“I didn’t plan to write this one – except that I fell in love with Google+, so I decided to write a book about it,” Kawasaki said.
Now, I’ve known Kawasaki more than 20 years and the last time he wrote a book about a product (“The Macintosh Way“) was 1987.
“After using Google+ for a few months, I felt the need to write another product-oriented book,” Kawasaki explained. “This book explains ‘what the plus’ makes Google+ as special as Macintosh.”
Kawasaki is an Apple Fellow and he was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh back in 1984. So, this is high praise for Google+.
“My goals are to help you to derive as much joy and value from Google+ as I do,” Kawasaki added. “My topics include: How to circle people, how to perfect your profile, how to craft effective posts, how to comment, how to respond to comments, and how to share photographs.”
Now, you are about 90 minutes and just $2.99 away from mastering Google+. That’s all it takes.
But Don’t Just Take Kawasaki’s Word For It
Here’s what three experts have to say about What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us:
- Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, says, “What The Plus is the G+ motherlode! Guy’s book will make you fall madly in love with Google+ and never look back!”
- Robert Scoble, Rackspace videoblogger, says, “People ask me why I like Google+ better. I struggle to find the words, but Guy Kawasaki not only figured it out but shows you how to get the most out of this new social network.”
- Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice-President, Social, Google, says, “We didn’t expect over 100,000,000 people to join Google+ so quickly. If we had, we might have written a tutorial like this one. Lucky for us, Guy has written this wonderful introduction to Google+. Highly recommended!”
OK, so that last “expert” has a horse in this race. But I know Smith and Scoble and they don’t pull their punches. So, I clicked on the “Buy now with 1-click” button on Amazon.com and downloaded the ebook using the Kindle Cloud Reader.
It took me about an hour-and-a-half to read the 10-12 chapters. Why 10-12? Because the ebook has chapters 4 and 4+ as well as chapters 6 and 6+.
‘What the Plus!’ Highlights
In fact, “Chapter 4+: How to Achieve Trustworthiness” and “Chapter 6+: How to Optimize for Social Search” were two of my favorite chapters.
For example, Kawasaki says in Chapter 4+, “Don’t get the impression that the key to trustworthiness is simply projecting trustworthiness. That would be putting lipstick on a pig – it’s still a pig underneath. The underlying fundamentals are the key, so that you can be conveying trustworthiness.”
And in Chapter 6+, he says, “Social search should bring a smile to the face of every marketer because this is one of the few comprehensible ways to influence search results: post stuff about a topic, and you’ll probably be included when your friends search for a topic. Social search means goodness for all: searchers get more relevant and valuable search results and ‘searchees’ know how to appear in those results.”
Finally, I really enjoyed reading “Chapter 9: How to Hang Out.” As Kawasaki says, “Google+ Hangouts blow away what you can do on Facebook and Twitter. It’s one of those ‘enabling technologies’ that people can use to ‘let a hundred flowers blossom.’ If you are feeling like a Google+ evangelist, you could use hangouts as a kind of Trojan Horse by telling your friends to just use hangouts and to stick with Facebook and Twitter for everything else. Soon you’ll be seeing a lot more of them on Google+.”
Will You Fall in Love With Google+?
After reading “What the Plus!,” I finally joined Google+. I was amazed by how many of my friends were already there – and then I was promptly asked by an acquaintance at YouTube to “circle” YouTube for marketers on Google+. The posts were relevant, so I did.
Even though I’m a PC guy, I’ve got to admit that Kawasaki is right: “Macintosh was a better computer, and many people didn’t ‘get it.’ Now, Google+ is a better social network, and many people don’t get it, either.”
So, check out “What the Plus!” And let me know if you fall in love with Google+, too.