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 This is the second post in an ongoing series of useful and interesting content that goes up each Wednesday. Here you can find links to different SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, self-publishing, and other various articles that I thought you might like. This week there are 32 articles. Post removed 04/15/150000
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 This is a basset hound On Monday I had a Book Basset featured author post. This is eBook advertising that I paid for way back at the beginning of March. For just $24 I got five of my eBooks profiled on their site, which has lots of readers coming each day looking for deals. I decided to profile the following books:
I felt that was a good mix and it gave readers a lot of price points to choose from. For instance, The Jongurian Mission is free, and if they like that they can pick up that stand-alone fantasy book, The Hirelings, for $3.99 (hardly anyone ever does).  My Book Basset eBook Marketing Featured Author Post Black Walnut and Wake Up, Detroit were both originally priced at $0.99 when I scheduled the ad. I’ve since raised them both up to $2.99 (they’re not selling anyways), but Amazon caught the lower price at some retailers for Wake Up, Detroit, so that one was still $0.99. The eBook Advertising Results So how’d things turn out? A helluva lot better than the two eBook blog tours I’ve done recently (those both resulted in zero sales). I managed to sell 4 copies of Wake Up, Detroit and 2 copies of Black Walnut. That shot the books’ rankings up to #45,598 and #63,465 respectively.  Wake Up, Detroit's Results  Black Walnut's Results That’s really good, especially for so few sales. You have to figure that both books were well over the million mark, probably ranking around #1,250,000 or so before those sales came through. And that means that both of them got back into their Top 100 charts for a short time. Riding the Amazon Top 100s Perhaps some of those sales actually came from those Top 100 appearances. I’m not sure, and I don’t think I’ll find out – both books have since fallen below #100,000 again, the typical cutoff for the Top 100s. Anyways, I thought it was a pretty good ride, especially for two books that I think are quite enjoyable, but which no one really notices. An added bonus was seeing Black Walnut right above Walter Mosley, a great detective writer whose Easy Rawlins books really saved me from a lot of boring days in China. (For those of you not familiar, Bill Clinton said during the ’92 race that Mosely was his favorite writer).  Maybe I’ll get a review out of these sales and those Top 100 appearances, I’m not sure. The point is, you want to give your books a boost from time to time so you can get into those Top 100s. That provides so much more visibility. Take my perma-free book, The Jongurian Mission. I’m always in the Top 100 for my categories, simply because the book is free and gets downloaded enough each day to stay there. It’s been in the same general spot (#3,000 to #7,000) for eight months now. New Amazon Categories for Shorter Works The other books I advertised with Book Basset didn’t move too much, except The Jongurian Mission. ‘Sales’ for that perma-free book have really been in the dumps recently, and I’ll profile that in an upcoming post pretty soon. The other thing I discovered was some new Amazon categories. Now, I first found out about these a few weeks ago while looking at the G.I. Joe books on the Kindle Worlds pages. I found them again yesterday, simply because my book happened to fall into one (I have no idea how but mean to email Amazon to get more info on this – stay posted).  Now, as you can see from the above picture, the Amazon category is called “Kindle Short Reads” and it’s further divided into units of time, like “15 Minutes” all the way up to “90 Minutes,” which would be around 50 pages or so. The categories are divided up even further by genre, as you can see below.  All in all it’s a great way for authors with shorter works to get themselves a little more visibility. Like I said, I need to look into this further. I’m sure you’re interested, and I’ve got enough short works where it could help me. Well, in conclusion, I didn’t sell a lot with the Book Basset ad but I sold some, got a little more visibility, and did some eBook marketing for the month. Now it’s back to writing more titles. Maybe one will have a better ride. You Might Also LikeMy BookBlast Paid eBook Promotion Results
My Kindle Fire Department Paid eBook Promotion Results My Freebooksy Paid eBook Promotion Results (Hint: They Were Great) My Bargainbooksy eBook Promotion Results – Meh! My Upcoming eBook Blog Tour My Upcoming eBook Blog Tour for The Hirelings Tried and True Ways to Sell Your eBooks Year-Round 75 Websites that Promote Your eBook  That’s a great question, and I’m happy to say that I’m qualified to answer it. See, this is my Writing Blog’s 207th post. I started this site on March 2, 2013, so that means it took me just over 13 months to get that many posts. Additionally, I have 151 posts on my ESL blog, 62 posts on my Montana blog, and 32 posts on my Montana election blog. So how can you do the same? And do you want to? I mean, yeah, getting 200 posts on your blog sounds like a great thing, but it’s a lot of work too. Are you ready to write thousands of words each week, set aside time in your daily schedule for the next year or longer, and neglect certain areas of your life so you can talk to a brick wall that you call an audience? Alright, good, then let me give you some tips that will help you get up to 200 blog posts fast. Organize Your Files in Folders It’s a must to organize your blog posts. You need to refer back to these sometimes, perhaps to figure out what posts you wrote around the same time. Trust me, you will forget what you’ve posted. I also have a spreadsheet with the perma-links to all my blog posts, making it easier when I need to link back to my site. For instance, if I’m commenting on a blog about eBook sales, I might leave a specific link back to an old eBook marketing post, not just my generic homepage. I figure if the person clicking on my name on that site is interested in the article I directed them to, well, they’ll go and explore my site further. That increases both the on-site time as well as decreases my bounce rate. That page they came in on is now viewed as a landing page (rather small but with potential), and I’ve also given Google yet another cue as to what my site is about. This last point is important. Many folks are worried about links right now, specifically ling-building and linkbacks. Now, I’m only going to be commenting (that’s the only way I get links unless someone unknowingly links to me) on sites that are relevant to what my site is about. Often I’ll have these links point back to Google+, Facebook, or Wordpress if I can’t put my own site down. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. Organize Your Pictures in Folders Recently I moved all of last year’s pictures into a “2013” folder. For this year I’ve already moved the last three months’ posts into a folder called “2014 Q1,” which makes it easier to handle. Considering I had more than 50 posts during that time, it just makes sense. Now I can access the recent pictures more easily, as you can see below.  The pictures for your blog posts will get away from you I do the same thing with my Word documents for each post, as you can see.  Organize your blog files for fewer hassles When you have a folder with fifty to a hundred posts it just makes you want to close it out and not even look at it. That means you won’t be putting up a post that day, or even that week. And that means you’re falling behind. Don’t let this happen by using simple organizational principles. Have a Standard Post Design I’ve used the same standard design since I got started, which is to have paragraphs and pictures. Weebly, my website designs software, makes this easy for me. I simply drag-and-drop one of those boxes and insert my text and then picture. I separate those by headlines, and follow the same pattern throughout.  A typical post will have an opening paragraph and then three headlines with their own paragraph or two, maybe three. Each of those headline blocks will have at least one picture, typically in the opening paragraph of that block. For that reason I usually try to have each block be at least two paragraphs.  A newer blog post format The picture I use for the first intro block is typically the picture I’ll use on the homepage when I put the link there. Also, I have a “You Might Also Like” headline at the bottom of most posts, directing visitors back to similar articles I’ve written. Rarely will I have links pointing to other sites.  Now, I didn’t always do it like this. For a whole month or two after starting this site I primarily relied on text. I’d use bullet points, but there wasn’t much in the way of pictures.  An old blog post format This is boring, and I decided to move away from it. Hey, it’s my site and I can do whatever I want. I wish more sites that rely solely on text would do the same. Color Code Your Posts’ Categories Like many of the above points, this is one I talked about in my post on how you can get your blog to 100 posts fast. Since then I’ve had to organize my color coding system more, adding additional categories and also cutting out some of the old posts.  Color code your blog posts for easy reference If you compare the two color-coding pictures in these two posts you’ll see that those spreadsheet cells really start piling up, so I put those on a different page. Now my main problem is that I’m running out of colors. Also, I’m getting too many posts bunched up into generic categories like “SEO” (the pink color). I need to organize those particular posts down into subcategories, such as link building, guest posting, content marketing, social media marketing, and other things. The problem’s that I keep putting that off. That’s a common problem you’ll find when you blog for a long time, and get up to 200 posts or higher. There are a lot of small things like links, categories, and just keeping track of what you’ve done and what you haven’t. This can keep you from continuing. I mean, imagine if you’re a site like The Book Designer and have more than 1,000 posts. That’s quite a headache to manage I bet! Engage in Social Media Marketing I’ve been doing a lot with Google+ lately and my Facebook fans have increased as well. For instance, after doing a post on Optimizing Your Google+ Circles I got a whole bunch of views and about 150 more followers.  Try to get more circles in your life Now, a lot of authors don’t like to do marketing, but it’s pretty simple and really consists of nothing more than writing a few short sentences here and there. I think it’s the thought of getting into it that scares people the most, but after you familiarize yourself with the various site designs you’ll be fine. You’ll find more than enough eBook marketing and content marketing posts on this site, if you take the time to look. If you’d like to save time consider buying one of my books on the subject. Have Numerous Series For When You Get Bored I get bored of writing for my blogs, and I have series to combat this. For this writing blog there’s Dead Author Interviews, Adventures in SEO, the Monthly Reports, and a few on writing a fantasy novel and even writing faster. Just last week I started another series that’s nothing more than content curation. Posts like that can be easy (they can also be even harder) and that means you have an extra post that week, or day even. All of these are good things to have on your site, whether it’s just a weekly 3 to 5 post series or an ongoing series that ends sometime in a few months, or perhaps an open-ended series that you add to when you feel like it. For my Dead Author Interviews series I have a whole list of names. Sometimes I’ll break one of those down into its own document, get some research, and get started slowly. For SEO Adventures, I typically write when I feel like it, going over everything that’s happened since the last installment. That’s a good word – installment. Episode might be better, like those old TV shows you used to like. Well, 12 is a good number, so think about starting your monthly series this month. If nothing else, it’s an extra 12 posts closer to your 200. Take a Day Off Do you know what I did last weekend? A whole lot of nothing. First, I wasted a lot of time playing Facebook games like Criminal Case, Farmville 2, and Hemp Tycoon.  This game will eat your time like no other Next, I did a lot of social media marketing on Google+. Finally, I didn’t have any jobs to do so just didn’t have as much of an economic incentive to write. Remember, this blog doesn’t really make me any money, at least not measurably. So why all this time wasting? Well, I was visiting my parents in Helena and also didn’t have anything to work on for other people. So I decided to do nothing. Alrighty, I still posted on this site each day, but when I say nothing, I really mean that my daily word counts went from around 5,000 to 500 or so. I hate that, but sometimes it helps to recharge the batteries. This advice might apply to you, but I still don’t like it. Insult Your Visitors I do this frequently, as you can see in such posts as Writers Stop Visiting My Site and Just…Don’t Listen To Me. Those are two recent examples, although I think I’ve done the same many times before. Sometimes I feel bad about this, but my site traffic doesn’t go down. Blog comments also don’t go down, primarily because there are none. So what have you got to lose in a situation like that? Maybe something, maybe nothing. I guess you won’t know until you give it a try. Do Not Focus on Making Money I don’t have much in the way for advertising on this site. I tried a pop-up survey asking visitors about my site, but after a week or two with no comments I took it down. That was about a year ago, and since then I haven’t added any of that crap. I do have a few Amazon Affiliate ads, and some Google Adsense ads, but nothing too major. And you know how much those make me? About $1.82 a month or so. I figure that’s why I have so many visitors each day, because I’m not bombarding them with crap they don’t want. If you want to get up to 200 blog posts fast you’ll need encouragement. Maybe that’s money from advertising, although I don’t think you’ll be getting much. What I think is better is if you have that steady increase in traffic over time. Organic audience building boosts your confidence, and that keeps you motivated to keep posting. So in that regard, I think ads are bad. After all, they scare away visitors that could have turned into users, and that means your traffic could stall, and your motivation to write right along with it. Try to Be Bold and Daring and Entertaining I try to do this, but I don’t think it works very well. My whole idea is that people want to be entertained, they don’t want to be informed. Well, my Google+ Circles post getting 175 views in 2 days (that’s a lot for me) might say otherwise. And yet at the same time it’s the entertaining articles that keep showing up high in the rankings each month. Again, that’s not quite accurate. Perhaps it’d be good to say there’s a mix of informative and entertaining. Hell, I don’t know what people want! That’s what you’ll find out, too. Maybe it takes 20 posts, maybe 100, but eventually you’ll run out of steam or just start to say the same thing over and over again. So what can you do? Posting cat videos might work, as those get the most likes of anything I see, besides puppy videos. No, I think it’s better to take chances. Try something stupid or silly, like my Tarot posts. Blame the planets for your eBook sales like I did once a few months ago. Maybe you should talk about your family or kids or pets. I think that’s pretty boring for most people, however, unless you’re famous or something. So in this one I guess you’ll have to think up something on your own. Bummer. Try Not to Be Boring This is something I try to do a lot, but really, do you know what you’re doing that is boring? I mean, really? We had a Boredom Scale when I was an ESL teacher. This was something I started on during my last year, when I myself was bored out of my mind, and a lot of students got a kick out of it. Maybe there’s a sidebar plug-in that can act as a Boring Scale for you. After all, we don’t always have the best judgment. Hmm, maybe you could get someone else to read your rubbish before you assault everyone else with it? I never do this, but again, you don’t really want to do what I do if you want to be successful. Trust me, Big Boys that specialize in content marketing, social media marketing, and branding will be able to help you a lot more. I mean, their content’s never boring, right? Don’t Pay Attention to the Big Sites Alright, the Big Boys again. I talked extensively about this in my book Visit My Site, Bitch, so you should be like the other 20 smart people in the world and buy it. Now, at this point I’m seriously thinking of changing the title of this post to “200 pieces of shit advice not to take when it comes to blogging.” That actually might get me a lot more hits, and I think I’ll have to save that idea for later. But really, when it comes to the Big Boys, they often recycle the same 200 blog posts over and over again. Yeah, you’ve noticed this, right? I mean, let’s take a tally here. The most common big site topics include:
Alright, those pretty much encompass the top articles you’ll see each month on the Big Boy sites. And to make it easier for you, I’ve divided up the 200 posts into what I think they’ll be about. For instance, “This is a Holiday So We Don’t Work” is not used that often, but I’d say 5 times each year you’ll see that exact post up on your favorite site, and on the exact day you’re sitting around doing nothing and just dying for fresh content. How about “Not Doing What You Should?” This is a post you’ll see about 10 times throughout the year or in a 200-post cycle, and they really point out your own inadequacies, usually to sell some kind of product or service. Sometimes the advice will be friendly, advising you against doing what Tom over there is doing. Sometimes it’s a big condescending, calling Sally an idiot. But never will it be you they’re talking about. It’s kind of like going to the doctor and saying “Listen Doc, I’ve got a friend who…” And this gets us around to “You Are the Most Important Thing to Us,” a common post you’ll see about 25 times a year, a few times a month, on average. Here we extol the virtues of you – the user. What a crock of shit! Perhaps if those sites were actually telling their visitors and users just how stupid they are, well, maybe those visitors would come back more often. You don’t have to act like a Soup Nazi, but being Polyanna-ish is no way to continue with your blog either. Perhaps you should visit the Big Boys more often, to get an idea of what not to do, or just how you can take their lame game to a whole new level. There is money to be made with that last one. After all, copycats can always find an easy buck. Find a Fuel for Your Anger Writing in the morning is good for me, especially if there’s some story about the Republicans doing something stupid. Those aren’t hard to find, so I can get fired up and my fingers flying and then, BOOM!, there’s 1,231 words or something.  You need to find your own “Republican” articles as well. Piss People Off (At Least in Your Mind) At Least Once a Week I typically put up at least one post a week that I cringe at and wish later that I perhaps didn’t put up. Sometimes these are really popular, other times no one reads them at all. Most people want to be angered when they’re on the computer. They want to take out their frustrations on someone else, or at least have someone actually come clean and tell them to their face that, yes, they are stupid. A No-BS attitude can really help your site. If you put out bullshit on a continual basis no one will really be interested in you. At that point you’re going to engage in some of those questionable SEO tactics that could get your blog in trouble. But what is trouble, and is it really that bad? I guess if your blog is tied to your business, or if your business is your blog, then trouble might not be good. But everyone likes to slowdown and look at a car wreck, and some even pull over to stop and get out. No once can’t look. Your site could be that car wreck, if you put out an edgy piece of content at least once a week. I bet it’ll be tame at first, perhaps swatting at a few flies. But if you decide to dig up the whole backyard one day and really get at the infestation problem as you see it in your niche or industry, then my hat is off to you, sir. I doubt it will come to that, but chances are, putting a bit of bite into your blog will help you in ways you can’t yet realize. Post Everyday See, I don’t follow this rule, at least not on this blog. I have four blogs, however, so if I’m not posting on this one for a day that means I’m posting on another one. Also, sometimes I put up two posts in one day on this blog. I don’t’ really care. Now, by this point I’m sure you think I’m crazy. I mean, I have four blogs. Some people can’t imagine keeping up with one blog let alone four. And I have a rather blasé attitude toward them and the readers of them. And that’s why I should have just done what I wanted to do, and that’s given you the best piece of advice right up front. Unfortunately that would have meant this 3,296 word blog post would’ve only been 2 words long. And that would have pissed you off. Well, good – go write something! So what is this magical formula? “Write everyday.” You Might Also LikeNote: This is the fifth post in what will be Free Fiction Fridays. These are short stories I’ll be putting up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up.  Runway Cut out of Jungle This post was removed on 04/018/14 - Thanks!
 Recently Copyblogger decided to shut down the commenting section on its blog. Now, instead of having comments on their site, they’re letting people comment on Google+. You can see links to the Copyblogger Google+ page at the end of each blog post. Today they had an audio article examining the effects of removing that blog commenting section. The main reasons seemed to be:
I listened to the podcast they had while eating my superhot habanero chili today. While listening I thought it’d be great if we had another perspective on this decision of theirs, and particularly a ‘supernatural’ perspective. To do that we have to go to the Tarot cards, and what better reading than the Traditional 5-Card Spread? Alright, the question is, “will Copyblogger’s decision to remove comments from their site have a negative effect long-term.”  Question: Will removing comments have a negative impact long-term for Copyblogger? First Card: Two of Coins (Reversed)  Normally I’d say the Two of Coins is a rather bad card to get in your present position. You’re juggling your finances, and there are choppy waters at your back. You’ll notice that the equilibrium, or infinity, is out of balance, and those transport ships carrying your wares in the background are also having a tough-go of it. The main, thing, however, is that you’re still upright, still juggling, and still making your situation work. The good are going to market! Reversed (upside down), however, the card means that things are crashing down around you. The idea was good, but you just couldn’t keep things in motion. There could be some financial instability and security issues. Overall, not good. Second Card: Justice  This is quite the strong card, but it’s coming up in the past. The woman in the picture is thought to be the Greek Goddess Athena. She has an upright sword and well-ordered thoughts, shown by the small square on her crown. The sword is sharp, and has a double-edge. Justice cuts both ways, and this woman is a fair and impartial observer. She uses the scales in her left hand to balance logic and her superior intuition. I think this is really an appropriate card because it represents authority, wise thinking, and sound-decision making. A great card…to have now or in the future. This is showing in the past, and perhaps we’ll learn more from the cards to come. Third Card: Death (Reversed)  Alright, the Death card is not that bad, and certainly not the worst in the Tarot deck. It’s also coming up reversed, so even though it’s in the future position, it probably doesn’t mean what you think. So what does it mean for Copyblogger, or you for that matter? Instead of moving forward, as death always forces us to do, you’re lagging behind, becoming stagnant in what you’re doing while not changing with the times or situations. I’d say you need to let go, let those old ideas or beliefs that are holding you back die, and move forward. But…Google+ is a great social networking platform that allows me to develop meaningful business connections while strengthening my bottom line, right? Yeah, this is a tough card to read. Let’s look at it more closely.
Fourth Card: Seven of Swords  Of all the cards in the Traditional 5-Card Tarot Spread, the fourth card is the most difficult. Why? Because the fourth card shows you the reasons behind your question, and can do a lot to show you how the second card is influencing your question. So this card can really apply to the questioner, or me. And perhaps that’s me in the card, trying to steel those Swords, or maybe some of the traffic from the Copyblogger site. So am I one of those spam commenters that they complain about? Maybe. It’s obvious that whoever it is in the picture isn’t getting away with it. In the background you can see the horsemen just on the horizon. Overall the card shows someone sneaking away from their responsibilities. Sometimes we’re running away with the wrong choices. You need to use caution, and you also need to consider if getting away with your prize is worth the price that may have to be paid. Since this card is playing on the second, which is the Justice card in the past position, it could be that the deception will have a negative affect on that authority imparted by Justice. All in all it could be that authority has been damaged in a failed attempt to ‘take the money and run.’ Fifth Card: Ten of Wands  This is a great card, even though it has some negative aspects. First of all, the fifth card is showing how the overall situation will play out. The Ten of Wands is a good card to have there. In the Ten of Wands we see a man carrying a large bundle of wands toward a house in the distance. He strains under the load and perhaps even feels that he’s taken on too much. In fact, he can’t even see where he’s going, so focused is he on what he must carry. The wands in the picture represent our burdens and responsibilities, which we carry with us always. Perhaps if this load must be shouldered on a daily basis it’s just too much for you. Consider scaling back and carrying less. The sky is blue and clear, which means nothing else has bearing on the situation. Tarot has wands for creativity and the ‘ten’ cards for abundance. You’ve got a lot of creative abundance, perhaps too much to handle all at once. Figure out how you can lessen this load or you’ll be walking a slow road toward your creative aspirations.  You Might Also Like This will be the first post in an ongoing series that I’ll put up each Wednesday. I’m putting it up today because I just got the idea. Actually, content curation is nothing new, and many great sites are doing it each week. They give you links to useful articles, but they do so on the weekend. That’s great, but come midweek you’re out of the good stuff. A lot of this stuff is new. Tons of content goes up on different sites each week, and since I sit at home all day and work, and do a lot of web surfing, I figure I’d share some of it. All in all, you’re getting a mix of relevant and useful content that pertains to:
That’s about it, I guess. We’ll start off slow this week with what I gathered together just today, as well as a couple links I put down awhile ago. Midweek Roundup - 18 Total Post removed 04/15/15...thanks!
 I’m sure you know that I write ESL books. See, English as a Second Language is a multi-billion dollar industry globally, and there’s not going to be any decrease in demand for it. Instead, demand for ESL teachers and books will only continue to grow. So in that regard my decision to move to China 5 years ago to become an English teacher wasn’t such a bad idea. And the 7 ESL books I have now, as well as the ESL website I update regularly, all contribute to one thing – making me an authority in this subject. Yes, you want to be a thought-leader in your niche. For ESL, there are few that I know of that have the experience or know-how that I have. Well, there probably is, but I don’t see them blogging about it, writing eBooks about it, and increasing their followers because of it. So how can I continue to increase my authority? Why, by continuing to update my website and put out new ESL books. And that’s why I just had my ESL cover designer make me another 4 covers this week. Here they are:
As you can see, they follow the same basic design as all my other ESL books. That’s author branding, and that makes it easy to know at a glance that this is an author you’ve read before, you want, and that knows what they’re talking about.
Now, some of these books are going to be short. I mean, how long can 10 ideas really be? But that’s fine. I’ve got ESL books ranging in price from $0 all the way to $9.99. Some of these titles will probably be $0.99. Why? Because I want to increase my authority further. A good way to do that is to put out a variety of products at different price ranges. Lots of people will get in at $0, then go to $0.99. Maybe they’ll download some ESL worksheets from my site, or move on and get a more expensive $2.99 or $3.99 book. The ultimate is if they get that $9.99 book, or buy everything. So that’s what I do. I won’t bore you with a lot of it – you can visit my ESL site for that – but just remember that there are many options out there if you’re smart. You are, right?  I’ve been using Google+ a lot lately. Of all the social media platforms, this is the one I focus on the most, and for the following reasons:
So what things can you do to make Google+ better, and work for you more? Optimize your Circles. Google+ Circles and Your Social Connections Google+ Circles are nothing more that groups of people with something in common. I have Circles for authors, designers, and content marketers to name just a few. If you look over at the top of my blog’s sidebar you’ll see my Google+ profile. A few days ago I had 100 followers. Now I have 170 or so. I’m sure in another week I’ll have more. So what’s the secret? Sharing content that people find relevant. Yep, that’s how I get more people in my Circles. That and large Circles I can add and then organize later. Yep it’s all about how you add to and then organize your Circles. Today we’ll focus on your Google+ Circles and how they can get you more benefits long-term. To do that, let’s take a look at the following pictures, but first, let’s tell you how to get into Google+ Circles and manage your Google+ Circles account. Finding Your Current Google+ Circles So let’s get you onto the main Google screen, and as you can see in this picture, you’ll want to click that Google+ notifications button (it looks like a bell) up in the upper right-hand corner by your profile picture.  To find your Google+ Circles, start on the main Google screen. Clicking on that will bring down your Google+ notifications window pane, which looks like this. After that, just click on the “Google+ Notifications,” here:  Click the bell icon to open up your notifications pane. Click on "Google+ notifications" So that brings up the following screen, which shows you the recent activity on your account. We’ll want to click over on that “Notifications” button on the far left-hand side of the screen, here:  On this screen click the "Notifications" button to open the drop-down menu That will then open up the larger pane, and it looks like this:  Click on "People" to open up your Google+ Circles page Simply click onto “People” and it will take you to the main Google+ Circles page. Simply click on "Your Circles" to get to where you need to be.  The main Google+ Circles screen. Click "Your Circles" to get to your specific people. Also, this is a great screen to find people you're interested in, or who have similar interests. After all, it's all about growing those Circles, right? Organizing Your Google+ Circles Screen Here you can see my main Google+ Circles page. Now, I have quite a few Circles, mainly because I know I’ll be adding a lot of people. See, I don’t want generic and random Circles like “Authors” or “Following.” I even got rid of “Friends” because, let’s face it, I have none.  Your Google+ Circles page has people in the Cirlces on top and your various Circles below. You can resize those panes. What I do have are lots of random internet acquaintances and other add-ons that I’ve accumulated. As you can see, I mainly stick these folks into my Circle called “Circle Adds.”  Large unruly Circles like this help no one. Get those people into their appropriate Circles. These are people that I primarily get from large Circles or groups, and today you can see I’ve got 1,032 people there. I’ll just add the whole group, and then later I’ll come back and put those people into their appropriate Circles. Today I’ll clean some of that up, moving perhaps 100 people into more appropriate Circles. If you do a little each day like that then pretty soon you’ll be quite organized.  Hightlight a person and figure out their likes, services, or job. Put them in the appropriate Circle, or a "holding Circle" to easily organize later. Let’s take a look at this “Circle Adds” Circle. As you can see, there are many people, and one of them is this “Your Internet Marketers” person. Alright, they seem like an SEO service firm or content marketing firm or social media services. I don’t know – it’s pretty hard to tell. To get an idea of who this person is I’ll simply highlight them by moving my mouse over them. Here you’ll usually get a short description.  This obviously looks like SEO or content marketing, so that's the circle I'll put them in. What I think I’ll do is move them into my “Social Media Marketing” Circle. To do that I simple click and drag, moving them down like this:  Drag them down to that circle, and then delete them from your "holding Circle." (You don't want them in 2 Circles, do you)? Now they’re in both the “Circle Adds” Circle and the “Social Media Marketing” Circle. Since I don’t want them in two Circles I’ll go ahead and delete them from the “Circle Adds” by clicking on the little “x” by their name. Now all I’ve got to do is move those other 1,031 people! So as you can see, this is one way for you to easily manage your Google+ Circles so you can increase your social media footprint, increase your online business, or perhaps sell more eBooks. Below are some helpful links to Google+ guides. Trust me, you want to get started on this in case you haven’t already. And if you were like me, really slow to get going on this after you started, now would be the time to get going. Why not start by adding me to your Circles? After all, I’m obviously in the mood to move people around today. And if you want more secrets on how to Increase Your Social Media Presence, check out this post, and sign-up for my mailing list for a free guide. Good Google+ LinksNote: This is the fourth post in what will be Free Fiction Fridays. These are short stories I’ll be putting up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. So you have one week to read it and then it’s gone for good. Enjoy!  Yala National Park This post was removed on 04/11/14 - Thanks! To Be Continued... Path of Flight 370  I’ll tell ya – I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to social media. Please do not listen to me about anything when it comes to that. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr (I don’t even know if I spelled that right)…it’s all a mystery to me. I have groups, pages, links, accounts – all kinds of stuff that does pretty much nothing for me that I can see. Twitter especially is something that really just flies right over my head. So when it comes to social media, you should probably go to some other sites. Or groups. Or maybe even pages. Because I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about when it comes to that. I mean, I lived in China for 5 years. Facebook and Blogs were banned! I do, however, know a little about blogging, SEO, self-publishing, Amazon KDP, freelance writing, self-employment, guest blogging, and hemorrhoids. So if you want advice about any of those things, then… Well, no, I’m not going to give you advice. If you want that you can go to many larger sites with more followers, larger circles, pages of likes, and pins up the wazoo. I will give you entertainment. Because at the end of the day, really, you can get advice anywhere, but you can’t get a unique and entertaining perspective on things you probably should have forgotten about years ago. And that’s what this site is for – like a shining beacon in the dark that you can put your feet up on and forget the day’s worries with. But social media? Nope, better look somewhere else. You Might Also Like |
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