Your Google+ Tips for July 5th

Your Google Plus Tips for July 5th

1. Hangouts in an instant

2. Profile photos added to Comment Tracker

3. Explore Google+ Hashtags

Google Hangouts in an instant

Video chat without downloading a plugin

Google is trying to make entering Google+ Hangouts as frictionless as possible.

So last week they rolled out the ability to enter your first Hangout without needing to download the Hangout video conferencing plugin for its Chrome browser.

Just click to start the Hangout, allow Hangouts to use your camera and microphone, and all set.

This update is rolling out to all Chrome users over the next few weeks.

It doesn’t sound like much, but anything that can be done to simplify entry will be a “plus”.

Profile photos added to Comment Tracker

The Comment Tracker app for Hangouts On Air is a valuable tool for increasing engagement on HOAs.

This allows the participants inside the HOA, including Host and filmstrip,  to pull up comments and questions from the people watching live and display them in the video.

Before this development, all people would see was the name of the guest followed by the comment or question.

Now they also see the guest’s profile photo. 

This is a valuable branding tool that should encourage people to attend live HOAs and engage. 

There's a lot of networking that goes on in the audience during a HOA that adds both entertainment and information to the topic discussed inside the video.

HOAs are recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

So it comes as no surprise that the largest number of views for a show comes after the host has hit the "stop broadcast" button.

Having your profile photo show up inside a HOA ensures that those viewing it later get to see you and your insightful and witty contributions to the show.

This also introduces you to people outside your own circles thus increasing your reach.

Explore Google+ Hashtags

#Hashtags are great for doing searches, especially on Google+. It’s the best way finding people and topics specific to your interests.


Google+ loves Hashtags so much, it adds one to your post if you forget to.

You can turn off the auto hashtag by heading over to your settings:

1. Connect to your Google + account.

2. Click on Home > Settings.

3. Scroll to the "Hashtags" section.

4. Uncheck "Add related hashtags from Google on my newly created posts".

5. Click on the "Back to Google +" link.

The  “Explore” sits next to “More” on your G+ navigation toolbar.


The desktop version includes:

1. A summary view that highlights posts across multiple categories.

2. A starter set of topics (like Music, Sports and Photography) that you can click on to explore further. What’s Hot is also listed here, instead of in the navigation bar.

3. The ability to search for specific topics, and read what others are saying about them.

4. The option to “go deeper” on relevant sub-topics (like #HolidayBaking) when you select or search for a topic (like #FoodAndDrink).

5. An easy way to follow the people and/or join the communities that are talking about the stuff you’re into.

To get started on desktop, simply click “Explore” at the top of your Home stream.

Related Hashtag Suggestions:

By clicking on the featured hashtag in a post, the card rotates enabling you to scroll through five other posts with that specific Hashtag.

The last card gives you a list of related hashtags.


With the new "Explore" button, you can research topics and grow your circles with people who posts on topics you're interested in. 

It should come with a warning though. 

It can be a bit of a rabbit hole as one hashtag leads to another discovery. 

If you haven’t played with it yet, put some time aside to explore “Explore” to:

- Find relevant connections

- Mine content ideas

- Measure trends

- explore related topics.

 Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you found it helpful, please share.

And if you haven’t already, join our Google+ Tips & Topics Community.

You can catch up on past #GPlusLunchBunch shows on my YouTube channel or Google+ Page.

Google Plus Tips of the Week

I realize the image above isn’t the most “Easter-ish”, but my early Easter present on Thursday was waking up to my NewRayCom site being hacked.

This is why you’re reading this on my Blogger site. (Which I hadn’t used in four years).

I reached out to my online and offline friends and have a few looking into possible solutions.

One of those friends is William Rock, a fellow Google+ “geek” and internet marketing and SEO specialist who agreed to be our special guest on this week’s #GPlusLunchBunch show.

There are lessons to be learned from every mishap.

I thought I was on top of my website security, backups etc., but….

Well you’ll have to see the show to find out what happened.

Your Google Plus Tips of the Week

1. +Posts Ads - Social Advertising?

2. A Couple Chrome Tricks

3. Comment Tracker

Google+ +Post Ads: Bringing Engagement to Advertising

The big news this week was the general release of +Posts. This is huge news both for brands and for Google+.

Mark Traphagen wrote a great post on LinkedIn about it that spoke to how is was a real game changer for advertising.

What are +Posts?

Basically, they’re Google ads made up of Google+ posts from your Page, Profile or even a Community.

They’re pushed out to targeted audiences in Google’s Adwords Display Advertising Network on millions of websites worldwide.

Google refers to them as “engagement” ads with good reason.  Visitors can, “+1” you, share, circle and leave comments.

As Mark points out, Facebook has promoted posts, Twitter, promoted tweets.

The difference here is:

“...that Google is enabling social content ads that aren't on the social platform. Instead of littering Google+ with ads ... +Post ads are places where people expect to see ads: on websites that already have Google Display ads.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark that this is a game changer for brands on Google+. 

Brands who’ve had a hard time building a network on Google+ can now do so by sharing their best posts where they normally would place their ads.

If your clients don’t come to Google+ take Google+ to your clients.

Martin Shervington has written a great step by step guide for creating a +Post ad.

And Ben Fisher of Steady Demand has tools that allow you to measure level of engagement.

Chrome Tricks:

Do you have Chrome extensions on your toolbar?

If you’re anything like me, they probably populate at least half of that real estate.

I came across this post that shows you how to slide them out of the way to make more room for the address bar or to hide them when you do screen share.

Added tip:

You can shuffle your Google apps around.

This came out a couple weeks ago but I just noticed it was active on my computer this week.

I love this because there are a couple apps I use all the time.

So now I have them at the top of the nine that are visible.- Gmail, Drive and Calendar.

What apps do you place on top?

Comment Tracker for Google+ Hangouts

If you watch many HOA’s (Hangouts On Air) you’ll probably run across a few that pull up comments from the audience on to the screen

They can do that by using the Hangout tool: Comment Tracker.

When you download and install this app inside your HOA, you’re able to see comments from the event page, pages where the event has been shared and even on Twitter,using a hashtag.

It’s not the most intuitive app to set up, but once you get the hang of capturing the right urls, it makes your HOA’s so much more interactive.

Heres a few key points from the Comment Tracker site, followed by a helpful post from Michael Daniels: Using Comment Tracker with the SHOAE (Scheduled Hangout On Air Event)

And here’s the Hangout Helper, Ronnie Bincer showing us how to set up a Twitter Hashtag widget so we can track the twitter stream.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.
I hope the new look didn’t throw you off thinking you had opened the wrong email. 

Resilience and the power to renew is the not so secret to success. 


Have a wonderful weekend.