Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [35]
Interestingly, you can also share a post with someone not on Google+ by including that person’s email address in the sharing area below. Simply click Add More People, and start typing in the email address. When it’s all typed in, press your Tab key, and poof: You’ve emailed someone a copy of the post you’re about to share.
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Sharing Something with a Limited Audience
When you share something with a limited audience, the people who have received that post can see any mutual connections you’ve shared it with, plus get a count of how many other people had access to see the post. So, if you share with your Managers circle, and that’s 24 people, any colleague who has a mutual connection in common with you will show up when one clicks the “limited” explanation that shows up to the right of the date stamp on the post (see Figure 6-3).
Figure 6-3 A limited post.
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Formatting Posted Text
As noted, to post text, simply follow the preceding step of going to the Stream page (your little house) and clicking in the white area of the box that says, Share What’s New. Type your text in and press Share.
You can also add bold, italic, and strikethrough text to format your text. Following are the methods for doing this:
• To bold text, put two asterisks (*) around the word or words you want to bold.
• To make your text italic, put two underscores around the word or words you want italic.
• To apply strikethrough to your text, place a dash (--) around the word or words you want to apply it to.
You can also post a link without having to do anything fancy. However, posting links into the text box makes the post become a “link” post; if you don’t select something such as a photo, a video, or location data first. In other words, because a post can be either a photo post, a video post, or a link post, but not more than one of these types of posts, typing a link to a website into your “text” post turns it into a “link” post.
If you make a different type of post, such as a photo post, a video post, or a location data post, you can then add a link (or links) into the text part that accompanies that type of post. For example, if you post a photo, Google+ enables you to add text to that post. If you post a photo, and then mention that you took it in front of http://dell.com headquarters, that shows up as a link in the text part of that post, even though it’s a photo post.
Likewise, you can add location data and not need to choose between types of posts.
Experiment a bit, and you’ll get it.
Posting Photos
Photos are actually quite powerful in Google+. I’ve noticed (through testing) that if I post straight text, I get one level of reaction. If I post a photo and that same text, I’ll get a lot more interaction. Why? I think it’s just because we can use the photo to draw people into the story.
You choose three options to post a photo on Google+. You can simply add a photo, you can create a new album (or collection of photos), or you can post a photo from your phone (if you’ve taken photos and selected auto-post via the Google+ mobile app for Android or iPhone). Don’t worry about the details of those last two options yet. Just think about posting a photo from the web app at first.
When you click Add Photos, the web application asks you to locate the photo you’d like to add. After you find and select that photo, Google+ uploads a copy of it and puts it on your post. Photos show up below the text you enter (should you choose to add text to the post) no matter what. So, you can’t choose the location of where the photo is placed inside the post. It’ll always be at the bottom (as will video, links, and placed data).
On the