Deciding What to Post on Google+

By Jesse Stay from Google+ For Dummies, Portable Edition

To get off and running on Google+ (Google's social networking site), your first step is to choose something engaging to post. This refers to content that gets people commenting, sharing, +1ing, and talking about your post.

When you +1 a post on Google+, it’s like “high-fiving” the individual that wrote the post, and the person who wrote the post can see that you +1d it. It’s a compliment to the person writing to have someone +1 their post.

Sharing Google+ posts with friends and family

Believe it or not, sharing posts with just friends and family is one of the most common uses of social networking sites such as Facebook. This may be why you decided to try out Google+. If so, you’ll need to do a few things to ensure that you’re getting what you want from Google+:

Make sure your close friends and family have Google+ accounts and are using them. If you can’t convince your close friends and family to use Google+, you may be sorely disappointed! Try inviting them by sending them personalized invite e-mails.
Post content your close friends and family will understand! If you’re posting for your close friends and family, or you want them to get more involved on the site, don’t post content they’re not going to understand. If you want to involve a personal audience, post personal updates!

Be careful posting anything too personal on Google+! If you want to share more personal updates, you may want to consider posting them just to a Close Friends or Family circle. If it’s really personal, consider not posting at all — remember, even with circles, anyone can still share what you post to their circles and extended circles!
Create circles specifically for these groups if you will be posting other types of content. You may want to consider creating a Family circle or Close Friends circle just for targeting updates to your close friends and family. For example, if you post pictures of your kids, you might just post them to a Close Friends or Family circle and not to the public or other circles.
Post less frequently to these circles of friends and family. If you are on Google+ mostly for friends and family, consider their streams — do you want to be the only one dominating their stream, or do you want to leave room for others?

Also, keep in mind that many of your close friends and family won’t be as familiar with how to use Google+, so even as Google+ gets better filtering for this type of stuff, there’s a chance they don’t know how to use it. You don’t have to post less frequently to please your close friends and family, but if your main purpose is to communicate with your close friends and family, you may want to consider it.

Posting on Google+ to journal your life

Google+, Facebook, and other social media sites are great places to keep a running journal of your life, what you’re doing, and how you’re succeeding. Follow these tips if you want to use Google+ to journal:

Focus on accomplishments, not everyday tasks (like what you ate for lunch).
Be sure that if you’re sharing to the world you remain focused on things in your life that people might find interesting.
Consider posting journal-type entries you don’t want the world to see to a circle (maybe name it, well, Journal) with just your e-mail address in it. This way you get a copy sent to your e-mail. You can also go back to that circle on the left of your stream and review your accomplishments.

Posting on Google+ to communicate with specific groups

If you have a user group — let’s say you’re a photographer — you might consider creating a circle (named Photographers) for that group. Share the members of the photographers circle with your Google+ stream so they can also add your photographer friends to their own similar circles. Then, you can keep a tight-knit relationship with those photographers you associate with.

Think hard before posting to only a specific circle. Could others following you benefit from this post? Are other photographers outside your circle following you; if so, can you add them to your circle? Or you may want to consider just posting to your Public circle. Posting only to a specific circle can cause many, who otherwise could benefit, to not see your post.