Book Review: What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us

I just finished Guy Kawasaki’s book, What the Plus!: Google+ for the Rest of Us*. I picked up the book because I am interested in Google+, and I recently got newly excited about using it after watching a learn.extension.org presentation Google+ Quickstart with Stephen Judd.

While I downloaded the Kindle version, the paperback version weighs in at 208 pages. In 19 chapters, Kawasaki provides a great primer on Google+. The book is a quick read but provides a wealth of information gleaned from his personal experience. It was fun to read a book written by someone who so thoroughly enjoyed his topic.

Kawasaki not only provided technical detail on how to use Google+, he also shared his personal experience as a day-to-day user. In his book, he mentioned that he typically addressed hundreds of comments each day. He has incorporated tools and strategies to manage this workload. His insight for managing posts and comments has already paid dividends for me. I quickly installed the Google Chrome Extensions that he recommended. One of the extensions allows me to set Google+ as my central social media platform, and I can share posts out to Facebook and Twitter.

Of the 19 chapters, 15 chapters are primary chapters, and four chapters are supplements to other chapters. For example, he has a chapter on making a great profile, and supplements the chapter with achieving trustworthiness. Chapter 6 focuses on sharing posts while its supplement talks about optimizing for social search. Chapter 10 talked about getting more followers and was supplemented with how to be a little fish in a big pond. Finally, chapter 11 dealt with dealing with bozos and surviving in an all boys’ club.

For a couple of the chapters, Kawasaki asked guest authors to provide their input. One chapter was written by a photography guru and the other was a woman’s perspective of using Google+.

Kawasaki’s book provides links to valuable resources such as databases for finding people to add to circles, resources for finding photos to add to posts, and great resources for finding content for posts. I was able to walk away with a wealth of useful resources and strategies for using Google+.

Whether you are an experienced user of Google+ or interested in starting, I would recommend this book as a primer.

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