7 Circle Management Tips That Will Increase Your Google+ Experience

For those of you that use Google+ (which is awesome, by the way, especially on the iPhone) here are some great tips as suggested by photographer and fellow G+er +Billy Wilson.

Many people complain that they won't circle someone who posts something in the neighborhood of 20 times a day, the good news is that with circles you can have someone circled and never see their posts. Here are some of the ways I keep my circles organized. Doing this as early on in your G+ experience as possible is recommended, since putting together and organizing a lot of people takes a lot of time.

1. Create Circles for Content You Want to Consume: Not everyone I circle I want to see posts from, I have +Britney Spears and +Paris Hilton in my circles (see tip 7 why) but I never see a single thing they post because they aren't in my circles of content I want to consume. You also have a volume control on your circles if you like looking at your main stream. 

2. Divide the Content You Want to Consume Into Smaller Priority Based Circles: There are many people on Google+ I wouldn't mind seeing posts from, but some people I like to see more often than others. So I have a series of circles dividing people who I want to see content from starting with people who I don't want to miss and ending with a series of circles containing people I'm not too connected with yet but still want to keep up with and interact with on occasion. 

3. Divide the People Who Produce Content You Don't Want to Consume Into Circles: Doing this helps me remember why I circled someone, for instance I might love hanging out with a person but I find the content they post utterly annoying, so I put them into my "People To Hangout With" circle which is the circle I tend to select when doing a limited hangout. +Britney Spears and+Paris Hilton are in my "Celebrities Who Don't Interact" circle and I mainly just have people like them circled to keep track of big names and when they are hanging out on G+ (see tip 7).

4. You Can Limit Which Circles Are Publicly Displayed on Your Profile: I don't really want to boast that I have a lot of mainstream celebrities on G+ circled so most of them are in circles that aren't publicly displayed. I find this to be a good measure to limit who's displayed since it will affect the "IN COMMON WITH YOU" box you find on people's profiles (found only on profiles with less than 14,000 followers). I don't want to look like I'm following and supporting people I only circled just to organize and see if they might be hanging out (see tip 7). I'll give an example as to how "IN COMMON WITH YOU" works, on G+ I have +Summer Holmquist circled publicly, so if you have me in your circles and go to her profile page, on the right above where it tells you who she has in her circles it will say "IN COMMON WITH YOU" if you hover over that box and click "View All" and type "Billy Wilson" into the filter box I will come up as one of the people who you have in common with her. You can select which circles you have displayed publicly by clicking "Edit Profile" at the top of your profile page, then click the box that displays who you have in circles and you can select who can view this (your circles or public) and which circles will be shown. People will never know which circle you have them in of course, just that you have someone circled or not if you chose to show a particular circle.

5. Create More Circles to Organize People: Even when I have someone circled I like to add them to more circles. For instance I have circles for people I enjoyed hanging out with, people who are artists, Canadians, scientists, musicians, photographers, Googlers; into technology, news; I know from Flickr or Youtube; people who have been on my show, and so on.... This way I'm not just pigeonholing someone based on only one thing.

6. Create Hangout Invite Circles: When you start a hangout that is public or a limited one to more than 25 people, they won't get a notification in the top bar or in chat. So it's a good idea to make a handful of circles with 25 people each that you really want to hangout with so they will be better notified that you want to hangout. It's best to mention you are hanging out in advance in a limited post so people are ready when you invite. 

7. Get +Mohamed Mansour's "My Hangouts" Extension and Make a Notification Circle: I want to know if people I enjoy interacting with are hanging out, and I also want to know if people like +Britney Spears ever actually do take the plunge into hangouts. By using +Mohamed Mansour's extension and connecting it with one of your circles you can be assured that if there's someone you want to hangout with hanging out, you will be notified.