In today's "Marketing Monday" article, +Greg Trujillo of CT Social discusses the minimalist's approach to managing your Google+ Circles so that you gain the most out of your time spent on Google's social media network, and why it matters.How are your Google+ Circles? Do you have them under control? Would you like them to be? Whether you’re new to Google+ or even if you have been around for a while, it seems like almost everyone struggles with Circles. I was confused about them myself when I first started out. I had a Twitter mentality, and I felt that what I needed to be doing in order to succeed was adding more and more people into my Circles so I could gain more visibility.
The Blind Approach
The Blind Approach
As a result, I started blindly adding almost any shared
circle that sounded like it was filled with thought leaders and social media
experts. As it turned out, Google+ capped my circles for me when I hit that
magic number of 5,000…and by that time, my home Stream was a mess. I couldn’t
really get a handle on who I should be talking to and who to follow. Names and
pictures scrolled by so fast that it was difficult for me to get to know anyone--
forget about putting them in an appropriate circle.
This is when I really started to wonder why my experience
was not what other people were saying they were getting on Google+. I
eventually figured out that my problem was focus. I couldn’t prioritize my
engagement onto the people that I was actually interested in getting to know.
Because of this, I decided that I needed to reduce the number of people that I
was following and really focus on a core of no more than 100 people that I
would interact with on a regular basis.
The reduction of people worked really well for me. I was
able to find and set up the core people that I wanted to follow, and use their
suggestions to find more people that I also enjoyed getting to know. Now I have
a personal soft cap of 200 people for my circles, but I can see that eventually
becoming an issue as well because there are so many awesome people to follow on
Google+. As more people place me into their circles and engage with me on
my posts, the number of people I am following continues to grow.
My #1 principle for Google+ circle management is engagement.
Engagement is the difference between a casual follower and a
real relationship.
I don’t add people anymore just because they added me, but if
someone comments genuinely on a post of mine, I’m likely to add them to my
“Started Following Me” circle. Genuine content, to me, means that the person
really takes the time to add content to their comment on my post, talking with
me about the topic. No one-liners!
Similarly, when someone shares one of my posts, I look for
people who add their own thoughts and opinions to what I’ve said. This one is
huge points for me! Not only did you take the time to read my post, you shared
it with your friends and fans with your expanded thoughts on the topic. BIG PLUS!
After using
engagement as a basic qualifier, I use a simple tiered circle system.
From the “Started Following Me” circle, each person in there
has a couple of weeks to engage with me again and share content or ideas that I
find interesting. If they are silent on engagement or don’t catch my attention
with interesting content, they are removed from the circle.
If, on the other hand, someone DOES catch my attention over
the course of those two weeks, they will be graduated into a circle that either
fits their content, location, profession, or their personality.
This method of weeding people out has worked wonders as a
way to keep my circles under control. Without it, I would add too many people
to my circles and end up with my original problem.
Why Circle Management Matters
Once I started using this strategy to keep my circles
maintained, I found that it became easier to engage with people that I chose to
follow. It became easier to get to know individuals and place them in the
correct circle, or create a new circle that places them more correctly. This
was the launching point for my Google+ engagement.
As for tangible benefits? Since retooling my circles, my
following has grown quickly, I’ve been invited to more guest blogging
engagements, and have also been invited to appear on various popular Google+ Hangouts on Air. This is directly related to the priority that most
Google+ influencers place on good engagement, and the ease with which I can now
participate in discussions by comparison.
Keeping your circles in order is the foundation to being
able to deliver amazing content and engage with your audience on Google+.
What strategies do you use to manage your
circles? Let me know in the comments below!
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