My circles on G+ have been exploding in the past week and I think it’s because I’ve been included in a few public circle shares.  One from Christine DeGraff, that has been shared multiple times and one from another G+er, Johnny Wood, who is in my Social Media circles. Jonathon Barton discovered me and added me to his own circles.  I previously discussed circle management on my blog at Sharing, Re-sharing and Circles.

In that column, I discussed the fact that i broke down my circles into topics that I was interested in and I understand many people on G+ do so when they first break into this Social Media platform.  For the past couple of weeks however, I’ve been looking for a new way to communicate with my fellow G+ers.  As is ALWAYS the case, (And this is how I choose to see things) when I put something out there (to the Universe/God,) I initiate a spark that follows my thought until it finds what is looking for.  When spark and thought meet, to create what I’m looking for there is an explosion of joy.

Jonathon Barton was that explosion on Saturday, July 20 when he circled me.  Jonathon recommends creating 5 new circles in G+:

Regulars
+1ers
Commenters
Post Share
Everyone

First:
Dump everyone from all your circles into “Everyone”.

This may take two passes, as you may bump against the ‘daily circling limit’ that Google has, if you have a lot of people already circled.

Go ahead and keep people in your various (dishevelled) specialty circles if you like, but

YOU WON’T BE READING THOSE CIRCLES ANYMORE.

Why?

People in those circles are real human beings and post all kinds of stuff, cat macros, macro photography, circle management strategies, etc. that are completely unrelated to the circle you’ve put them in…

Again – your specialty circles are now for POSTING, not READING.

Now that you have everyone in Everyone…

As people interact with you, add them to the circle that matches how they interacted.

Did someone +1 your post, your comment, or your comment on someone else’s posts? Put them in +1ers. Same with commenting on your posts, and/or resharing them – put them in the proper circle right from the notification pane.

When you discover someone who has been added to 4 of the 5 new circles – i.e. they have check marks for Everyone, +1ers, Commenters, and Post Shared, add them to Regulars.

The side effect of organizing this way is that the level of consistent interaction I have with people has gone WAY WAY up. because I’m interacting more frequently with people who interact with me more frequently. There isn’t really a case where someone who is +1ing my posts regularly is getting lost in the shuffle – it just takes one +1 to get dropped into the +1 Circle – and then when I read the +1 Circle, I’m likely to +1 your post, because I KNOW you’ve already done the same with me… Same with sharing, and commenting…

And of course, it makes figuring out who your ‘regulars’ are dead simple.

* Everyone who circles me gets circled, and they go into Everyone, so when I run out of content in the other 4 circles of people who have interacted with me, there’s a secondary stream of content where I can be the one giving the first +1, Comment on, Reshare, etc. “Give and Get Give” as the mangled paraphrase goes.

* Periodically remove everyone from the Everyone circle and leave only the people in special interest circles and the ‘interaction’ circles. If you’ve had me circled for a while, but haven’t found a single thing I post to be worth a +1, and you haven’t posted content interesting enough for me to drop you into a specialty circle (Gaming, Science, Ukulele, Motorcycles, etc.) where I think you belong, then you’re outta here, bub.

All of this info is at his “About Page” on his profile.

As I said at the outset of writing this column:
I was looking for a new way to manage my circles within the last week or so; only because I wanted to interact with my “regular” interactors and here comes Jonathon Barton knocking my Law of Attraction/Universal door.

Once more this proves to me again that what you “put out there”  will be answered.  Can you now understand why I feel that Law of Attraction REALLY does work?  You only have to choose to see it.

Be Happy!  Be Well!  Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris