Group items tagged

nclude all your other social site links.

Include your website, and location

get creative and make your cover image something to talk about.

generate Circles for in-store customers; online customers; partners; industry leaders; business friends; coworkers; etc.

Make sure you use them. And then, make sure you use them well.

Write targeted updates to send out to targeted groups

Using Circles can extend the life of your updates (and blog posts), and can your them to resonate better with each of your segmented connections.

Don’t post your update to them AND send them an email to notify those in your Circle about your recent post:

The email option lets you make sure an important post will reach the Circles you need it to (like to customers, if you’re posting about a social contest marketing campaign, for example).

But don’t overuse this function! It’s particularly annoying if your Circles have not asked you for continual updates! It’s spam.

People do not like to hangout with people who only talk about themselves.

80% of your posts should be about lifestyle, customers and stuff other than you; 20% should be about you and your products.

Another big no-no is not addressing negative comments on your posts. Bad comments will happen. It’s an open forum, and not everyone is going to agree with you, or even like what you do.

judge how to respond to comments on your updates.

If it’s an inappropriate comment - delete it, but I’d try to tell the commenter first - not doing so can lead to even more PR problems for you...)

Find communities that suit your business niche, and join them.

join a few business-related ones - start to network, and you never really know where those connections will lead you.

Engage, share others’ posts, comment. Treat Communities like a networking breakfast, or trade show. These can be your customers! Give them respect and interest, and they will likely reciprocate!

Do not post a link - and not include at least a brief comment!

Make sure your product pages, blog post pages, website and other other relevant landing pages have an easy to click G +1 button!

it's also about sharing with the right people. Circles will allow what educational consultant Tom Barnett calls "targeted sharing," something that will be great for specific classes and topics

Skype has become an incredibly popular tool to bring in guests to a classroom via video chat -

teachers are already talking about the possibility of not just face-to-face video conversation but the potential for integration of whiteboards, screen-sharing, Google Docs, and other collaborative tools

Google + seems like the solution for someone like me who wants to use the web to have conversations about school topics with students and parents and yet not have students and parents have access to my personal posts.