I’ve been fortunate enough to be relatively active on most of the major social media networks far longer than many of the so called ‘experts’ and have learned from my mistakes. It was over a year ago that a friend urged me to give Google Plus another run and to ensure that all of my updates were as publicly available as possible.
Since that time I have had the opportunity to observe numerous people neglecting this very simple and yet important advice. Nothing is more frustrating than to see something that you worthy of resharing because it is relevant to your audience only to be hit with the following disclaimer;
I find this disconcerting because the point of sharing most of these updates is to allow it to be received by a wide an audience as possible. Obviously if we were talking about a personal photo or status update then a limited circle of sharing is absolutely appropriate. What I mean is the typical photo memes or a handy WordPress tip being shared to a limited audience. Items like helpful SEO tips and the latest song from your favorite musician are the sorts of things that you will want to share with everyone.
Hopefully they will want to re-share with everyone they know and the only way to effectively accomplish this it to loop in the public circle. Fortunately the fix for this is very simple. All that you need to do is add the public circle to the address list.
Normally when you share something you will likely see ‘Your Circles’ and possibly ‘Extended Circles’ as demonstrated in the following screen shot;
Simple click on either of the ‘+ Add more people’ links in the right of the dialog box as demonstrated in the following example:
Now select the Public circle as identified by the globe icon. Once it has been added you should have full sharing turned on as depicted in the following example:
It is worth noting that once you share something with full sharing turned on it will remain your default sharing stance until you change it by sharing something of a more limited scope. So if you re-share something the gives you the limited circle warning originally noted above then that will become your default stance.
Honestly Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that sharing is as simple and private as possible so feel free to open things up a bit. In fact I would like to invite you to start your public sharing experience by cutting and pasting the following into your various social networks but especially on GooglePlus.
Maximizing your returns with GooglePlus http://bit.ly/17I7muq #JAFDIP
Thanks and happy posting!
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