I’ll be posting as I explore and learn the G+ system. Feel free to share your thoughts with me and join me on Google+ too!

So far, the number one positive feedback I’m hearing is that G+ has excellent privacy features.

My favorite feature is the search functionality. It’s kind of like Twitter meets Facebook in the way that you can do a search for a specific keyword and you’ll get results for anyone who has posted publicly on that topic; then, you can create a Circle using that keyword name and add those interesting Plussers to your Circle. (Users are called Plussers by the way—no longer a “Twit,” now that’s a Plus).

Getting Started:

1. Set up your profile: you can share as little or as much as you feel comfortable sharing.

2. Create your Circles: when you post to your Stream – only people within that Circle will see your post.  Plus (pun intended), you can choose to view a stream from a specified Circle (which is cool). You can create Circles based on keywords too – like Publishing, or Gardening, or Random Stuff, etc.

Cool Features:

1. Google+ has a drag and drop feature: you can drag people into Circles, also you can drag and drop an entire gallery of images into your G+ gallery – less clicking – more playing. Cool.

2. Video chats. Start a Hangout button. This will be a great feature for conferencing, seminars, book signings, and more.

I’ll be posting this week on my Google+ account - join me there.

• Work
• School
• Family
• City
• Close Friends
• Acquaintances

Fortunately, Facebook has a habit of warning of upgrades so I wasn’t too surprised. In fact check out the release here.

It’s nice to see competition driving change even if only incremental.

A: When tracking the traffic to your website, you should be aware of your bounce rate, which is literally when a visitor lands on your website and bounces right off.

Typically, you can expect a higher bounce rate if you are running a pay-per-click campaign, or if you are getting a lot of traffic through search engines. Why? Because you cannot control how people conduct a search and you certainly can’t know what people are looking for (not exactly anyway). This is why it’s so important to be very targeted with your blog post titles, title tags, tags, keywords, and description tags—it’s one thing to draw people in, it’s another to keep them there.

PLUS, you need to deliver what you advertise. If you have relevant content you are less likely to experience a high number of bounces. I once worked with a client whose desired search term was “Spousal Support,” (meaning the book offered tips to support your spouse in a healthy marriage), but as it turned out people searching for that term were looking for divorce attorneys, not marriage support. Had we optimized the client’s site for that term he would have experienced a high bounce rate.

Any bounce rate above 70% is BAD. With that said, anything below 30% is equally bad because that tells me no one is finding your site organically. I typically shoot for something between 35 and 55%.

Remember too, your bounce rate is just a small part of what to look for when you gauge the effectiveness of your site and whether or not you are creating sticky content.

See where your traffic is coming from before you worry too much about your bounce rate. If your traffic is coming in direct and yet people leave right away, I would assume that you need better content to draw them in and keep them there. If you have a 78% bounce rate (for example) and your traffic comes mostly through search engines, then you might try to play with your keywords and title tags and ensure that your content is relative to your tags. You can learn more about writing effective title tags here.

I’ll post more on Traffic Tracking in tomorrow’s blog.

Thanks to Karla Olson of Book Studio, Inc. for submitting this question.

Karla Olson has been in the publishing industry for over 25 years and has been involved in the creation and development of hundreds of books representing traditional and custom publishing and packaging.

Before founding BookStudio in 2005, she was the Creative Director of Tehabi Books; principal of Via Press, an editorial and publishing consultant; Editorial Director of The Michael Friedman Publishing Group; and Assistant Editor at Putnam Publishing. Olson is the President of Publishers and Writers of San Diego, an affiliate of Independent Book Publishers Association, and Founder and President of Read Local, a marketing coalition for authors.

A: The most effective way to encourage others to share your content is to offer value so that people want to share it with their network: free resources, tips, advice, statistics, etc. But, you also need to make it easy for your audience to share that content. To answer this question, I would like to discuss the Share and Follow WordPress plug-in and offer a few tips that will help get your content out there and gain you more exposure.

Firstly, let’s talk about the many ways that people will share content:

1. E-mail it to a friend
2. Share it or Like it on Facebook
3. Retweet it on Twitter
4. Bookmark it on Delicious, Stumble Upon, Technorati, etc.
5. Share it on Digg, Reddit, etc.
6. Plus 1 it on Google (a new beta program that is similar to Google’s Like)
7. Favorite it or Like it on YouTube
8. Comment about your services on Yelp!

Here’s the key: if you have a readily available button that is easy to click—people will click it. It is never advisable to make people work to share your content.

To easily manage your share features, I recommend Share and Follow (one of my favorite WordPress plugins). It’s slick because the Follow/Subscriber portion appears on the right side of your screen and does not take up valuable space in your sidebar.

Follow Features: This tool gives you customization options and allows you to include an RSS feed along with recognizable icons so people can easily follow you on your social media pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkeIn, You Tube, Vimeo, and more.

Share Feature: the share portion appears below each post in your blog; you can also set it so that it appears at the bottom of every page. You choose which icons appear; I recommend including the email to a friend feature, a retweet option, and a Facebook Like option as well as commonly used icons like Digg, Stumble Upon and others—again, if it’s easy, people will share it.

Here’s a Tip: Utilize the Read More tag available in your Editing Toolbar

Benefits of the Read More tag:

1. This will enable readers to see more than one headline at a time, similar to scanning a newspaper for headlines that interest you.  Otherwise, if you have a very long post that your reader is not interested in they might choose to leave your site instead of scrolling down or clicking to the Next page to see if there are other interesting posts.
2. Comment options are only available from the post page (as opposed to the index of many posts)—if readers do not click through to the post page, they may not think to comment on your post. By forcing your reader to click through to an actual post, you will be encouraging conversation, which is very important.
3. If your reader does not click through to your post page, they will not see the Share options.  Many blog readers and owners do not realize that when you visit a blog you are looking at an index of blog posts, typically four to a page, depending on the length of your posts (sure the whole post may appear, but it’s still an index of latest blogs).  So, if you do not make it obvious that readers need to click through—they won’t.  This leaves it to chance that your readers know to click the post title in order to view the entire post with comment and share options.

Below is an example of an index page that utilizes Read More tags. Keep in mind that you could make it so that your share icons appear below each post on the blog index page but honestly this would look clumsy and again, the benefits of using Read More are many.

Thanks to Julie Orlov for submitting this question.

Julie is the author of The Pathway to Love: Create Intimacy and Transform Your Relationships through Self-Discovery, a wonderful book that guides readers through the process of finding true love. “Experience how relationships grow from fantasy to real love in four phases. Through the art of storytelling, you will learn the issues, tasks, and gifts that are available in each phase of the developing relationship. This book not only empowers you to create the relationship you want, but demonstrates how your relationships mirror back what you need to see, thereby providing the perfect conditions to heal, grow, and transform.”

Julie she has worked as a psychotherapist, coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant for over 24 years, helping people transform their lives. She started her career in clinical social work, treating individuals, couples, and families in private practice, guiding them to learn the importance of understanding and acceptance. She shows us that “understanding and accepting who we are today, empowers us to transform and create the life we choose.”

As an author and speaker, I know how important it is to be able to sell your books and products at the back of the room—or even out of the back of your car (since we authors always have copies of our book with us). Square is a simple little device that plugs into the headphone jack of most smart phones (check to see if your phone is supported). The account is free, the device is free. You pay as you go, and the money deposits right into your account. Here’s how it works:

1. Create a free account and connect it with your bank account.
2. Receive your Free card reader.
3. Download  the app.
4. Start swiping and get paid now. They charge 2.75% for each swipe (with no contracts, obligations, or hidden fees).

I love it.  Are you using Square? I’d love to hear how it’s working for you.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

“If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, Ford issued a press release stating:

If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash.  Twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.
11. You could call an outsourced help desk, where you would be instructed on how to fix your car yourself, but you would only understand 33.3% of what the person was saying.

Joke provided by Blaine Whipple (with a few modifications).

Here’s how it works: First, login to your Google account and do a search for Google +1 – you will be directed to a page that allows you to sign up “Try it Now.” You then have to activate your account, which gives Google permission to access your profile information and share your +1 recommendations with people within your network.

To see the +1 feature, you will need to be signed into your Google account. As you can see from the example below, I have +1′d my website and so has Chad Thompson. Because I know Chad, I can see that he gave this site his vote of approval.  My assumption is that my network is made up of people whose emails appear in my g-mail address book.

Google is also going to make it possible for site owners to offer the +1 option on their websites, similar to the Facebook like button. It will be interesting to see if this feature catches on—I personally like the concept. The key is to increase your Google network.  What do you think?

1. “How-do-you-do, just required you to know I have added your site to my Google bookmarks because of your extraordinary blog layout. But seriously, I feel your website has among the freshest theme I’ve came across. It really assists make reading your weblog a lot easier.”
2. “howday,you guys. I was informed by one of my collegues to check out your weblog. I like the layout of the website greatly. This blog is very awesome. Please keep on the good work. I certainly will read it oftenly and introduce it to my roomates.”
3. “Howdy! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog. Is it hard to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty fast. I’m thinking about creating my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any tips or suggestions? Thank you”
4. “Interesting blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog jump out. Please let me know where you got your theme. Kudos.”
5. “Hey there! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site? I’m getting fed up of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for another platform. I would be great if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.”
6. “Hey there! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site? I’m getting fed up of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for another platform. I would be great if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.”
7. “Wow, wonderful weblog structure! How long have you ever been running a blog for? you make blogging glance easy. The whole glance of your web site is magnificent, as smartly the content!”
8. “I think other website proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and great user genial style and design, as well as the content. You are an expert in this topic!”
9. “Woah! I’m really digging the template/theme of this blog. It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s hard to get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness and visual appearance. I must say you have done a very good job with this. Additionally, the blog loads super fast for me on Opera. Outstanding Blog!”

These comments were taken directly from a client’s site.  I wrote an article about taking advantage of SPAM comments sometime ago – find out how you can use SPAM comments to your advantage.