Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [32]
This can be useful in a few ways. If you want to group together company teams into circles, you can. Imagine making a “project team” circle, and putting the specific employees and contractors in that circle, and then advising them all to do the same. Pow—instant, reasonably private communications and sharing. (I say “reasonably” because I wouldn’t yet trust Google+ with specific company proprietary data. It is a public site.)
You can also use outbound circles for personal interests, obviously. Maybe you’re into fitness and nutrition and you want to share recipes with a group of people into similar things. Perhaps you’re a car enthusiast and like to share photos and videos of cars. If you’re not interested in sharing with the general public, by all means, this is the way to do it.
Circle Tricks
You can put people in more than one circle. Simply hover over their name with your mouse, and you can see where you’ve listed them; then decide if you want to move these people to another circle by unselecting the old and selecting the new, or if you want to add these people to more than one circle. Just select the new circle or circles you’d like to add them to, and make sure those boxes are checked, too.
I have a few friends I’ve put in Close because I want to share specific things with them. I have a few of these friends also placed into Marketing because they opted into receiving information that I share with people about marketing. I have a good friend in four circles and counting because our interests relate in matters of health, marketing, and Buddhism. Plus, she’s in my Close circle. You can do the same with select friends, work colleagues, and customers, if it makes sense to you and your business.
Another trick: If you want to copy everyone (or most everyone) from one circle into another circle (maybe you’re promoting people from Not Sure to Interesting), simply go to the Circles page, and then click the circle you specifically want to copy from. When it displays, click the View Circle In tab. Then, go to the upper-right part of the screen, click More Actions, and choose Select All. Then, click and hold the mouse button down and drag everyone into the new circle (below) that you want to move them into.
Want to do all but one person? Hold down Command (on a Mac) or Control (on a PC) and click the person you don’t want to move to the new circle. Easy as that, you’ve moved all (but one) to where you want them to go.
Circles Aren’t a One-Time Thing
Organizing and re-organizing your circles is an ongoing kind of thing. For example, I find that sometimes people I’ve chosen to follow because of where they are employed doesn’t always work. One employee of a large retail chain was in a marathon to post as many potential reshares of other people’s content as humanly possible, so his reshares constantly showed up on my screen. I removed him from the circle after a bit, and things went back to normal.
As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, setting up circles wisely can save you a lot of time, but you need to make some adjustments along the way. Don’t make managing your circles a “job.” When you have the occasional 10 minutes, slip into your circles to decide if you need to further define them. For instance, I have a circle that’s built just for larger name-brand companies. I might go back and make a Tech Companies circle and separate them out from all the other interesting companies I follow. An ounce of prevention keeps you from having to rebuild your circles too often, though.
Wrapping Up
We covered a lot of ground here. Think of this: Consider whether to have inbound and outbound circles; remember that adding someone to your circles doesn’t mean they see what you’ve posted until they add you back; know that you don’t have to circle back everyone who chooses to circle you; and remember that you’ll have to touch your circles more