hearty, thank goodness. We don’t need another social media tyrant.
Get to know Google+, hit me up in a circle, and then join me for coffee tomorrow. It’s always good conversation about social media and marketing, and… depending on your brewer, it’s usually good coffee.
Learning the social web, one app, one site, one concept at a time.
See ya tomorrow morning. Right?
@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/06/tomorrow-morning/
Writing the best info I can about social media, get ya some more:
- Going Global and Going Virtual: Are You Ready for What’s Next in Agency Models?
- There is Never Enough Time To Get Everything Done: So… What’s Your Plan?
- You Don’t Have To Start Learning Google+, But You’re Gonna Fall Behind
- Social Media is Only Part of the Online Marketing Mix
- Authority and the Speeding Train of Project Leadership
- Positive Momentum: How Do You Generate Your Forward Thinking?
- White Boarding – Learning To Think with Your Hands
- Truth, Transparency, and Trust: How Do We Establish Our Connection?
- Positive Forces: Delayed, Deflected, Divorced, Distracted, But Not Deterred
- Plussing or Dividing: How Are You Showing Up in the World?
- Dear Graduate – a Toolkit for Learners and Job Hunters
- Expert Not Found – Social Media is About Being a "Student" not a "Guru"
Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)
Going Global and Going Virtual: Are You Ready for What’s Next in Agency Models?
We’ve got resources all over the planet with various expertise. The problem is no longer the collaboration software, or systems. There are fewer barriers today to creating a new global AND virtual marketing agency. What’s lacking is the connections, the trust network, the brainpower to figure out how to wire up the systems from end-to-end and start doing business.
Here’s my roadmap. What am I missing? What other obstacles are in our way? What are the resources we have in abundance here in Austin, Texas, that may not be available globally? And what about the billing rates? Is outsourcing "everything" really the best option?
click to view full-size on slideshare.net
I’ve got the toolbox and the skills. I know some people and you know some people. What’s next?
It’s probably easy to write this post off as philosophical or theoretical thinking. But I believe the tools for connecting us in a fundamentally new way, are almost free. The possibilities boggle the mind when you start digging in and trying to figure it out.
@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/06/un-agency/
Other posts to help you kick ass in social media:
- There is Never Enough Time To Get Everything Done: So… What’s Your Plan?
- You Don’t Have To Start Learning Google+, But You’re Gonna Fall Behind
- Social Media is Only Part of the Online Marketing Mix
- Authority and the Speeding Train of Project Leadership
- Positive Momentum: How Do You Generate Your Forward Thinking?
- White Boarding – Learning To Think with Your Hands
- Truth, Transparency, and Trust: How Do We Establish Our Connection?
- Positive Forces: Delayed, Deflected, Divorced, Distracted, But Not Deterred
- Plussing or Dividing: How Are You Showing Up in the World?
- Dear Graduate – a Toolkit for Learners and Job Hunters
- Expert Not Found – Social Media is About Being a "Student" not a "Guru"
Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)