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How To Use Google Plus the Guy Kawasaki Way

Google Plus Book

Guy Kawasaki sent me his new Google Plus book called What the Plus! Google Plus for the Rest of Us and here is my review and some of the main takeaways.

Roughly what I had to say:

Challenge to find right people to follow on Google Plus, I now know that you can simply look at the circles that other users have recommended and add those people to a circle of your own. This of course saves a lot of legwork. Just search for “shared a circle with you” in the search bar. This will show circles that have been shared recently as well as the most popular ones. I followed a few PR people that Scobleizer recommended.
There are also compilation sites like Find People on Plus, GGPL, GGLPLS, Plus Friend Finder and Recommended Users.
On the search impact, the author produces a number of screenshots where his post and/or profile come up in generic Google searches for ‘venture capital’. I did notice that he was himself logged in to Google in the examples, so I tried it as well see none of Guy Kawasaki’s mentions or even Google Plus. So not sure about the precise impact on search yet.
Use of hashtags on Google Plus, I didn’t realise this. So instead of searching for ‘bacon’ posts, try ‘#bacon’ next time.
Very quick read, 138 pages and probably a screenshot or picture of each page. I didn’t even attempt to read this ebook on my Kindle, did it on my Mac screen instead. I suppose it will work well on an iPad or Kindle Fire.
Some people speculate that Rober Scoble and Chris Brogan were paid to move over to Google Plus. I don’t know about that but there is plenty of Google loving in this book, every product from Chrome to Picasa gets a recommendation and link. So wouldn’t be surprised if Guy Kawasaki at least gets some better Google search ranking out of this book.
What is unclear and not mentioned in this book is if anyone has ever had any marketing or sales success from Google Plus. Unlike the other 3 big networks, I haven’t seen and case studies yet.
A chapter is devoted to how to get more followers. The author writes: “There are two kinds of people on social networks: those who want more followers and those who are lying”. I’ll agree with that. Some of the tips include perfecting your profile, sharing good shiitake, sharing in public, helping people, mentioning others and responding to comments.
One final tip I picked up on was the to compile a circle of people in a particular category. Include yourself in the category and then share the circle, people will then add the whole circle to their collection and you’ll get more followers as a result.

Filed Under: Book, Google, Review Tagged With: Book, Books, Google

10 Personal Branding Ideas for Google Plus

Unless you have lived in a cave for a while, you cannot have missed the launch of Google Plus. This new social network managed to sign up 20 million users inside two weeks, influencers like Chris Brogan are already reporting to get most of their blog traffic from Google Plus. I for one was impressed with the interface and innovative features of this new network. The question is…

Is it useful for personal branding?

Google Plus is definitely useful for personal branding, to me it combines the best of Twitter and LinkedIn and possibly even Facebook. You are able to be picked up in Google searches, to show off a public profile full with information about what you do, content shared and even links to your site, blog and other places.

As always, personal branding works best online when you are selling yourself in some capacity. This could be your expertise, your training, your inspiration or creativity. The type of business person that relies on referrals for new customers will definitely benefit from using Google Plus (and other social networks). I can think of professions such as accountants, lawyers, designers, consultants and even health practitioners.

Here are 10 ideas to help you brand yourself on Google Plus:

1. Do up that profile of yours

The most logical place to start is your profile on Google Plus. If you are a heavy Google user you probably already had a Google Profile linked to your username. This profile has now become Google Plus and even more powerful. The main benefit of the old Profile was the fact that you ranked well for your name on Google the search engine (hope this isn’t getting too confusing).

On your Google Plus profile, make sure you upload an image, write up a nice headline (just like LinkedIn) and a paste in your professional bio which you can add hyperlinks to. Be sure to link up your profile to your blog or website and any other outposts you have such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube etc.

2. Get your head around the privacy settings

Google Plus is very useful in that it’s both private and public. You can choose what part of your profile is visible to a random search on Google and what is visible to your nearest and dearest. You are able to share posts publicly on your profile, these will appear in searches on Google. Just click on Privacy Settings and it's all self-explanatory.

You can also choose to download all your information provided to Google in an instant using what they call Data Liberation. They let you save a backup of your images, profile information, contacts, circles, stream posts and other stuff to your computer. It seems they take your privacy very seriously, the big G obviously learned it the hard way after the Google Buzz debacle.

My approach to privacy is that I’m not bothered about it, everything I publish on Google Plus is in the open – I just make sure that my posts are safe for the office as it were.

3. Categorize your network in Circles

One of the key features of Google Plus is what they call Circles. It’s a very straightforward way of categorizing your contacts, just like circles of friends in real life. Google’s Circles are similar to Facebook or Twitter lists, even LinkedIn tags but they are much simpler to administrate. The first thing you want to do is import your contacts to Google Plus from webmail services such as Yahoo or Hotmail, contact files from Outlook and LinkedIn.

Once they are imported you can choose who you want to put in what circle. This is when it’s time to be smart about what you do. I would suggest having a family circle, a friends circle, a business circle and any other circles relevant to your personal branding objectives. Let’s say you want to go on a dentistry speaking tour of South America, I would then add influential people in that industry from Argentina and Brazil – they will be notified that you have added them and hopefully interested to add you back. Once they do, you can go on sharing content and engaging properly. Before you know it you’ll be on that plane to Rio. Note that other users will never know which circles you put them into.

Personally, I have four circles just to keep things simple. It’s family, friends, acquaintances and following. Family and friends are what they say on the tin. Acquaintances is where I put most of my online buddies that I have actually engaged with, following is for people who probably don’t know who I am. I might do circles for more specific purposes as and when the need arises.

4. Search for great content with Sparks

Another nifty feature of Google Plus is Sparks, basically a Google Alert set up for whatever keyword you are interested in. So you tap in ‘politics’ and up comes news articles, blog posts and other stories related to politics from the last days. If you want to be more specific, just add another keyword like ‘Canadian’ or ‘local’ to narrow down the search results.

With Sparks you’ll never be lost for content to share on Google Plus. One thing that annoys me slightly about Sparks is the fact that you can only share stories on Google Plus, I guess a Twitter integration wouldn’t make much commercial sense but I would have appreciated it.

So yes Sparks is very useful but nothing revolutionary that you couldn’t do with Google Reader, Google News and Google Alerts (just to underline the complete Google dominance of the web by the way). Just bear in mind that others will easily find exactly the same content in Sparks so you might have to think a bit outside the box to stay original.

5. Share that great content selectively (if you have the time)

Once you have found content in Sparks, go ahead and share it on your profile. Google Plus make it very simple for you to click ‘Share’ and it will go into the streams you choose. Be sure to only share relevant content to relevant circles. If you’re sharing something about Argentinian dentistry, you’ll want to keep that to your South American dentistry circle and not friend and family. Likewise, the dentists of Bueons Aires will not take a huge interest in your holiday snaps from Blackpool.

I share all my posts with everyone, just like I do it on Twitter which seems to work well. To share things selectively you will need to dedicate a lot of time and effort to Google Plus, not sure if it’s worth it at this point.

6. Use Hangouts for group video chats

Remember the old chat-rooms from the 90s? Here they are again but this time they come with audio and video. Hangouts is a much talked about feature of Google Plus allowing you to have a conversation with a group of people in your circles. You could of course use this for business purposes, perhaps by giving a free webinar or offering free consultations with prospective customers. Not long after this feature was announced by Google did Facebook present their Skype integration, no coincidence there.

7. That engagement thing

The trouble with Twitter is that it’s difficult to see who commented on what, there is no stickiness of posts at all. Facebook does this much better but it’s in a very closed environment and only friends can join in the discussion.

Google Plus has made it very easy to engage with fellow members. Anything you post will come up in the homefeed of people who have put you in their circles, they can click Share, Comment or +1 (the Like equivalent on Google Plus). You will be notified who has done what and you can follow up and get a discussion going. The engineers at Google HQ must have worked long and hard at this as everyone I have spoken to think they have cracked it.

If you use Gmail you'll notice constant notifications in the top righ hand corner of your browser whenever something happens on Google Plus – I dare you to ignore the notifications for a whole day (we both know it ain't gonna happen).

8. Get your vanity URL

Right, this one isn’t compulsory but most people like to get a shorter URL than the one that Google issues us with by default. Check out GPlus.to for an unofficial vanity URL for now. Google will bring out the ‘real’ one soon.

9. Invite others to circle you in

If you want people to add you on Google Plus you’ll have to start telling the world you are actually on there. You can add your URL on your email signature, stick an icon on your blog or just mention it in a blog post like this: “Hey look at me, I’m now on Google Plus – circle me right here”.

10. Use Google Plus in moderation

The jury is still out on Google Plus. Yes it’s looking very promising and it has attracted lots of followers in a short space of time, but it has a long way to go until it catches up with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The early adopters are there but the long tail haven’t got there yet, meaning your target audience might not be present. If Google Plus becomes a serious contender they will get there but it will take 6-12 months I would say. So for now, explore Google Plus but only treat it as another really useful tool when you can see some results from it.

Hope these 10 ideas are of use to you, please let me know how you get on with Google Plus as I am not sure myself of how useful it is – but will keep you posted of course!

You might want to check out 10 Ways to Brand Yourself on Facebook as well by the way.

Filed Under: Google, Monthly, Personal Branding Tagged With: Google, Personal Branding

Gmail’s Killer App: Rapportive

Do you use Gmail? Do you ever get emails from random people who you don't know? Spammers pretending to be your long lost cousin in Nigeria? The ambassador of Syldavia enquiring about your bank details? Here's a little application that can help you find out who the person sending the email really is, and much more.

What on earth is Rapportive?

Rapportive is an add-on to Gmail that works alongside your webmail and looks up the people you are interacting with. It brings up a picture, links to social media profiles, their Twitter stream and more. It lets you add notes on every person almost like a simple CRM system. The application is completely free, very quick and easy to use. I have been using Rapportive for a few months now and every time I tell someone about it they get really excited, this leads me to believe that we need to get the word out there.

The company behind the extension (with the same name) was started in 2010 and is doing really well by all accounts. They are pumping 200 million lookups through their system to happy emailers every month. Gary Vaynerchuck and Paul Buchheit (the creator of Gmail) are both investors and methinks they are all hoping to be acquired by Google one day.

And why should one use it?

Let's say you have been emailing with John Smith for three weeks and John seems to have some good ideas for your blog. You decide to check out what John does on LinkedIn or Twitter but because of his name it's impossible to know which profile it might be. With Rapportive you no longer have to do any time consuming searches. If John has any online profiles registered against his email address, they will appear on your Gmail sidebar with direct links to the profiles.

Rapportive saves you time and effort when looking people up. It's sometimes very important to do this cross reference as there are sadly some less-than-legit folks out there on the Interwebs. Let's face it, if John doesn't have any profiles online we are likely to smell a rat, just like employers do when their applicants don't come up in searches.

On the right you can see what it would look like if you got an email from yours truly. Rapportive would bring up my avatar (probably from Gravatar) and check out the social networks to see where I have profiles. It presents the information with hyperlinked buttons to online profiles and you are able to write notes on the person at the bottom of the box.

How to use Rapportive

Rapportive is a Firefox, Chrome and Safari extension. It's very easy to set up, just go to the install page and it will be up and running in a few seconds.

Next time you open Gmail you will see Rapportive in the top right corner, you may have to log in to it the very first time.

When you hover over someone's email address, Rapportive will scan their database (I think that's what they do) and present results in the right hand sidebar as per the image above. The best way for you to learn this is really to play around a bit with it – if you don't like the extension just deleted it as quickly as you installed it.

Conclusion

Rapportive is a great time saver and invaluable tool for anyone who has the slightest interest in who the people behind emails are. I use it daily and think it's a nifty little tool – even worthy of a blog post…

Do you use Rapportive or a similar application?

If you are on the fence about Gmail, check out "How I Decluttered my Emails with Gmail".

Filed Under: Google, Monthly Tagged With: Google

How To Make Google Love Your Twitter Profile

I wrote a post the other week about How to Make Google Love Your LinkedIn Profile and this week the turn has cometh to Twitter. Although you have far less space to write about yourself on Twitter, there are a few tricks you should be aware of to optimize your profile for search engines.

Good news, your name already ranks well on Twitter

Do a search for your name on Google; I bet your Twitter profile will come up on the first page (as will your LinkedIn profile). This means Google already loves Twitter in terms of search engine rankings for your name.

This means that if someone is checking you out online (a potential customer or employer), they are very likely to find your Twitter profile along with your blog, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Now let’s rank well for your keywords

When a potential customer or employer know what they are looking for but not who, they are likely to search using keywords. Let’s say you are looking for an SEO guru on Twitter, you are likely to search with keywords.

Using Twitter Search, Twellow or Twazzup you can enter “SEO consulant” and you’ll get a result for everyone doing this on Twitter. Now consider that people run these searches every day. From journalists to recruiters, searches are constantly being run online for individuals with your skills.

To get your ranking well for keywords you can add the keyword to your twitter user name; @YourName could be @YourNameSEO for instance. This will give you a significant boost as most people search for user names.

If you think this looks a bit spammy you can simply change the Twitter name, meaning the box just above the location where you fill your own name in. Change this to “Your Name KEYWORD” if you like.

The other obvious thing to do is adding keywords to your 160 character bio. The best way to do this is simply to list what you do, e.g. “SEO consultant helping companies being found on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Jeeves and other search engines”. Anyone searching for any of these terms or a combination of these terms will get you on their radar.

As you can see I have put a few keywords on my own bio for this very reason. For more on bios, check out How to Breathe Life into Your Twitter Bio.

Let’s get you ranking well for location

And let’s face it – there will be lots of SEO experts on Twitter so the search will definitely use a location to narrow down the search results. So on top of punching in “SEO consultant” they will add a location like “Birmingham”. This will pull up all the SEO ninjas in Birmingham in a simple search.

To ensure you get on a search for your location, you will want to fill in your location info properly. Before you do this, think about your target audience. Are you a global blogging persona? Probably best to put your nearest big city, let’s say New York.

If you are a property surveyor in a specific area, probably best to localize it as much as possible so go with Hoboken, you could even state South West Hoboken. The more specific your location, the more specific interest you will get from people on Twitter.

The localization is one of this tool’s greatest strengths. Twitter is a global tool with a fantastic reach but in my opinion, it’s best at creating local communities. Every town, borough, parish, arrondissement and quarter has its own Twitter feed nowadays and it brings local folks together – and now they will all find you.

I used to have “London, UK” as my location but recently changed to “Covent Garden, London, UK” and it has generated quite a lot of interest which is exactly what I intended. Reaching the world is great but there are seven million people in central London who I can start with

Your website link

If you want Google to love your Twitter profile, you’ll have to link it either to a site carrying your own name, your keywords or your location. If you don’t have your own blog, this might be a good time to set it up. In my case, I’m linking to my company site and in fact even to the company blog so that visitors will go straight to our content.

Whatever you do link your profile to, don’t use a link shortener here as the search engines won’t pick up on the original URL.

Google could even love your photo

As I mentioned in a previous post, renaming your profile picture with your name, keywords, location etc will also help your rankings. Search engines robots can’t actually see images but they do look at the image file names. So instead of using “myphoto.jpg”, try “john-smith-birmingham-seo.jpg”. It’s a mouthful I know but it won’t be visible to anyone but your new buddy Google.

Can you add any more Twitter SEO tips? Please share in the comments!

Filed Under: Google, Monthly, SEO, Twitter Tagged With: Bio, Google, SEO, Twitter

Donor2Deed Aids Pakistan Flood Victims Using Geolocation Tools

Today I had a chat with Olivia Cosgrove, who is the inspirational founder of Donor2Deed, an advanced application that uses geolocation services like Google Earth and Maps to show donors how their money is being put to good work in projects around the world. Donor2Deed is currently mapping the Pakistan relief effort and providing this service free to charities who want to raise money for the victims of the floods.

What is Donor2Deed all about?

Donor2Deed (D2D) is an integrated online fundraising and communications tool that uses Google Earth and Maps to connect donors directly to projects and automatically feedback progress updates to those donors giving them a unique giving experience. Donor2Deed has a FaceBook and iPhone application and can link to a non-profit’s Twitter account.

What is special about this application?

Donor2Deed is special in the following ways:

1. It gives donors more choice as they can contribute to the project, a cost heading within a project, for example, materials, staff or transport costs, or they can buy a unit, for example a malaria net for a beneficiary. This enhances the transparency of the donation and gives the donor more ownership on how his money is spent.

2. D2D gives the donor an understanding of the impact of his/her donation. It automatically feeds information back to the donor on the progress of the project in a format (SMS, Email etc) and in a timeframe that the donor chooses. We make it easy for the charity to give their donor a personal experience of the difference that they are making.

3. The staff on the ground can upload updates, pictures and videos. This gives the donor an ‘on-the-ground’ real time feel for what is going on and the impact that he is making.

4. Maps and earth are at the core of the giving process – it is a unique way to encourage people to give, D2D has a patent pending on the process.

What features are new?

• Maps is at the core of the giving process. It is location driven.

• Donating to a certain part of the project – being an accountant and having worked in lots of overseas projects I understand that it is not hard to break your project costs into 3 or 4 headings (Materials, staff, admin etc). It a unique way to inform the donor of the real costs of a project and enhance their understanding of what it takes to actually deliver a project – e.g. there is no point having a 4×4 20 tonne truck in the rainy season in Africa – you need a lot of ox and cart – they can navigate the slippery roads.

• Enabling a charity to automatically push project updates to the donors of a specific project. Before D2D some charities gave big donors special privaleges by connecting them to a project and updating them on the progress. D2D makes it easy for charities to connect with the youngest and smallest donor. Transparency should not be reserved for the big donors. Everybody deserves it.

• All the charities have video, pictures and narrative on what happens in projects and in particular an emergency response. Donor2Deed takes that information and assembles it in an interactive way on maps. People get a real sense of what is happening in that location.

How will it help the people on the ground?

People on the ground can access the system to see who is doing what projects where, i.e. who has delivered Food to a village.

We are working on enabling people on the ground to upload data via SMS. 2G is the main service in developing countries and the mobile network is much bigger than the landline network.

How did you think of this?

I have worked overseas a lot and on my return people always had two questions: Where does my money go and did I make a difference?

I have 2 stories that inspired Donor2Deed:

Tsunami 04/05 - My Granny stuffed £200 into my pocket when I was leaving for Indonesia – to help the people. I ended up buying crayons and paper for the kids and ladies underwear to give women back some dignity – they lost everything. The kids drew pictures of that fateful day when the 4 waves came (26.12.04). I went to great lengths to bring some of those pictures home and to tell my Granny the difference that she had made. I realized that I wanted to tell everyone the difference that they made.

Kosovo 99 - I led a shelter team that became the no. 1 shelter team to respond to the emergency in 1999 after the war. We were the only team to complete its target of 700 homes prior to the Balkan winter setting in –one of the reasons we achieved this was because the public gave generously – €2 million – this allowed us to get out and buy wood ahead of other agencies – we could respond quicker as we did not have to wait for large international donors to sign contracts that covered the cost of wood.

The impact of their donations was immense and I had no way to communicate that to them. Imagine if I could have told them – I had no way to communicate with those who gave and the admin burden on the charity I worked for would have been enormous. I wanted to simplify the process and make it fast, as close to real time as possible.

What’s your background Olivia?

For my sins I am a chartered accountant and tax consultant. I trained as an auditor with KPMG and have worked with some of the largest entrepreneurs in Ireland, for example, setting up a life assurance business.

What I realised was – as an auditor I was very good at systems – emergencies are all about systems, creating, implementing, evaluating and improving. In addition, as an auditor I had to become a good communicator – as I had to get information out of people who did not want to give it to me.

KPMG gave me 6 months unpaid leave to work as an accountant with an aid organistaion called Concern Worldwide (who was an audit client) in the Rwandan refugee camps after the genocide.

What is your experience of relief efforts?

Indonesia, Tsunami, 05: Developed and implemented logistics system for international medical agency operating in Banda Aceh, the worst hit area of the Tsunami.

Malawi Famine, 02: Set up Logistics operation to support nutrition and food security programme procuring 3,000 tons of food and coordinating with the World Food Programme (WFP).

Afghanistan/Pakistan (Post 9/11), 01/02: Developed inexperienced management team into effective unit that could plan, prioritize and delegate tasks to facilitate the construction and management of four refugee camps to accommodate 60,000 Afghan refugees on the border of Pakistan with a specific emphasis on preventing outbreaks of diarrheal diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

Mozambique Floods, 00: Conducted interim review of logistics operation in Mozambique Floods. Liaised closely with WFP to ensure that transportation of commodities to Extended Distribution Points occurred as required.

Kosovo, 99: Publicly recognized by UNHCR as the leader of the only project to successfully complete target to rehabilitate the homes of 700 families before Balkan winter set in. At the request of UNHCR, coordinated the activities of over thirty NGOs to rehabilitate the homes of over 80,000 people in the worst affected area of Kosovo immediately after the war ended.

Haiti 98: Implemented financial accounting system in the region. This included training staff and testing the system fully prior to it going live.

Malawi, 97-98: Worked with the World Bank as a Senior lecturer in Accounting responsible for teaching and development of core subjects.

Rwanda Genocide, 95-96: Head of Finance in Refugee camps in Tanzania: Annual budget $15 million. She managed several projects within Rwanda in 96 including, Child reunification and malnutrition projects, transit centers and displaced camps.

Northern Ireland 85-94: Worked with disadvantaged children across of a range of projects from cross community work to training local youth basketball teams.

How are you spreading the message about Donor2Deed at the moment?

Emailing, social media, blogging and interviewing. Currently hoping to link with the BBC, still working on it.

Hoping to get linked onto the DEC appeal page to encourage people to donate to the Pakistan relief effort.

What’s the one thing people can do to help you?

Donor2Deed has developed this tool and is giving it to charities for free to help them raise money for the Pakistan Relief effort. People can help by spreading the website:

• Email it to others
• Put it on their blogs
• Twitter (@donor2deed just set up)
• LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platforms
• Donate via our website
• Give us some feedback to help us do a better job next time

Final words of wisdom?

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” - Vincent van Gogh

I guess it is summing up creating Donor2Deed. I decided to take all my skills (as an accountant) and overseas experience to solve a problem – and it took a lot of courage, effort and self-belief. I also want to encourage others to ‘Go for it’. We are all experts, you don’t have to be able to shout it to the world – just use your expertise to do the right thing – whatever that is – in my case – help charities become more transparent to their donors.

About Olivia

The CEO of Donor2Deed, Olivia Cosgrove, is a chartered accountant. She trained as an auditor with KPMG. She has 15 years field experience in a wide range of leadership roles in humanitarian operations such as the Tsunami in Indonesia, Afghanistan post 9/11 and the Rwandan Genocide. She experienced the challenges at first hand on the ground to account for expenditure, report to donors and communicate the impact that donors are making. As a result, she has designed the tools to give Donors additional transparency, demonstrating the impact that they make while reducing the administration burden on you, the non-profit. Donor2Deed has a patent pending, has been backed by the Head of Technology in Google and has secured a high level advisory panel that includes Microsoft.

Filed Under: Expert Interview, Monthly Tagged With: Applications, Google, Interview