Creativity and Writing on Google+

Is Google+ adding anything to your life right now?

Are you even using it?

I’ve been off and on with it, not quite sure the best way to approach the relatively new social media service from the search giant. Back when the service was in invite-only mode, I clamored to get my own account. Once I had it, I played around with it for a bit and then set it to the side when I and everyone else realized that it wasn’t the next Facebook.

Then I purchased What the Plus? by Guy Kawasaki. You’ve likely heard of Kawasaki if you’re into online marketing at all, but, for the rest of the world, Kawasaki worked as the “chief evangelist” for Apple way back in the 80′s. He’s no stranger to jumping into the technology game and promoting the tool that has not caught on yet.

Kawasaki’s book was incredibly informative, and I learned to look at Google+ more like Twitter instead of Facebook. Instead of looking for people you know on the service, look for people who are posting information about the topics that interest you most. Google is, after all, kind of awesome at the whole search thing, so it makes sense that the social service makes good use of searching profiles by topic.

So you can hop on Google+ and search for your favorite topics, but you still have to find members that are regularly active. Despite Google’s grandiose claims about the number of active users, many users are still trying to figure the service out. As such, they post infrequently, or they only share someone else’s posts instead of adding original content. (There’s plenty to be said for the practice of curation, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

There are tons of other great bloggers and authors out there in the great big internet, but the members of the Creativity and Writing Circle are making great use of the Google+ platform.

I’ll be the first to admit that Google still needs some work on the new social media service, but there are some major advantages to jumping into the Plus waters at this time.

1. Interact with Influencers Now – Because there are fewer active users, your comments on other posts stand out more. You are more likely to catch the attention of your favorite author / blogger / influencer.
2. Focus – I like the busy-ness of my Twitter and Facebook feeds. I like having new information every few seconds (or even multiple times in a second), but Google+ currently allows me time to focus on what each person is posting.
3. Formatting – The abilities to format your text with bold and italics and to edit your text make Google+ so much more precise than the other networks.

Trust me, I’m not going to abandon Facebook or Twitter any time soon, if ever, but Google+ is affords the writing / creative community some opportunities that are unique. Try adding the Creativity and Writing Circle to your circles and see if it enriches your experience.

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