Google + Your Personal Website

Google+ offers users an opportunity to create a personal website that is fast, free, and available to anyone on the internet.

Fast – Your third attempt and after takes less than ten minutes to make major revisions or start a new site. First and second attempts are about learning the tool.

Free - Google+ works off your Gmail account, Google’s free email service with superior spam protection.

Already have another email address?

I have six email addresses plugged into my Gmail browser. Postini spam protection brought my spam-zombie AOL account back to life.

Available – LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks require the viewer be a member of that network. Google+ is visible to anyone with an internet browser. Better still, if they don’t have your internet address, Google Search does!

Google+ Parts

Let’s look at a Google+ site.

I use a custom URL shortener, bit.ly/DicksProfile so viewers can get there without using search. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google says they want products that have at least a billion users, so their URLs are built for quantity. You can do cute on your own. Googling “Dick Davies” will also get you there.

The Edit Profile button opens you to editing your profile. Before Google+ I had built the forerunner, a Google Profile. When I showed it to Jack, he said it was the most efficient use of web real estate, better than our four websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, three other social networks, and three blogs.

Let Google do the organizing. If it wasn’t about you, you would be impressed.

Owner Picture – People want to see a picture to make sure they know you. Last week I put in a new seersucker picture, which took less than a minute.

My name and tag line are fully configurable.

Photos – Mine are from Yahoo’s Flickr, since I was using that before Google’s Picasa, and these are images from my blog posts.

Links

To the right, the Links Section is one of the strongest features. This allows you to showcase your best work on the web.

As you can see, I have organized my links to interest potential clients.

Google Guys put up their technical presentations, bit.ly/BruceWon has his blog posts.

If you want to post a page, put it in Google docs (part of your Gmail) and connect that link to the name you choose for it in the Links Section.

Capability Paragraph (center)–I pasted mine from my LinkedIn page.

Employment – Please be interesting! Note that they want your current interest. No details about past employers, so much better than a resume!

Map – Was you dere?

Telephone numbers, email, birthday, gender I hide. You can do what you want.

Other Pages

My Buzz was strong before Google+. Viewers see a strong list of my publications. I see publications from my five favorite writers.

Posts is where I can put out things I like, whether I write them or not. I have 56 people who I know who have Google+ pages and see whatever I post there.

Some n00bs come on and post 50 times a day. Or they used to. I don’t see them anymore.

A lot of my favorite bloggers are posting other things on their Google+ pages. I got back to following Eric Raymond, the guy who invented open source, though Google+.  

What can you add? 

Update - Infographic: Killer Facts About Google Plus



 SalesLab’s next Rainmaker, (Number 8!) is Google + Your Personal Website, Fast, Free, and Findable! the first 300 seconds of the Capital Technology Management Hub, at 6 pm, Tuesday, October 11^th. The headliner is Overcoming Mobile Challenges in the Federal Government - Sponsored by TeqCorner, featuring Ferhan Hamid, CEO and Vikrant Binjrajka, CTO of INADEV.

Thank you!