This is a bit of a snarky rendition of cirleshares. Take a shot of whisky and then read it.
If you’re on Google Plus, you may have seen shared circle posts on your newsfeed. They look like this:
I remember the first time I saw one, I thought,
“Hey cool! That nice person is telling the world that these people are cool and you should follow them. And oh look. I can hit one button and add them all to my following in one fell swoop! Neat!”
If you were like me, you probably opened it up and noticed that you could add some of them, and not all– if you chose. Like this:
Then of course, you read the instructions above the circle and realized, if you wanted to be in a cool circleshare, then you could join too. Now you’re really interested. And who can blame you?
This is exactly how I came to learn about the ins and outs of CircleShares.
There is just one problem…so many people don’t get it. Even though the instructions seem simple, the concepts themselves are slightly confusing because so many still don’t understand how G+ works. So I’m going to attempt to explain it all, so by the end — you understand how they work, and why you should join!
What the hell is a circle?
Good question. It’s not a community. It’s not a place where you go to talk to certain people online. It’s simply a list. Google had to go and make us all confused by calling it a circle, but that’s because Twitter has already used the word list…but I digress.
Let’s say you follow 1000 people. 300 of them are friends, 300 of them are family (you really should consider birth control) and 300 are colleagues. Then you have 100 or so strangers. Circles allow you to group your peeps together so that you can send messages to them directly…OR…filter your newsfeed so you can see different peoples’ updates. Google plus works more like Twitter than Facebook ....everything public is in the newsfeed. So 1000 people is a lot of updates. You want to be able to filter some out, and that’s why people use circles.
So a circleshare is when people advertise (or brag or boast or encourage) other people to follow the people in their circle. That’s it!
How does it work?
For this to make sense, let’s travel back to 6th grade when you took sex-ed and learned about STD’s. When you sleep with Joe, you are really sleeping with everyone Joe has ever slept with.
Circleshares use camaraderie
Everyone in that circle is happy to be in it. They want people to follow them right? So when the circle is created by someone and they advertise it, ALL the people in the circle should (in theory) want to share it too. If I’m in a play and I’m standing on the corner yelling, “Get your tickets to the show tonight”, it’s not going to be as effective as if the whole cast are all standing on their street corners doing the same thing.
So your circle is a cast list of people. When the circle is made, everybody in that circle gets on their street corner and blabbers about it.
CIRCLESHARE RULE #1 – You all have to share from the original post. This is the confusing part for some (one of the many). When I created my first circle of super cool bloggers I loved, I had to give each of the bloggers in that circle a URL to the post I used. That is the post that they were supposed to share.
But why? Hang on, I’ll get to it.
Circleshares use peer pressure
So everyone in the cast has gone on their street corner and blabbed about how awesome we all are. Great. But now, there are other people that are thinking,
“Huh. I want to a be a part of that group. That seems fun.”
This is how it spreads so fast. Now, not only do you have the 30-50 people in the group sharing, you have all their fans and followers wanting in on this cool circle too. Great! Here’s where you create another rule to keep the virus spreading.
CIRCLESHARE RULE #2 – You have to show your commitment to the circle by agreeing to share it. People who are interested in being a part have to put in the time first. Think JV vs. Varsity. Hate that analogy, but it’s true.
“Okay, so you want in huh? Show us how bad you want it. Share the circle to your newsfeed. Tell the world you’re adding us to your network cause we’re so awesome. Once you do that, then we’ll put your name down for the next round.”
Again, the people interested have to share the original post. Here’s another obstacle. It’s tempting for these people to share whichever one they’ve happened to find (since remember, we’re all sharing and yakking about our awesomeness) but they have to share the original post the host/ess wrote.
But Why?
Because as circleshares grow, the host has to keep track of who’s playing by the rules. When you share something publicly, G+ stores it on the backside of the post. Have you ever realized you can flip a status update around and see all the activity on it? Yep.
So to make life easy for the circleshare host, if everyone shares that original post, then the names will line up on the back of the card, easy peezy.
Confusing thing number 456,504,020…
People who aren’t in the circle but want to be, sometimes think if they share the circle, then they are immediately added. Nope. This is why circleshares are dated.
Follow along. I create a circle on Sunday. It has 30 people. All 30 of us stand on our respective street corner and blab about our awesomeness. We tell people that if they want to be in the next one, they have until Wednesday to share THE ORIGINAL POST. As it turns out 100 people decide to do it. Sweet.
Wednesday Night the circleshare host goes to the post and flips that bad boy over. She goes down the list and checks to see who reshared the post. She goes through ADDING all the people that did, into the circle.
Dum–dee–dumb-dumb-dumb….
She removes the people that were in the circle but didn’t share. Bad circle people. Bad bad.
Now the circle group is changed right? It’s no longer just 30 people. She announces a new circleshare is going to happen soon and this one has the original 30 people PLUS the 100 that showed they want in by their unwavering loyalty.
She announces it’ll be on Friday. When the post goes out, now she notifies 130 people that the circle is ready to go. All 130 people share it and guess what? That’s a lot more newsfeeds than the week before (only 30). People will see it more and are more likely to follow you.
It’s also more likely that MORE people will want to join. And the virus spreads on and on and…
The Takeaway
When you sign up for a circleshare, you show your solidarity by sharing the circle even though you aren’t included. This is an RSVP for the next one. In other words, delayed gratification. It’s usually a week before you’re in the circle.
If you are in the circleshare, it’s your job to share it each week so you stay in it. Otherwise, you’ll get the boot.
ALWAYS read the instructions and share publicly and from the original post.
So now it’s time to practice what you’ve learned. Here’s a circleshare that has an RSVP by Sunday March 2nd. This means if you are not in it and want to be, get your butt over to G+ and see if you can avoid dizziness as you try it out. Good luck!
