Google+ for Romance Writing/Reading: Set Up to Circles

with Dee Scully

What Is Google+

Google+ is a social network. I know. I know. I hear your groans. “Not another social network. I’m already on Facebook.” Before you scroll to the comments and leave me a ‘thanks, but no thanks’, hear me out.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DeeScullyRomanceAuthor/posts/p/pub 

Google+ Is Not Facebook 

Google+ is not Facebook. It does connects you to people, but with Google+ Circles you can more easily customize your ‘friends’. You can assemble them into various groups such as ‘family’, or since we are talking about writing/reading romance…‘writing colleagues’, ‘editors and publishers’, ‘agents’, ‘historical romance authors’, ‘Harlequin authors’, etc… Circles help you target who sees your content and what content you see.

Privacy or Piracy 

One other thing that sets Google+ apart is its security. Google+ does not distribute your personal information and it allows you to assign a privacy setting for each piece of content that you share instead of a single setting for everything. This may seem tedious but it’s actually quite protective for those of us who don’t want our private information hijacked and sold to marketing companies.

Getting Started

To get started you’ll need to set up a Google+ account. Once you set up your account, I suggest visiting Google’s Get Started page. It’s a simple five-minute walk through of how to connect and create Circles.

Suggestions for Writers

1. Your profile page acts as a business card, so when setting it up choose a cover picture that reflects your writing and use your ‘writing as’ name (if different from your given name) to best promote your writing persona.
2. Use the space under your name for either a tagline such as Historical Romance Author or your web/blog address to make it easier for people to connect with you and your writing.
3. You can further detail your profile page with your unique bragging rights (e.g. “I survived contest judging and lived to talk about it”), your occupation, skills, education, contact information, etc.

HOW TO CONNECT
Contacts

When you’ve set up your account and profile page, you need to add contacts. You can import contacts when setting up your account and Google will automatically add anyone with a Google+ account. Or you can add contacts one by one via your home page or your profile page. Simply go to the ‘Search for people, pages, or posts’ bar at the top of your screen. Type in a name and hit the blue and white magnifying glass button or enter.

Alternatively, you can scroll over Home and a dropdown box appears. Click into People and Google will suggest contacts, add your Gmail contacts, or ‘search for new contacts.’

Circles

To create Circles, click into People (see above). From there scroll over and click into More and then into Your Circles.

Hover your cursor over the grey dot with the big plus in the middle.

Do as the prompt directs and “Drop or click to create circle”. Create as many circles as you want/need. Add your contacts to one or many Circles.

Once you’ve created a few Circles and added your contacts, send a message to a single contact then to one of your Circles. Make sure you add Dee Scully Romance Author to your contacts and Circles!  Play around with the Google+ tools and get to know it a bit better.

Let us know in the comments below about any Google+ Community or contact that is of interest to romance readers and writers.  Let's get a list going!!

In the next instalment of Google for Romance Writing/Reading Part II we’ll learn how to use Google+ Circles to target readers and writers.

I love to love…the Top Positive Quotes community on Google+.

Top Positive Quotes-Fathima Afra

I love to laugh…at what I used to think was important.

I love to learn…as much as I can about Google+.