All About Google Plus Circles

Now that you have your Google Plus profile page and your Google Plus Blog Page setup, it’s time to talk about circles (and hopefully not in circles).

Similar to using Twitter lists and Facebook Interest Lists, you can read status updates from the people you have added to certain circles. The difference with Google Plus is that you can also share content with people on those lists.

To create a Google Plus Circle

Go to your Google Plus profile page by clicking the +YourName in the upper left corner of your Google account. On the left side, select “Find people.”

In the find people section you have three options: Find people, Added you and Your circles which will be at the top of the page.

Select “Your circles.” On this page you will see any circles that you have already created along with an option to create a new circle.

To create a new circle, hover over the empty circle and select “Create circle.”

In the pop-up box, name your circle. You can add people in this pop-up box or you can do it in the next step.

Now that my circle is created I can drag and drop people into it. To select more than one person, hold down the shift key.

To edit or delete a Google Plus Circle

If you want to edit an existing Google Plus circle, right click the circle and select “Edit circle.” You can then rename the circle and add or update the description.

If you decide you no longer want a Google Plus Circle, right click the circle and select “Delete circle.” A pop-up box will appear for you to confirm deletion.

Using Google Plus circles effectively

To be honest, when I first started on Google Plus back when it first hit the social media scene I had no idea what to do with my G+ circles so I threw almost everyone in the same circle. That circle which I named “Friends” now has almost 200 people in it and there is no strategy involved at all. Bad move, I know and slowly I’m working on fixing it.

The purpose of G+ circles is to easily share and read content from specific sources, right? Well, if my interests involve photography, parenting, social media and cocktails then I should have circles set up for people who share from each of those categories.

Example, if I create a circle called “Photography” I would include people who share photography tips. When I’m in the mood to read more about how to improve my photography I can pull up this stream on G+ to read relevant articles. Also, if I ever write about photography I could tag that circle when sharing on G+.

To view different circle streams on Google Plus

Using the navigation bar at the top of Google Plus you can view the streams from various circles. Click the “More” button to see circles not listed in the nav bar.

To share with different circles on Google Plus

If you want to tag a certain circle in your latest status update on Google Plus, select the appropriate circle from the drop down box before sharing.

Learn a little more about Google Plus Circles. 

I hope this helps you to better understand Google Plus circles and how to use them effectively for managing your sharing and reading on the Interwebz. Next week I’ll have some tips on how to share your content via email and how to mute users who abuse the email sharing option.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any other Google Plus questions you would like answered.