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Is the new Google+ Communities a game changer?
The tidal wave started a few days ago on December 6th 2012 when Vic Gundotra announced the creation of Google+ Communities
I have seen many comments from early adopters like:
“Looks excellent”
“Google, you’re amazing :)”
“keep up the GREAT innovations..”
“This looks like it’s going to be a winner”
For me… simple “wow, about time”
Getting started – Finding communities to join
Click the new communities icon that has been added to the Google+ navigation. You might also be invited to join a community, however, I do not see these invites in the normal notifications list.
They currently are shown in the list of communities once you select this new communities navigation choice. This will most likely change in the near future.
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Private and Public communities
There are two types of Google+ community, private or public. For public communities, they can be unrestricted and thus freely available to join, or they can have membership subject to an invitation.
Private Communities can be fully private and found only by knowing the URL, or restricted to invitation only, but remaining discoverable by search.
(An example of a public Google+ Community)
If you get an invite to a private community, it will look like this..
(An example of a invitation to a private Google+ community)
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Creating your own Google+ community
So maybe you might like to create your own community? Why not? It’s free. To create your community, enter the communities section of Google+ and click the red button in the top right hand corner “create a community”. You will be taken through the set up process, which includes adding a title, tagline, description and making the choice between private and public.
(Creating a private or public Google+ community)
It is advisable to pre-create the list of categories, as things soon get out of hand when posts are created without categories and are thus harder to find back again.
(Creating Google+ community categories)
In summary – Google+ Communities
Google+ communities is a game changer. Wow, on 6th December 2012 the choice of social media community expanded to include a major new player. For B2B and B2C professionals and consumers this new choice may have a major impact because of the link with Google search. There is also a major advantage with costs when compared to Facebook pages. There are many recent posts about not being able to reach all the page followers with organic updates alone. One example is the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban Nov 2012 post and the reply from wired.com. George Takei of Star Trek fame contacted Facebook about his concerns, and was told “buy more promoted posts.” – read more about that example here.
Are you impressed by this new Google+ feature? Do you think you will use this new feature in the future either for work purposes or for personal use?
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