Guest blog article written by Steve Loosley, Tech Blogger

Three weeks and 20 million users — Google Plus is everywhere, from the headlines of the New York Times to the millions of “walls” on Facebook. What is Google+, or G+ as it’s commonly called?

What does Google Plus mean for +You?

Google claims, “The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world.” Even though Google+, Facebook, and Twitter are often used in the same sentence, Google is carefully positioning G+ as a platform for sharing information, as opposed to another social media site.

G+ is designed around the metaphor of a circle.

All of us have “circles” of friends, circles with our family, close friends, classmates, colleagues, associates, customers, clients, and so forth. Moreover, we share different things with different circles. We tell our parents one thing, our close friends another, and our business associates still another.

G+ enables us to share different things with different groups or circles of people electronically, just as we do “off-line” in everyday life. We can share stuff with one person, with a group of people, or with anyone and everyone, the public. Stuff can be most anything, notes, pictures, videos, web pages — virtually anything.

In the following series of posts, we will show +You how to put Google+ to work, including how to sign-up for G+, set-up your profile, arrange your circles, and share information. In our next post, we will help you join and set-up your account.

Additional Resources

Google+ Project Website

Accomplishing More With Social Media Webinar Series: 9/19, 9/26 (12:00 to 1:30 pm Pacific Time)

LinkedIn for Sales Professionals! Webinar: 8/5 and 10/14 (9:30 am to 11:00 am Pacific Time)

Sumi Das, host of the The One Live show at BNET asked me during the show:

“What advice (relating to managing interruptions) do you have for those of us who work in a deadline-driven industry, and even for people who don’t, if is not an option to only check email once every couple of hours--you may need to respond to a message immediately upon receipt, particularly if it is from your manager!”

This was my answer

“Checking e-mail once every couple of hours in today’s work environment? Not only this is not possible, but I think it may be counter-productive.

We live in a highly collaborative work environment, and we are highly interdependent, so we need to check e-mail more often and keep the issues and decisions moving along.

What I recommend is checking e-mail after each focused session.
So if my current task requires 20 minutes of focus, I stop checking e-mail during this focused time, and then the first think I do after the 20 minutes is check e-mail.

This is the message that I want everyone to hear: The highest levels of accomplishments are achieved when we work in bursts. A burst of focused effort, followed by a burst of collaborate effort, and then followed by a burst of play time to get re-energized and ready for more.

Now e-mails from managers are a whole different story. Managers need to become more aware of the impact that their e-mails have on their team and not expect immediate response. When issues are critical and require immediate response, use a different way to notify their team. Something they should discuss with their team and agree upon ahead of time.”

View the recording of the show for more tips about Accomplishing More With Less! And learn more about The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook.

As I was getting ready for our lunch & learn webinar this week, I wanted to review a couple of related articles, and my first instinct was to print them so I can take a look at them while on the go (in between meetings or at a café before or after lunch).  However instead of printing, Delicious and the iPad came to the rescue, and helped save ink, paper, and time!

Having installed the Delicious toolbar on my browser (see www.delicious.com), bookmarking these articles in Delicious is one click away. Furthermore, Delicious allows me to tag the articles with relevant keywords and add a custom note.

Delicious also allows me to make a bookmark private or alternatively keep it public and therefore share it with others:

With just a few clicks the article is now available from anywhere, using any computer or device, like a smartphone when in motion or when space is tight, and the iPad while sitting at the Café and sipping my favorite decaf vanilla soy latte.

Additional Resources

• Question & Answer: Can I import my browser bookmarks into Delicious? Can I make a Delicious bookmark private?
• 5 Ways to watch over your brand and quickly address issues! Learn from Delicious.com

Share with us how Social Bookmarking has saved you time!

Are you watching over your brand and your users like the Delicious.com team?

Additional Resources

If you haven't ventured yet into Social Bookmarking, a whole new adventure is awaiting you. Social Bookmarking platforms like Delicious not only let you bookmark web pages for future reference, but also tag them, add your notes, and share them with the world.
 
And there is more! You can see the web pages that other users have bookmarked and therefore learn about what topics are popular and what resources are available out there. It is like having a real-time "magazine" that is edited by the "world" and delivered to us on a silver tray 24x7. Most importantly, it is not in the way and interrupting our flow like an e-mail update would. Instead, it is in the background at our service if/when we want it or need it.
 
There are two questions that came up recently about Delicious, one of the most popular Social Bookmarking platforms, during our lunch & learn webinars and also my recent presentations about managing e-mail and Social Media. Here are the answers.

Can I import my browser bookmarks into Delicious?

Absolutely. This process is made easy by the Delicious import function:

1. Sign up for Delicious at www.delicious.com (you would need to create an account if this is your first time).
    
2. Go to Settings (one of the links on the top right of the Delicious home page). 
     
3. Select Import/Upload Bookmarks (one of the many settings that are available to you) and you will get to the import screen which would allow you to easily transfer a copy your browser bookmarks into Delicious:

 
 
Can I have private bookmarks in Delicious?

Yes, you can have private bookmarks in Delicious. Even though one of the primary purposes of Social Bookmarking tools such as Delicious is to "share" bookmarks with others (sharing is what makes this "social" bookmarking), there are bookmarks that we want to keep private. Delicious allows us to easily do so by simply clicking on the "..." when we tag the bookmark.

Additional Resources

• Recording of the 5 Social Media Tools by Jenny Blake lunch & learn webinar at the "Accomplishing more with less" group on Facebook
   
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English (video)