With Google+, you can create an unlimited number of circles. Circles house different groups, or segments of people, so if you wanted to communicate with family members, you could create a circle primarily for members of your family.
The same goes for Networking, Partners, Customers, and Friends.
Each time you create content, or post updates to your Google+ profile, you can choose which circles can view it, making it easier than ever to create content that is targeted towards specific groups of people.
To create your first circle, log into your Google+ account and click on the circle icon from the top navigation bar.
When you are just starting out, you will have 4 pre-created circles that you can edit or delete. Google will also suggest people to add to your circles based on the contact list from your Gmail, Android and other Google services and products that you may be a part of.
You will want to edit the titles of your existing circles before adding in people, so that you can easily categorize your contacts. To edit one of Google+’s default circles, double-click on it to open its panel.
A pop up window will appear that contains the circles name, a brief description about the circle, as well as a snapshot of who you have added to the circle. Since you are just getting started with Google+, most of these areas will be empty for now.
Take a look at the screenshot below for an example of what a circle looks like before customization:
To rename a default circle, click “rename” at the very top of the table. To edit the description of your circle, click on “edit description”.
In my example, I edited one of the default circles and re-titled it to “Bloggers”, entering in a description that quickly identifies the types of contacts I will add to this new circle:
Creating clear descriptions for each circle is important as it will help you better organize your contacts once you start adding people to your circles.
As time goes on and you have multiple circles of contacts, you will be able to view individual streams and updates from each group of contacts by clicking “View stream for this circle” at the very bottom of your circle’s information table as shown below:
You can also search for specific contacts later on, by opening the information table for each circle you’ve created, and clicking on “Search” in the top right corner:
You can have as many circles as you wish, creating new ones by clicking on the circles icon in the top navigation menu.
When you create a circle, no one but you can see what you’ve called that circle, nor can they see those you choose to add into it unless you enable it from within your privacy settings. Otherwise, all that anyone can see is that you added them into a circle, not what that circle is called.
This makes it easy for you to organize your contacts, so that you are able to identify groups of people based on your circle names.
Begin by creating a few different circles based on the groups of people that you plan to communicate with. You can easily find existing Google+ contacts by entering in part of their name or email address into the search box at the top of your Google account’s main page, as shown below:
If the person you are searching for is already on Google+, they will appear within the search results window otherwise you will be given the option to invite them to Google+.
Google will also suggest users based on your existing gmail contacts, and these users will appear along the top of your Google+ circle page:
When you see someone that you’d like to add to your circle, drag their name into an existing circle, or to create a new circle, drag them into the blank circle that is visible on your profile page:
