How to Use the Advanced Secrets of Google+ Messaging

The other day I told you about the basics of Google+ messaging, but that’s not the end of the story; there’s more to tell. Let’s take it a bit farther today, shall we?

Email Addresses

You already know by now that you can share with circles and with individuals. What you might not know yet is that you can also share with people who aren’t even members of Google+.

It works exactly like all other messaging. The dropdown appears, though if you’re entering an email address you’re less likely to get a populated list.

From here, of course, you enter whatever you want to share and the share gets sent off to the person’s email which can be checked on sites such as zero bounce. Once there, it looks something like this:

Alternative Invitation System

Note the big orange “Join Google+” button in the email above. This serves as an alternate way to invite people to Google+ which some may find less intrusive because you’re sending it along with actual content that presumably they’ll find interesting.

That’s always better than a plain-jane invitation out of the blue, unless the person actually asked for an invitation.

Evernote & Other Services

One HUGE implication of this ability to send to email addresses that many people caught on to early but that not everyone heard about is the ability to share directly from Google+ with Evernote and other services that allow posting from email, no plugins or apps required.

Evernote gives you a private email address that you can send content to. Anything sent to that address is stored in your Evernote account just like any other note. You can simply Share from G+ to that email address. Voila! You’re done.

Of course there are some handy shortcuts that can make it even easier; for instance, did you know you can put email addresses in Circles too? Yup, you don’t have to type it out every time. Just create an Evernote circle, with your Evernote posting address as the only member of the circle.

That may look a little weird; it kind of looks like I have a contact called Evernote. That’s because I do.

Google+ works with Google Contacts. Since I’m not eager to give my Evernote email address out to the public at large, I created an Evernote contact in Gmail with just that email address in it. G+ treats it like any other contact.

Since that Evernote contact has no Google+ profile, it gets shared to via email only, as indicated by the little mail envelope.

So now whenever I find something cool on G+ that I want work with later, I can share it to my Evernote circle and I’ll find it in any Evernote app or my web account on any device.

Other Services

That last trick doesn’t work just with Evernote. There are plenty of other services you can do the exact same thing with. Maybe you know a bunch already. The ones I know just off the top of my head are:

• Evernote
• Pinboard
• WordPress

Do you have other favorites? Let us know in the comments!

Bookmarking

Evernote is great for bookmarking, so you can use the above tip for that if you want.

If you don’t use Evernote though, or find stuff you just don’t need in your Evernote account, you can just create a Bookmarks circle and share to it. You don’t even need to put anyone in the circle, it can be empty.

It’ll appear with all your other circles under Streams and clicking it will let you browse through all the stuff you thought you’d like to look at later.

Disable Sharing of Your Content

There are times you’ll want to share something, but make it clear to people you don’t want it reshared outside your circle. Google+ supports this functionality.

Here’s what a message looks like on your profile – note the triangle-in-circle options button in the upper right.

Clicking the options will show you … well, the options, of course.

Not only can you disable resharing of your posts, you can also disable commenting on them. If comments are getting out of hand, it’s good to know that one.

A couple of important caveats about resharing:

• Disabling resharing cannot prevent people from simply copying & pasting your posts! Don’t make the mistake of thinking this option ensures privacy. It’s not much more than a flag that tells people you would appreciate it if they would not share your content around. That said, it is more than is offered elsewhere, so it’s a good thing.
• Once you post a Share to a limited audience (considered to be any option that doesn’t include Public), nobody can reshare it to Public. They’d have to do the copy/paste thing. If you’ve got content you want to spread far and wide, do make sure to share it public so you don’t limit yourself.

Again, happy messaging!