One of the first things you should do when you join Google+ is setup your profile. It’s the first thing all new people you meet on the platform will look at when deciding whether or not to put you in one of their circles.
If you use other social media platforms, like Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, etc. this exercise will go very quickly. I’ll show you some ideas on which pieces can simply be copied into place here on Google+ – a simple mapping process will get you up and running with a decent profile in minutes.
1. Put in your name. There’s no need to think up a clever handle, and you had to enter your name as part of the setup process. So this step is already done!
2. Enter a tagline (Twitter). Copy whatever clever one-liner you worked up for your Twitter profile and paste it here. You can tweak it if you like, but chances are whatever you settled on for the limited field in Twitter is probably going to work fine here.
3. Add a profile photo (Twitter, LinkedIn). Don’t leave the mysterious shadow figure on your profile for even a minute. Take an existing profile photo from Twitter or LinkedIn or another service and paste it in here. I use the same profile photo for all social media services so I can be more easily recognized from platform to platform.
4. Add your introduction (Blog, LinkedIn). Copy this from your “About” page on your blog, or if you don’t have a blog copy the summary paragraph from your LinkedIn profile.
5. Put up your links (About.me). If you aggregate your social media profile links on a central page, like at the About.me service, you will have a good reference list for this part of the profile. If you don’t, just run down the basics here and fill in the blanks – Twitter, Blog, LinkedIn, Quora, etc.
6. Employment history and education (LinkedIn). This is an easy one. List the companies and college(s) from your LinkedIn profile. Leave out the details to make your profile cleaner. If someone’s really interested in the details, they can get all that over on LinkedIn, and you’ve already provided the link to that.
7. Something interesting (Twitter inspired). Here’s a chance to take advantage of all those skills you honed over on Twitter in order to be concise and engaging in a single sentence. This may take the most time to think up, but don’t sweat it too much. The first thing that comes to mind is likely going to be the most interesting bit of information.
8. Ignore this! Circle counts are not working on Google+. There is a known bug in circle counts not incrementing when you are added to circles. Don’t sweat it; it’ll get fixed eventually.
Now you’re ready to mingle. You have a clean, clear, and complete profile that hits all the highlights. Use this to get started, so you can begin posting and mingling right away. You can always update and tweak it later on as you see fit.
