Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [21]
Notes: Not everyone has time to waste online all day. I’m never at my desk. But I do find myself sitting in waiting rooms while on sales calls ALL THE TIME, so when I’m there, I log into Google+ from my iPhone, and I post updates, and I live in the comments section. Sometimes, I share my location data, and other times, there’s no way I want someone knowing I’m at their competitor’s office. You must be smart about that.
Takeaway: That the sales professional doesn’t like Hangouts makes sense. She has too much to do as it is, and sitting around on live video chats seems wasteful. The Huddle feature enables fast messaging back and forth, and that feels more reasonable for her time management. Remember, just because there are all kinds of features built into Google+, you don’t need to use them.
The Educator
Time Used per Day: 3 hours (or more!)
Primary Goals of Usage: I’m running three courses online using Google+ as my collaboration platform.
Number of Original Posts per Day: 5–7
Number of Shared Posts per Day: 1–3 (if they relate to the courses)
Number of Comments per Day: 30+ (I answer a lot of questions.)
Links to My Blog or Projects per Day: 10–12 links to other sites and reference materials
Number of Off-Topic Posts per Day: 0, but only because I don’t want to distract my students.
Typical Strategy: I use Google+ as a kind of digital classroom in between my in-person sessions. I use it to post links to homework assignments (everyone has a blog of some kind to post their longer assignments) and use it for the Hangout feature quite a lot. There are more than 10 students in my class, though, so that sometimes feels a bit exclusionary by nature. Recently, I decided to do it in shifts to alleviate that problem.
Special Uses: Lots of my students use Google+ to connect with current online leaders in the spaces we talk about. When we recently wanted to talk about green automobiles, we found representatives from Nissan, Toyota, and Tesla Motors to talk to us.
Notes: Before this, we used an expensive and frustrating piece of collaboration software. I’m not sure how that industry hopes to compete with FREE, now that Google+ solves a lot of issues for me.
Takeaway: The potential for Google+ is huge for educators. It’s not built as specifically as some education software, but what the platform lacks in specific-for-educator tools, it makes up for by creating fast and simple connections between people with no-cost and browser-based tools.
The Photographer
Time Used per Day: 1 hour (sometimes more when I’m not as busy)
Primary Goals of Usage: Share photos, attend photography Hangouts, and meet and talk business bits with others
Number of Original Posts per Day: 20+ (if you count photo sharing)
Number of Shared Posts per Day: 10–15 (I share other great photos that I find.)
Number of Comments per Day: 5–10 (For whatever reason, I don’t comment as much as I should, but I press the +1 often.)
Links to My Blog or Projects per Day: 3–5 (I share links to my main site with every grouping of photos I post.)
Number of Off-Topic Posts per Day: 3–5 (That’s the nature of the business. We talk about whatever interests us.)
Typical Strategy: Nothing major. I just like sharing my best work. The critiques I get back often help me grow or inspire me to try something different. It’s changing how I see my craft.
Special Uses: Naturally, I use the photo-sharing feature the most, but friends have shown me ways to make slideshows with music and upload them to YouTube, so I’ve started doing that, too.
Notes: I could probably get more out of Google+ than what I’m getting, but I think that the more I share, the more it’s improving my work, so I’m not going to knock it. I like it more than Twitter and Facebook because I can see something immediately