Google Plus Review

15th July 2011

You probably know I’m not a fan of Facebook – I don’t trust them, they have no interest in their customers, I don’t like their product and I don’t think they give much in return for selling my data. So over the last week or so I’ve been playing around with the new kid on the block: Google Plus.

Google have already given me so many things that are invaluable to the way Virtual Assistants collaborate run their business – Gmail, a Calendar, the Chrome Browser, a Search Engine, Blog, RSS Reader, Analytics, Picassa, documents to share… and we use most of these things daily for free! Pretty good I think.

Now they’ve given us Google Plus. Not so much a replacement for Facebook because nobody is chucking an invisible sheep at me, poking me or inviting me to tend virtual crops, but it seems more of another way for to keep in touch with developments and interact with people you know but in a professional way that you decide.

The main features of Google Plus:

The Home Stream – This is where you see the updates of people you know, although there is also another page called Incoming where you can see the feeds of people who’ve added you, but who you decided to ignore.

In the home stream you can post an update that anyone can see, certain circles or just one or two people. You can also disable comments or sharing so your post stays private, you can also share or comment on other posts and mute posts so you don’t see them in your stream any more.

I like that on the site you can be who you want to be to whichever people you chose; so you can show the professional persona when appropriate and the more human side to people closer to you. You have to decide who can see your post before you can send it and can add video, links, photos and your location to the update as well.

Your Profile – I like that you have the option to see what information others (people on the site or random people on the Internet) can see about you on your profile. You can check this straight from this page, view how your profile looks and then decide to edit your privacy settings accordingly.

Google have made the privacy options very transparent and easy to manage which was very important to me personally; I’ve shared a lot of info with Google over the years and I like that they allow me to view it and manage it myself.

Circles – What’s great about the circles is that you drag your contacts into different circles that you can personally name (family, colleagues, friends etc) and you then decide what you share with which circles. This is handy as you can keep everyone in one place but not worry about your online image.

Photos – I think the photo section is a bit clunky still. Most people don’t know that Google stores online images in Picassa which it then imports when you join up; so it’s tempting to delete imported albums so they don’t appear in your photo section. But if the photos are linked to a blog or another site, you will be deleting them for good!

Nobody tells you this, but (un)luckily I had a catastrophe a couple of years ago when I deleted a Google account and all the photos on my blog went too. So I didn’t delete these albums, Instead I made them visible only to me but left them where they were.

Hangouts – Although I’ve only used the mobile hangouts so far, you basically invite people to chat and up to 10 of you can get together to have a conversation. This is a good way to record an interview (using a screencast tool not Google+) a business meeting, or just to have a natter. You can see each other if you have a webcam, but you can still talk even if you haven’t.

Sparks – This is where you search for things you’re interested in and it brings up posts associated with that subject. I haven’t used this as yet because my home stream has been interesting enough!

Notifications – In the site and on your GoogleToolbar (if you use one) you can see notifications of when someone comments on your post, adds you as a friend, tags you and other interactions. On the toolbar the button goes red and states the number of notifications you have, and if you click it from Gmail, you can see the updates without having to leave the page.

Google Plus Android App - The app has all the features of the online version but you also get Huddles which are the mobile equivalent of a Hangout. You invite people you know on Google+ and then you can all chat back and forth. I’ve used this a couple of times and it was a good way to decide where to meet later as we could all chip in without having to pay for texts or be at our computers.

If you flick screens to the right you have the Incoming stream which is the chatter of the people that follow you but you don’t follow back; and if you flick to the left you have posts of people you don’t know but who are in your neighbourhood.This bit is a bit iffy still as it doesn’t update regularly so isn’t of that much interest, but it may be handy to see what’s going on nearby.

I find it encouraging that Google are developing the site with the feedback of users; they rolled it out slowly and took on board what people said. There is a feedback button on every page and I’ve seen them freely respond to questions that friends have posted up for others to answer. They seem to not only be monitoring the discussions but jumping in there and responding too which is refreshing.

Overall, I really enjoy using Google Plus. Google is the main search engine, they decide what rankings you get, most people have a profile and some of us use their products extensively so having another handy app is always nice… they’re probably poised to take over the World but personally I think I’ll just wait until the date appears in my Google Calendar and worry about it then!

When You Shouldn’t Outsource Twitter

7th July 2011

Everyone knows by now that I think Twitter is a great business and information sharing tool; in fact I’d be on there all day if I didn’t have work to do! But if you’re too busy to give a lot of time to Twitter then should you outsource it?

Outsourcing Twitter

I think there some aspects of Twitter that are perfectly acceptable to outsource:

• Scheduling or posting information-based tweets and articles of interest.
• The setting up of your account including background and bio.
• Tweets linking back to your website or blog regarding your services or articles you’ve written.

But the one thing you shouldn’t get anyone else to do is speak for you.

For example, I know that certain Twitter accounts I follow are outsourced to someone else, so I now don’t ever engage that person in conversation as I don’t know if I’m talking to them or to the outsourcer – and I don’t want to speak to the outsourcer!

Fair enough, we’re all busy and there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all yourself, but if you (or your Virtual Assistant) schedule a set amount of tweets to go out each day which link back to your own site, blog or other relevant articles of interest, then you should be able to just hop onto Twitter once or twice a day and converse with people you know and build a personal relationship with them as yourself.

The same applies to replying on forums, Facebook and LinkedIn – you have to be the one who goes on there and interacts. Because If someone else is pretending to be you then it’s just fake, you’ve missed the point and it’s not actually worth doing it at all.

Feedly RSS Reader Review

7th June 2011

Screenshot

I’m going to say something quite geeky and sad now… I love my RSS reader. There, I said it.  I must explain that the reason I love it is because it’s not your average run of the mill, boring Reader; instead I use Feedly which looks like a clean, glossy magazine page and is designed so beautifully that it’s simply a pleasure to use.

You have the option to log in with your Google account which means it will then sync with your existing Reader – which is handy as you don’t have to start adding the info all over again. Once your feeds are added you can click on your categories and start reading the posts. You can save posts for later, send them to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote (plus many more and you decide which ones you want to use) or email it to a friend. They’ve made the feeds extremely shareable yet the screen is still quite minimalist – and I like minimalist very much!

You decide on the layout, link colours, what you want to see when you log in and how you interact with the reader. And adding new feeds couldn’t be easier – you simply go to the + box and paste in the URL of the site you wish to follow; once it has found the feed it asks which category you’d like to add it to and you just check the group you’d like. You decide on the names of your groups which also appear on the sidebar. Once you’ve read all the feeds you want in that category you click the tick symbol and it clears all the feeds on that page.

Apart from the interface, one of the things I like best about it, is the option to connect to my Twitter or other social media accounts and Tweet directly from the article I’m looking at; I can also edit the tweet or just paste it into my Tweetdeck and schedule it to go out later. This is how I manage to share useful and interesting articles with my followers and still get some work done!

Feedly also has an ‘explore’ section which lists lots of popular International blogs from categories that range from cooking, fashion and photography, to web app design, finance and gaming; I’ve discovered some great sites this way and again can quickly share them with people I know would find them useful.  I took up the option of using a Chrome extension as well so I access Feedly straight from my toolbar rather than bookmarking it. 

So If you’re bored of your dull, cluttered RSS Reader then you should give Feedly a try; it looks great, you can customise it the way you want, and it makes RSS feeds just that little bit more sexy!

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6 Tips For Better Networking

7th June 2011

1) It takes time – If you expect Immediate gains then you will be disappointed.  Networking is about building relationships – people do business with people they know and like, so if they don’t know you well enough then they’re unlikely to refer you.

2) Go for quality over quantity – The amount of people who attend a group is irrelevant; it can be better to belong to a small group where you gather good leads and referrals, than a larger group where you never have time to build a relationship and get yourself known.

3) You have to give to receive – If you never receive any leads then it could be that you never give out any! If you offer advice and share your knowledge, you are more likely to be trusted and referred.

4) Don’t judge a book by its cover – You may see a name badge and think that person will be of ‘no use to you’; they may not directly need your services but they may know someone who does. Business can come from all sorts of unexpected people!

5) Ask questions – Rather than trying to hand out as many business cards as you can, try instead to gain an understanding what exactly that person does. It’s better to focus on 3 people per session than try to cover the entire room.

6) Follow up – When you get back to the office, enter your new contacts into your email address book with a note of where and when you met them, then check to see if they’re on LinkedIn orTwitter and connect with them.  A quick personalised follow-up message means they are more likely to remember you, and a continued relationship via social media means you don’t have to wait until the next meeting to speak to them again.

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Why I Gave up Running The Sussex Big Fish Networking Group

30th May 2011

As you know, I recently decided to stop running the Sussex Big Fish Networking Group. I had started the group with Ashley Price from Banana Office in February last year to raise our profiles locally and to hopefully match people so they could gain more business.

However after one year, 3 venues and the exchange of many business cards, I started to see the group as one more thing I had to do. Writing the newsletter reminders, updating the calendar of events, ensuring the Big Fish Twitter account was posting lots of useful and handy advice as well as linking back to the calendar, collating new members, and then of course attending the group each month (which was fortnightly until recently) was actually pretty time consuming believe it or not.

Although I initially started the group to raise my profile, I have a weekly productivity slot on the Business as Usual radio show,my copy for the CV and interview advice section on the Brighton & Hove Jobs website has gone live, and I’m also the bars admin officer at The Green Man festival which takes place each August, plus I also remotely co-ordinate Londonevents for the same bars company – so I already have quite a lot going on.

The decision to end the group however came when I woke upthe morning of the meeting with a full days work ahead and remembered that Ihad the meeting that day. I realised that I didn’t feel passionate or motivatedabout the group and, although I always enjoyed it when I got there, I feel thatto run a networking group and make it useful, you have tofeel passionate about it and be able to devote the time to make it brilliant ratherthan it just bumbling along.

I was and still am utterly mortified to have copied the entire group in on the cancellation email asthis is something I have said time and time again is a massive faux-pas andshould never be done. Although I still firmly believe this, I am also much moreunderstanding of how this can accidentally be done when not concentrating – better to own up to such a thing and never do it again though I guess. But my apologies again as I know some people ‘‘replied all’ and some of you got somewhat annoyed by all the emails.

I did receive lots of nice messages thanking me for all the time and effort I put in, but to be honest, most people didn’t say anything. You set up groups to help other people and hope that some of the love (work) incidentally comes your way but this isn’t always the case; and there simply isno point spending a lot of time on something you’re not finding financially or emotionally rewarding any more.

The group list has now been taken over now by Jeremy Dunmore from Ascender Solutions; he has experience of running charity networking events in London and I was happy for the group to live on in another guise rather than disappear forever. I’m not sure if he’s emailed the list about the new arrangements but I know he’s started tweeting about a wine-tasting event he’s organised at the Hotel du Vin on the 17th June for a local charity.

So thanks again to those who supported me over the last year and I’m sure I’ll see you at some of Brighton’s other fine networking events…Viva La Big Fish!