If you are reading this how to, you have probably been sent an invite to join Google Plus by one of your friends who is already on the trial. This will be in the form of an email which will ask you to ‘Learn more about Google Plus’ so click on that to be taken to the Google Plus Welcome page. At first glance this Welcome page may look rather daunting, as there is quite a lot of information for you to digest on there, so you may be rather confused as to where to begin. As with most Social Networks, its best to start at setting up your Profile, and adjusting your privacy settings as you go along. As these are fairly comprehensive on Google Plus, we’ll work our way through them all step by step.
1. Setting up your Profile.
As you can see in the screen grab above, you are invited to Complete your profile so click on the blue box to be taken to your Google+ profile page. Next click on Edit Profile at the top of the page. Each area can be then altered where you can input your details as you think fit. To do this, click on each separate area in order to change it.
a). Introduction.
This tells anyone who you allow to see your Profile a little bit about you and who you are. You can fill in as much or as little information about yourself as you like, but if you wish to encourage others to get to know you better it might be wise to be as detailed as possible. At the side of the header Introduction, you will notice a circle. Clicking on this circle allows you to set up your permissions for that particular area, and the same applies to every area on this page.
b) Bragging rights.
This area is where you can state the things that you have achieved so far that you are proud of. Note that you do not have to fill in every area, they are not compulsory, but the more information you provide, the easier it will be for other users to both find you using Google+ search, or decide whether you are worth adding to their circles as a friend.
c) Occupation
Where do you work now and where have you worked in the past? How much information and who you decide to allow to see that information is entirely your choice. Simply click on the ring to the left of the header to adjust who you wish to be able to view each area.
d) Education.
Schools, Colleges etc that you may have attended if you wish your old school friends to be able to find you on Google Plus.
e) Places Lived.
This area allows you to state whereabouts you have lived by clicking on the map and then inputting an area into the search box. A pin will then be added to the map for each area that you input into subsequent boxes. Again you do not have to fill in this information, and you can alter just who sees that information as you add any areas that you have lived in.
The other areas are as follows, Home (your home telephone number) Work (Work telephone number if you wish to make this available to anyone) Relationship ( are you looking for friends, Dating, A relationship, or Networking.) Gender (you do not have to fill this in if you don’t want to) Other Names (maiden name or alternate spellings) Nickname (if you have one) and lastly Search Visibility Do you want to help others find your Profile in search results?
Lastly you can set up a Scrapbook to be shown across the top of your Profile. This can be any set of photos that you like, of yourself, or perhaps some favourite photos that you are especially proud of or to show what you are about.Once you have uploaded your photos to your scrapbook, you can also set up who can see those as well.
On the left hand side, you can set up who can see the people that you have placed in your circles and also those people who have added you to their circles. Note that no one, even those people in your circles have access or can see which circles you have placed them in or what you have called your circles. For this demo, I have made all of the people in both the circles completely invisible to everyone by unticking the tick boxes for both In your circles and Have you in circles.
When you are happy with your information that you have supplied and also your privacy settings for each area in your profile, then click on Done Editing in the red band at the top of your profile page.
In the next post we’ll move on to the next stage of adding people to your circles so that you can begin sharing!
NOTE! Each area on this page does not have to be filled in, or you can of course be as vague as you wish with the information that you provide. You will note in this how to, how I have been rather tongue in cheek with the information that I have given but this is just for demonstration purposes.
TG
I joined this but I don't really know if I will have the time. My Blogger blog is a handful for me. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteWell, I love it and I'm still going to find time to blog as well. Hopefully once Blogger is fully incorporated in Google Plus, we can easily do both!
ReplyDelete