A deeper look at "Circles" to organize your network

A lot of great content has already been written about Google Plus and how we can use it for recruiting (or networking if you are not a recruiter). I continue to think circles are the key feature for those of us feeling unsatisfied with other social media platforms ability to organize and structure our contacts. I wanted to give my take on how to really dig deep and use Google Plus to organize your online world.

1) Start Big - Huh? Don’t people usually recommend starting small? Well bad idea here. Create as many circles as you find relevant to your purposes and vigorously add your contacts. For example...adding me to your Google Plus account? I should probably show up in the following circles - Recruiter, Googlers, MathWorkers, Boston, UNH, Framingham State and a few others. By putting people into multiple circles you can make sure that when you need to tap those networks you’ve fully represented everyone you know.

2) Don’t be shy - Circles are private, so you could add me to “People to ignore” and I wouldn’t know it. So, don’t be shy about creating circles that you might not want to share with the general public. For example - “People I’ve Hired”, “People I wish I hired”, “People I’d never hire”....lots of potential here, be creative and use this feature to its full potential.

3) Import Address Book - Another great feature, and yeah, most other sites have this but not with the easy to use circles. Here’s what you do. Import your LinkedIn contacts (easy to do, um, Google it) and any other .csv files you’ve got. Not sure who’s on Google Plus or what circles they should be in because you are a networking machine and have like a million contacts? Well, that’s ok. Add them all to a generic circle “LinkedIn Unfiltered” is mine...and as people add you to their circles you’ll get notifications back, review their profile (aka remember how you know them) and then resort into the appropriate circles. It works, seriously, takes all the manual work out of what could be a daunting exercise.

Hope this helps, would love to hear your comments. We are all just getting started with Google Plus and exciting to hear what other folks are doing to maximize the platform!