Wednesday Words: Audience selector

Today's word isn't strictly to do with Facebook Pages or Social Media Marketing, but it does have to do with social media and I think it would be a useful word to talk about and that's Audience Selector.

On your personal profile on Facebook (and Google +) you can choose who you want to share your posts with. You can set a default status for this under security and privacy options, but you also have the options to do this on each individual post.  With Facebook, for example, everyone has the same standard three options of Public, Friends Only, Only Me, but then individuals can create groups or lists that they can selectively share things to.

Keep in mind, selectively sharing things doesn't mean that stuff you want to keep private will be kept private. People can be jerks and have a tendency to share what they aren't supposed to share - so if you don't want other people to see it, the best bet is to still not post it on social media.

For many people, it's a good idea to default to Friends only. I use the Public option myself because of the various sites I post for and interactions with others. Just remember there are benefits and disadvantages to using Public option.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media. These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media. You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Wednesday Words: Extended circles

Early last year one of the words we defined as part of the Social Media Marketing Wednesday Words was Circles.  Circles is how you arrange your connections within Google +.  You can group your connections into circles with which you then select the names of the circles you want to share your posts with.

But there's also extended circles on Google+.  Extended circles includes not only the people in your circles but the people who are in your circles' circle (aka a friend of a friend can see your post).

With Google+ you can chose for your post to only be shared with your circle or if you want people in the extended circles to be able to see your post.  When you chose to let extended circles see your post, your post could appear on their news feed instead of in just your friend's news feed.

Something to keep in mind when sharing with circles and extended circles on Google+.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media. These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media. You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Wednesday Words: Circles

Todays's Wednesday Word is a word that, thus far, is only associated with Google+ (G+): Circles.

Circles is how you arrange your connections within Google +.  You can group your connections into circles with which you then select the names of the circles you want to share your posts with.

You can also put people into multiple circles.  I have circles for VIPs, close friends, family, acquaintance and industry contacts.
The interesting thing to note though is while Circles can affect your personal profile on Google +, it can also affect your business page there as well.  People can add your page to circles (which allows them to see some of what you publish), but for them to see more, you have to add them to your page's circles.

And, just like Facebook, this isn't an automatic step.  You have to do this yourself.

Keep in mind, if you want certain articles you post to your page to target certain members of your audience and not others, be sure to put them into specific circles, then select that circle for the item to be posted to.

In the coming weeks, we'll be touching on Google + and how to use it as Social Media along with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

As always, I welcome questions on any of the social media platforms and look forward to answering questions of my readers.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.