Food Bloggers guide to Google+

So thank you all for showing up. I don't know who else is on the East Coast for this storm of the century they're calling it. We're hoping it doesn't amount to that. I know Robin, as you're right down the road. So far so good, right Robin? We just have to wait and see what happens. All right. Does anyone have a question they'd like to pose about G+, using G+, or what they might be doing that they could help themselves with? Any questions per se? If not, I will start with a little screen share then and we'll go from there. Let me find screen share. Okay, I'm going to go to my desktop. Alright, what I'm talking about with setting up your circles so your community is easy to find, so the people are easy to find, is if you go to your homepage which really is the homepage, is what streams for you. And at the top of the page you're going to see a bar and it says "all," which is everyone that is in your circles. And then next to that you'll have your circles. Now the first one, which is what I use the most, is my Active Food Blogger circle. And those are ones that are posting on a regular basis, more than twice a month, or not coming in and dropping 12 posts and then coming back next month and dropping 12 posts. I'm not looking for those right now. I have them, I want to keep them but I have them in a separate folder, just food bloggers. And as they become active, I move them over. But what you want to do is if you do that, and you can break this down even more so, so that if you were a vegan or vegetarian, or you wanted to separate them, or you have a group of 12 friends or 20 friends that you really want to keep close tabs on, you can set up a separate circle. And what I do is I advise you doing that before things get a little too crazy.. You want to set up your circles so they're easy to understand, they're easy to use. Now with this, I have my active food bloggers. So all I do, and if you hit J, the letter J takes you down to a post. So I can very easily see who's posting. I can give them some +1 loves, move on. So this makes it easy to move around. Michael's got some nice wines there. And keep track. Now, you know, if I find something— here you are, Stacy. Somebody just is feeding back there. So if you just joined, if you can mute yourself until you have a question, I'd appreciate it, and that keeps me from getting feedback. You come in here if you want to leave a comment. You know, this is just like— I don't know who was on FoodBuzz with me, but basically this is just like FoodBuzz. You can You can +1, which was the buzz. You can leave a comment for them. You can share. Now this is where you want to get into sharing. Like if you share a circle, right now you'll see it's coming up with just the groups that I invited to this. Alright, so you come in here and you don't ever really want to share to circles unless you're having something very specific like this hangout, or if there's a notice, say you had a a problem and you wanted to make all your friends aware that you're not going to be blogging for a little while, then it's okay to send them a notification. Or if you're in a contest and you need their help, you want to share something, then it's okay. But for the most part, you really don't want to share if you don't have to. I just did something screwy here. Let me come back to this again.

Dennis Littley, you meant you don't want to share to a circle, you want to share publicly?

Correct. Yeah, you don't want to share— you want to share publicly, not to circles. Right. Okay, when you share to circles, what happens is a notification gets sent out. And so, you know, a lot of people with all the notifications they're getting are considering that more like spam or an intrusion. So we don't want to intrude on each other's lives or give us too much to read. Especially, very especially, you don't want to click the send an email button. Because then it becomes overwhelming. You don't know how many emails I get, how do I turn this off? We'll get to that later too.

Dennis?

Yes?

I'm sorry, what kind of notification gets sent out? It's not an email notification, what is it?

See this little red box up here with the 2? That's what you get, that's your notification.

Oh, okay. Personally, I don't consider those a nuisance.

They're not intrusions but some people do. I don't consider them intrusions either. Okay, but this is what happens. You all know what it looks like, so these are your notifications. So I said it's not a big deal as long as you're not sending out emails. Now, but here's the problem. Sometimes even though you're not sending out the email, people don't have their settings set right and they're getting an email because you sent a notification. So you're not doing anything wrong, but they're still getting one. We'll get to that. So again, when you share, and the easiest way to do it is when you come here, add names, you click on that, and then your list comes down. Public, your circles, extended circles would be all the people that are following the people you follow. And then if you wanted to send something out just specific to a group and share it and not share it with anyone else, like today's group just went out to my active food bloggers. And to the Google people in case one of those wanted to bounce on and talk to us. They're always good to have on a hangout. So you would just put it in there. Now the good thing about this too is when you share it public, you're also giving me the capabilities of sharing it public. If you share it limited, it's gonna tell me that, and the best I can do is my extended circles. Okay, so that's a reason to share it public. Now what happens when you share it public is it will go into the mainstream.. And it'll give people— more people an opportunity to see it that may not otherwise see it. So that's a good reason to do it. Now, move from here. Alright, so this is how to use it. Now, you know, I have a lot of people that I follow here, and I have photographers. So if I wanted to see what my photographer friends were doing, I can come on and very easily see what they're doing. A lot of times you'll get some great tips. Good Hurricane Sandy pictures, that's always good to see now. Or some really neat— like I like Canon Tweets because I have a Canon camera and they tell you all kinds of neat stuff for what's coming out and what to do. Lotus Carroll is just magnificent if you've never seen any of her work. Eli Locardi does a lot of online lessons. And he has some YouTube videos that show you how to take, how to use lighting. He's really good. So I mean, there's a whole world out there besides food bloggers. And while I advocate this community and setting up your account so your active food bloggers or your friends, food blogger friends, or your little niche of food bloggers that you really like to follow are at your fingertip and you can follow them, it's always good to add more to that. Okay, you know, tech news, so you're informed. And you know, you can always go back to the main screen and get everybody too. And I'll sit here and just laugh sometimes because some of this is some of the funniest, goofiest stuff every now and then that they post. And it's good entertainment for me. I don't really spend much time on Facebook or on Twitter anymore for a couple reasons, and most importantly is just what is, is showing up. And then if you haven't seen this on the side screen here, this is showing you who is available for a chat. Now you can also use this just to chat with people real quick. Like if I wanted to talk to Joe, that's my boss from Chef Hangout, I could send him a little chat notice here, and if he's actually on the computer and can see it, he'll respond. He's also got a camera, so I could try and hang out with them real quick. So if they have a camera, that means you could do a quick one-on-one hangout with them. This one's on a mobile phone, alright, and the little green dots are showing that they are available. So it doesn't show everybody, it just gives you a snippet. And here there's a little box if you don't want people to know you're online for various reasons. Like, I've actually got a couple stalkers that constantly bombard me with questions and things all the time, so I'm very rarely visible. You can't get any work accomplished when people are doing that all the time to you, same person. Anyway, I keep myself invisible. Any questions so far?

We're good?

Okay, I will move on then. Come back to here again.

You're saying when you post a post only click public and that's it.

Yes. Now I'm not telling you what to do, you can do it any way you want to, but by clicking public what you're doing is you're eliminating the notifications going out and you're also sending it to more of the stream. Now while we want to— I said while we want to form a community and it's very important to follow your fellow food bloggers and to connect with them, Alright, these aren't the people that are going to be reading your blog all the time. These aren't the people that are going to be making your recipes. Alright, we want just like the regular people that are on here for fun. We want the tech people who have no idea how to cook, most of them, they just, they were looking for good recipes. Photographers are always looking for recipes. So what you want to do is you want to interact with them, and I've been able to interact with some pretty good ones along the way because they'll send me, hey Chef, do you have a recipe for— and I'll look for one real quick to send them because this is something they're turning to me for some help in that field and I want to provide it for them. Then you get a following that you never had. They'll share something to their friends, which is a whole new segment now. So you're opening up, you're diversifying, you're giving yourself a whole new area to get readers, to get people coming to your blog, to get people to reshare your stuff. Remember that hair commercial, one friend told this friend and these two friends told four friends and these four friends told— this is what happens. And by getting out of your comfort zone a little and going and looking for people other than just food bloggers, this is where your following is going to increase and this is where you're going to pick up some more people that are really going to be interesting and fun. I have some people out there from all over the world that are really fun to talk to. Okay, alright, so let me move on and I'm gonna go to how to, how to use your settings. Now if you come to the top of the page where your name is and you click on that and then you click on account, it brings up your account information. Now you can go right in here. It'll give you all your information that you can list, your security, you change your password. Two-step verification, I stopped using because every time I wanted to log on, it'd have to send me a message to my cell phone to put the code in. And I haven't had any issues with that, knock on wood. But I mean, if you wanted to really make it more secure, that would be how you did it. Your profile, this shows you what's showing up for you in your Google search when someone's looking for you. Sharing, manage your circles. If you click on that, that'll bring you to your circles, who your posts are shared with, a little bit of explanation. But most importantly, we come down to settings. Alright, and this is all up to you how you want to modify this. This is just how I have it. But you know, it will list who can send you notifications because if you leave that open for public, then you'll be getting all kinds of notifications from people that are really almost like spamming you and it's irrelevant. So extended circles, I figure the friends of my friends is good enough. Who can comment? I have anyone because you never know then who you're gonna pick up. And nothing is more frustrating than seeing something you like, and I just did that recently and tried to leave a comment for something, it says you are not allowed to make comments on this. Okay, so that's the last time I'm going to their, their post.

Exactly.

You can get push notifications. I don't really want to be notified by phone about anything unless the house is burning down. Email subscriptions, that's fine, let them send me what they want. But down here in the post, I mean, this is where you can get overwhelmed. Someone shares a post directly with me, I don't need to know that by email. If someone comments on a post I created, I don't need to know that by email. These are all things I don't feel that I need to know by email so my email box isn't getting really cluttered. What I want to know is if someone mentions me, if someone shares a post and they're in a circle. What is this? This is something new. Shares a post and they're in a circle. No, I don't want that one. I don't know where that was. Every now and then Google adds something, and when they add it, they automatically check it for you. Someone adds me to a circle, I want to know that so I can see who my new friend is. Someone suggests new people to add to my circles, that's fine. Tags me in a photo, if someone is putting photos of me out there, I want to know about it. If they tag me or tags one of my photos, or if they suggest a profile photo. I think that's a good one too. Hey, Dennis? Yeah?

I'm going to add something to what you're talking about here.

Sure, go ahead.

I think what you're describing is very good for some things, but I have a lot of the email function turned on, and then I have a rule that filters in my email and directs everything that gets sent to me in email from Google+ to a folder. And the reason I do that is not so that I can see it but so that I have it in my history because searching is terrible in Google+ and I want to have a record of every time I'm interacting with anybody on Google+. I want to have a history of it. So I have everything set to email me and then my email is set to push it to a place where I don't have to look at it unless I want to.

I'm getting some serious feedback from someone, I don't know if— Hey Brooks, how you doing?

Good morning.

Good morning. That's a good idea. Now how do you set that up, Michael? For a filter?

For a filter. It's a— goodness, I'm using Gmail, of course.

Okay.

I'm using Google Apps for my email, so there's a setting there, and I don't recall the exact steps, but I could prepare something and share it with the group for the next time if you like.

Okay, great. It's always good to know.

A quick summary is if you, if you set it up to get notifications, the first one that comes, you can mouse over it, or when you go into it, and then you go to, um, more. You just click, you can just select it, go to more, and then say filter messages like these, and then it'll pop up all the options for the filters. So if you want to skip the inbox, if you want to star it, if you want to mark it as read, you want to archive it, if you want to put it into a folder, whatever you want to do.

Is that all with Gmail?

Yes.

Okay.

Or Google Apps, whichever version you're using.

Okay, very good. Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I mean, like I said, this is not something that's etched in stone, but I mean, it's something that I do just to make my life a little easier because I get so many emails, and I want to read the ones that are content people are actually asking me questions so I can respond to them. So I just cut back on the different things I'm getting. Okay, moving on. Anybody else have any questions about anything? No, we're good so far. So far so good.

I actually have a question, Dennis.

Yes.

So I don't know if you're going to talk about this, but I have my personal profile and I have a page Right. And I'm wondering what is worth— because the other thing is that I use my personal email address for my Google+ account and I use my blog email address for my page account.

Right.

So which one should I be posting to or interacting with more, or does it matter?

Well, I think the way that it's set up, it does matter. Now, Google has some very strict guidelines on their fan pages, and they do it to prevent spam, which is good for us, but for anyone with a fan page, it's bad because it restricts who can follow you— or I mean, who you can follow, not who can follow you. It restricts who you can follow. You can only follow other brands. So if you had your blog page and you wanted to follow me, you can't. Until I follow you. Now the only way you can get me to notice you is by leaving a comment or +1ing on some of my posts. I can say, oh look, and I'll go back and follow you. But without doing that, I just can't find you. I mean, you just can't find a group of people, or you can't add a circle. Like, you couldn't add your circle of blogger friends to it to follow them so they'll follow you back. So you're being restricted when you have a fan page and your growth is going to be really slow. So I usually don't recommend using that. Again, you know, people want to have them, that's fine. It's up to you. It's entirely up to you. The other aspect of that goes into being recognized more as a person than just a blog. And I think right now what we're looking at is more interaction between people. We want people to recognize us as people and follow us as people. With the Google authorship using your personal page too, when you go through the Google authorship you will also have your little picture next to your post. So that's a good thing.

To clarify slightly, I'm also a health coach and so my food blog kind of ties into my coaching business. And it's all one site. So like for my page, it has my picture on it because I'm just me.

So—

No, I understand that. But when someone searches for one of your recipes, then your picture will come up on Google, on the Google search engine.

Right.

With authorship. So does that happen right away now when someone searches for you? Let me find—

I have the foggiest idea.

OK, let me go back to see if I can show you what I mean. All right, let's say we're looking for pumpkin— not pumping breast milk, no. Pumpkin— the strangest things come up. Pumpkin crunch. I can't spell this morning. Okay, there we go.

Dennis?

So as that comes up— yes.

I would add one other thought to that too. It depends a bit on whether your brand that you're trying to build is something larger than you as a person. But if you're building up a brand that you think you want to transfer to someone else's ownership later in life, then you really want to invest the energy in making the page be the focus. Because the ownership of that can change as compared to your personal profile, which of course represents you.

That's true. So that is something to consider. But I think for the most part, food bloggers would rather cut off one of their arms than transfer their blog over to someone. I mean, it's gonna die with me, and unless someone offers me an obscene amount of money when I retire, you know, I would never sell the name. So if you are looking to build a brand, then definitely that's the way to do it. But it's going to take you—

it takes a lot longer, a whole lot longer, a whole lot more energy.

Yep. It's got to be something that you really invest hours a day working on. I mean, to get to the same point you could by just using your personal page, it's just going to take a lot, lot longer.. And most of the people that come on Google+ get frustrated just with their personal pages because they're not getting to where they think they should get faster. So if you have a fan page, you're never going to get there. It's just going to take so long. But I understand exactly what you're saying. So if you're building something for that reason, then yeah, you just got to hope for the best and just keep really being active. But what I was talking about, about authorship was when I shared, when I did this, now see my picture comes up next to my post. When you search for me, like here she's got authorship so her picture, Myra's picture comes up. This was just another post and actually it's showing a picture of the cake because I posted on Google+ a picture of the cake and then it takes you right to your blog. That's the good reason to use authorship.

Can you describe what that means? I'm not familiar with that term.

Google authorship?

Right.

It's a way of verifying that you own your blog. Okay, so what it does is it verifies it. It takes about 2 or 3 weeks for it to go through. You get to put the links in. I think there's a piece of code you have to put in somewhere on your blog site, and it verifies you're the owner of it and links you to it, links your personal profile to it. So when someone's searching now and they see Allrecipes and they see a picture of a person with next to their recipe, I think most inclination is to go to the person because if you've ever been to Allrecipes, you know that it's just a hodgepodge. You gotta sift through it to find what you want. So I'm gonna interact with a real person and I get more emails now from people just asking me questions about a recipe that, you know, that just stumbled upon it some way. I get about 40% of my traffic right now from the search engine. Which is really kind of cool compared to what I was getting before I started using Google+. So authorship is like the next step in giving you ownership and connecting you to it. So it's a good thing to do. It definitely won't hurt you. Say, Dennis? Yes? May I add that if you use the Blogger platform, it's already built into the system.

Oh, cool.

Okay.

That I did not know. Alright, so that makes it even easier for those of you that are still on Blogger and are using it. So what else can we talk about here? Oh, there is a brand, a kind of brand identification too, and an authorship. I'm not sure what it is. Stacy just posted on the sidebar too the link for authorship. Thank you. And, you know, Anything that makes you more connected to what you're doing is a good thing and will help you in the long run. Alright, when I talk about connecting with people through the search engines, you know, that's a good thing too. It's making you more personal, it's making you more part of your brand. You're branding yourself is what it's going to come down to. And I'm lucky with the name of my blog has me in it, so it was easy to brand. But you're better off, you know, if depending on your goals, you're better off putting your personal page, putting your blog name under it in the sidebar, works at. One thing I see a lot of times is people don't add all the links in. You really want to add your links in on your personal profile on G+. If you have a YouTube account, if you have an account anywhere else, put them in. A LinkedIn, just put them in. The more links that you put for yourself, the better off you are. There's more things that are gonna show up when the search engine does troll for you.

Okay, that was my question. Does that, does that affect the search engines then?

I believe so. I mean, I was talking to some people from Google about it, and I'm pretty sure I remember them saying that it's just another way to find you. So, you know, it's gonna show up because it runs over everything, and your profile is part of you. They mentioned, I attended a TechMunch on Saturday and one of the things they mentioned was, I forget who it was that said it, was please put a way to contact you in your profile. If it's not on your blog, especially on your G+ account, put your email in. If you don't want to put a personal email, create a Gmail account then. But put an email in where people can contact you. I think it might have been one of the brand publicists, not the publicists, the PR people. Mention that. They'll want to contact people sometimes and there's no way to find them. And I've done that, you know, tell people I saw one of their pictures out on some site that someone else had stolen and I can't find an email address or I can't find any way to contact them. So, you know, that's a little off subject, but you should also have that on your G+ account. The more personalized and the more information you put on your profile, the more of a complete person you are and the more people tend to follow you. Like, if someone shows up up with a blue head and nothing in their profile, I'm not gonna follow. If they show up with a picture and nothing in their profile, I'm not gonna follow. You know, so it's just that you're not sharing anything, there's no posts, you know, I'm not gonna follow. You have to really put more in there. Okay, Michael, thank you. I'll see you later.

Dennis Littley, thanks for coming. Yes, another thing that authorship does is it moves you up in the search rankings. I watched my posts move higher, so that's hopeful. And it didn't take me 2 weeks, it took me about 15 minutes.

Great!

So, well, they tell me 3 weeks. I think when I did it originally it took a little while, but so if they're moving faster now, that's even better news.

Well, it was, it was extremely simple. Of course, I also do Google Ads, and that may have made it easier. But anyway—

I just did it, and it looks like if you have an email address with your domain in it, it's much faster because I'm already verified. I mean, it's not coming up in search yet, but I verified it already like 5 minutes ago.

Very good.

Good.

So I mean, that's going to help you in the long run. I mean, anything that gets you more that you are real is going to get you more time. And again, it attracts people. People see a picture. They recognize a person. They connect with people. We connect with people. We don't connect with things. We want to connect with people. So that is something to remember, to sell yourself as part of the whole deal. You having fun there Tricia? You zooming in and out. Okay, so anybody have any questions on anything else? We'll move on a little. Let's see what I had in my notes here. We talked about circles, homepage, commenting and sharing, posting to public. Oh, images, posting images. Google+, and this came from the mouth of Google, is a food-driven community. It really started with photographers when there weren't a lot of foodies on there. They've got some magnificent photographers on there and they share their pictures. There had been a question, a concern that somewhere in the terms of service that was misinterpreted that Google would own the rights to your photographs if you put them on Google+. That was disputed as not being true. You don't have to worry about that. You own your photograph. It's yours. If you put it up, there's no issues with it not being yours. What they said they were using it for is they claim the right to use it, like I think in a thumbnail for your post or for use promoting basically you, not for anything— or in the Google Images search when you click on those pictures and it takes you to your site anyway, so it's not a bad thing. But that being said,. And they mentioned the same thing was when you post, don't post a link, okay? You want to post your image. You post the image because the image has a lot more impact. So post your image with a link to your blog under it. Write a couple sentences about what it is, or, you know, hi Plussers, this is this cake I made, it's just wonderful, or this was the best chicken I ever had, I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. Say something nice, put your link there. Now I add, follow the link below for the recipe because in the comments it's, can I have the recipe, can I have the recipe, can I have the recipe? Sure you can, follow the link to the recipe. I actually write that in there now. Yes, Robin.

Sometimes when I go to link to someone else's website, the photo that's in the blog post isn't an option. The ad photos or photos that are always on the website, permanent ones. Show up, but when I click the, you know, the little right button, all the options that are there, their photo, the blog photo, the picture of the recipe or the food isn't there. Do you know how to get around that, or is that something on their end that's a problem?

If you're just posting a link, you mean?

Yeah, if I post a link and then it shows me all the photos that are an option with the link.

But it won't let you change it.

There's a couple different sites that are like that.

But it won't let you change it. Is that what you're saying?

It doesn't show me the blog post photo as an option if there are photos on the right that are—

Okay, are you always opening the post up before you do that? What do you mean by opening it up? Well, a lot of times you go to someone's site and the blog post will be first, but it's going to say— let's say you went to Laura's site and it said cakeduchess.com.

Oh yeah, no, I am. I'm doing the actual post and not the entire website.

So it's got the name of the post after the website also.

Yeah.

Okay, that I don't know. That might be the way theirs is set up. But if you want to get around that, all you have to do is click on one of their photos and if they're downloadable, I mean if you can open it and save it, open it and save it, post the photo with the link for their post under it.

Okay.

That way you're going to give them even more exposure because their picture is going to show much better.

Okay.

And you can still say, I found this wonderful recipe or this wonderful idea for being more green in your kitchen. Go to this link or for eating certified grass-fed beef. Okay. Because I know that's what you do, right?

Yes, that's what I do.

So if you post that and then you put the photo in with that under it, people are still going to go to that blog, so they're still going to get credit for you posting it.

Mm-hmm.

So that's a good thing. And you're also going to start getting credit for it too because it's not just a link, because they're clicking on your G+ thing. And while we're talking about that too, and I've mentioned it before, when you leave a comment for each other, if possible, if appropriate, leave their name in the comment. So if you saw something nice on a site, like if you look at Brooks' cake and you thought it was really great, you would put +Brooks Walker, that cake is amazing. Okay, so you're saying his name on Google+. So what you're doing is a little bell is going off every time that happens, and you're getting— you collect all those little dings every time, and that is more exposure on the search engines for you because of that. So now granted, you're not putting your name up, you're putting Brooks' name up, but when Brooks answers you, he's gonna say, "Thank you, plus Chef Dennis Littley, I appreciate your support." Okay, so when we answer someone that puts our name in something, you know, we respond, it's reciprocal. So this is kinda like the comment game that we used to play on our blogs where we'd leave 150 comments, we'd get 150 comments. Something like that except this is actually going to benefit you in the search engines because the more your name is mentioned publicly, the more exposure on the SEO end of the search engines you're getting. Okay, so it's like, it's a way for Google to reward their users. So the more I've been on, like I've been on G+ now for a little over a year, and the more I've been on the larger the number of my search engine hits gets because I'm getting bonus time for every time someone mentions my name, for every time I make a YouTube video, for every time I post. You know, it's like this accrual of bonus points for you for being a good pluser, for being a good user. Alright, and again, that goes back to diversifying a little and not just having food bloggers because you're gonna get a lot of praise and a lot of people that understand how the system works will also plus your name for you. I get more of those probably from other areas on G+ than I do from food bloggers.

So Dennis, I have a question. Yes. So this is Stephanie. Hi everybody, I'm sorry I was late. Is that kind of like if you're replying to somebody on Twitter, you say @StacySpensley?

Yes.

So this is +. I had no idea that was the case. My question actually was, I was surprised to hear you say that we should be saving pictures off of other people's blogs and then posting them to—

I didn't say that, I didn't really recommend that. Robin was saying she couldn't pick a picture. Like when she went to some blogs and she wanted to repost it on G+, that she could not access the photo that she wanted to give them credit. So I said, you know, perhaps if you clicked on the photo and saved it, you could post the photo there and put their link under it. I don't— yeah, I'm not recommending that you go around and take people's photos just to take them. She was asking how to get around— some people have it set up where it just doesn't show. A lot of times when you post a link, you post the link and it gives you options of photographs you can use, and this wasn't giving her the option. But no, I don't recommend just taking people's work.

I thought she meant For our own pictures that we should instead of posting the link, we should post the photo.

Someone else's picture? Yeah, for you, you should.

Okay, alright.

I'm recommending that for your blog. Post a picture from your post that is what you feel is the most, has the most impact. What happens is, let's go back to screen share. Let me go back to Google. Okay, here we got a great picture from Elizabeth. Looks nice. Let me go to Food Bloggers too.

See where I'm at.

This will be easier. And she's actually putting this link in. Now see, if you're doing this, you really don't need to leave this link in, and you can clean it up a little by taking the link out, because when they click on this, this is taking you right to it anyway. So having the link within this is a little redundant.

So, but are you suggesting that Elizabeth should have actually, instead of posting the link, should have posted the photo with the link in the caption as she was doing it? Correct. Here you go.

Okay.

See this?

Okay.

See the impact difference between that? And that?

Okay, yes.

Okay, which one— I mean, first of all, I love Betty Ann. She's one of my friends. I would share this just because she's my friend, but if I don't really know her or have a relationship with her, I'm not gonna share it. But this is outstanding, and not just because Laura's on here, but it's a really nice picture. I see texture, I see color. It's drool-worthy. So if I share this I'm going to get more response to me off of her picture and anyone that shares it from my post, she's going to get the credit for it. That's the one nice thing about Google. Say I share Laura's picture and I share it out to public. This is just because like I said we're in this thing so that pops up. I share it to public. Now I'm going to get 30-40 comments, I'm going to get 65-70 +1s on it. Alright, but anybody that shares it, when you come back to her site, it's going to be right under here in her shares. All the shares come back to her, so everything leads, still leads back to her. Okay, so that's, that's a good thing about sharing too. You know, it's going to help you, it also helps them, it helps everybody involved here. But the difference with the impact, I mean, to me this is just so much better better than that. It's just small. I mean, this is beautiful. It's a nice picture, but you can't really see it. Here, even though it's just a box of eggnog, it's got more impact.

Yeah, Dennis, there's another reason to use pictures, I learned. OK. It has— the image will show up better in searches. And then if you have Google Authorship— let me go to a screen share and show you what happens with one of the pictures.

The picture will show up next to the link.

Not only that, but I don't know if you can see my screen now.

No.

No.

OK. Click on screen share.

I thought I did.

And then click on the screen itself. So you have to open screen share.

And then do—

and then the little box pops up, click on the screen you want to share.

Right.

And then click share selected window. Okay, are you seeing it now?

No.

Uh, now I see us.

No, okay, I'm doing something wrong.

Okay.

Anyway, that's all right. What I can see is the the picture of the thing that I had written about and searched for, and then there's a picture of me followed by several pictures that I have posted because of the authorship that were not showing up before the authorship took effect. So it really makes a big difference.

Yes, Gareth? Oh, you just made it, I'm sorry. That was it. I thought you had another one.

Okay.

I'm a little slow reading the comments side. Okay, well that's good then. So that's another good reason to use the images. But like I said, it has so much more impact and that is going to attract other people, not just food bloggers. Then you're going to get your photographers making comments about it. You're going to get just your normal everyday people, your tech people. I had someone She was doing a paper for her doctorate in Maryland somewhere. She was off, she took a day off from I think it was Johns Hopkins to do something. I posted something. Well, that stopped her work on the doctorate, she wrote, and she had to make what I had posted and then posted about it to all of her friends and they're telling her, "Aren't you supposed to be working on your project? You better get back to that." But she stopped. So a picture will have a lot more impact than you think it will. So that's again a good reason to post the image. You know, it's food porn. Okay, and getting to that too, while I'm saying that, is the use of hash— the hashtags. Google is really saying that we should start using hashtags. So that was something I've never used too much of, but I've begun to. And the hashtags that you will find Find a screen share. Okay. So here we've got GOA, molecular recipes, cocktails, and what you would do is put in your blurb, the link, and I guess Helene added those in because they didn't have any. Here's one, someone put in Hurricane Sandy. So a hashtag makes it more relevant in a search. So if someone is searching for food porn, if someone is searching for a dessert, if someone is searching for a cake, if someone is searching for a chicken dish. And the nice thing about hashtags is it will start to give you some premade options. I really don't know if I can— let's see. So I'm typing in food. It starts to give me foodies, food porn, Food Friday, food quotes. So when you start it, it will give you available cake decorating, cake experience. So it will walk you through it. And you are liable to get autumn photography. You are liable to get more exposure that way from people who would never see you otherwise, just because they are coming up in here and they want to see autumn photography. I don't know if I have to put a hashtag in front of that or not for the search. There we go. So now because it was one of the hashtags, and I may never have found this person if it wasn't for that, so it's a good way to get yourself out there and to more people.

Okay?

So hashtags, they're recommending, you know, find something relevant. I did my first— this is going to sound crazy. Let me get back to my screen here. I did my first Caturday post this week. I keep seeing Caturday every Saturday. Caturday. Caturday. I like cats. I'm really allergic to them, but people are just posting pictures. Cat Saturday, it's insane. But everyone is doing it. Well, I posted a picture of a cat licking a snow cone, a multicolored snow cone that I just happened to find on Pinterest. And its tongue had the colors on it. I think I got 400 shares, 400 plus ones. And I think about 70 shares off of it. And people who may never have found me found me because of Patter Day. Okay, so it's crazy. There's Foodie Friday, you know, and people that may not have found you that look for Foodie Friday again. So if you can join something that's out there that may just seem a little crazy to you, you never know where you're going to pick up more readers, more followers, more of a diversified— do they have a Puppy Day? Pupper Day? Or are you just asking?

I'm going to start it.

Okay, well you know, I have two Bernese Mountain Dogs, I would love that. So I mean, people on G+ just love interaction. And that's what I'm trying to get across to everyone too, is that it's about interaction. It's about community. And it's not just about a community with us, it's about a community within. And you're going to find some really neat meet people if you take a couple minutes to look for them and just to make a comment here or there. I had a guy in Iceland make my triple fudge brownies one time. Oh, he was the most excited I've ever seen anyone. And that and the fact that I attempted to give him metric conversions. I do my best with them, I'm not real sure sometimes, but he said they came out really well and posted a picture of it. So he was happy and he's a tech person, so every now and then I get something from him that he shares. So you meet people, you make friends that you would have never made because of it, and it grows a community around you, and they tell their friends. And again, now here's more readership for you. It's how you break into new segments. Okay, any questions? Any topics you'd like to cover?

Yeah, Dennis, how do you— sorry, somebody shared a circle with me yesterday, but how do I know you have tens of thousands of followers? And you explained a little bit to me last night how you got so many followers, but is it just basically through the activities that you've been doing that you got so many followers, or are there tips for us that you can help us with?

Well, the best tip I can give you is to go into your stream and to find interesting people, make comments, leave pluses, and they're gonna look and see that you left a comment and wonder who you are, and they're gonna come back to you. And this is about diversifying because you're really gonna start to get a following when more people recognize you other than food bloggers. Right. I always repeat, we need each other. We want to stay intact, we want to keep in contact, but honestly, the people that are going to grow you are the people who are not food bloggers. Alright, when I share people, I'm not sharing what they do mostly for the other food bloggers I know, which it's good for them to pick them up if they don't have them, but I'm sharing to my community at large so they get a chance for exposure with all the different people. Let me go back to my screen share here again. Alright, now my profile. Now I have an ungodly amount of followers now, but I had 13,000 and then Google put me on their interesting people to follow list because I did so much here, I worked so hard at it, they recognized me for 2 months and put me on that list. And that's what drove it up this high. I did pick up. So it shows if you really work at it, you can get rewarded too. They do reward people. Here's a circle I shared yesterday with active food bloggers. I know I may have missed some people, and I said if you know I missed someone, let me know if you're not on here. But to add this to your circle, like if you want to add it to yours, all you do is click on the Add Circle, and that will give you the option. Of bringing them in. Okay, you can give it a new name and just add it right to everything you have, or you can go through it and you can pick people out and you can add them that way also. You can go through the circle afterwards, and if there's people that are doubles, you can take them out of one circle without losing them completely. If you have people in two circles and you delete them from one circle, you're not deleting them completely. You're just deleting them from one circle. So that's, that's good to know. For here on your circles, you open up your circles. Okay. You have them all here, and you can open up whichever one you want. And say I wanted to put Wendy into another circle. Well, I just take her and drag her right into that circle. And that's going to put her in 2 circles. So it's not going to eliminate her from this one, it's going to add her to an additional circle. So say you got this list from me and you said, hey, I just want a circle of these certain people that I know so I can talk to them all the time or I can set up Hangouts with them. So you could create a new circle and you can just start pulling people into that new new circle. If you decide you don't want to keep it when it's done, then you would just go to delete the circle and get rid of it because you don't need it anymore because you put them where you want them to be within your circles. Okay? And I always say, you know, set up your circles in advance. I didn't right away and I was just pulling everybody into 2 circles and a Food Blogger circle and I had to go back and it takes time. Start moving them around to check to see if they're still active, they're still doing things. Okay, did that answer your question or tips? I mean, the biggest tip I can give you to get more followers is just to be more active. You know, you get back the time you put in. If you're on Twitter, you know, you know you didn't get a lot of followers from just going on every few minutes, you know, a few minutes a day. It's work, it's retweeting, it's interacting, it's being seen by other people. So it's the same thing here, it's a matter of time. And what I tell people to do is if you don't have a lot of time to spare, at least try and give it 15 minutes a day, twice a day. The first 15 minutes you should spend going through your food blogger circle to connect with your friends. To +1, to share. And again, by sharing their stuff, you're not just helping them, you're sharing their picture and someone might see it that doesn't already have you in a circle and say, "Hey, that's a great piece of picture of a cake." They may not necessarily recognize that it's not yours, but they'll go back to you and see, "Oh look, they blog about or they have pictures of food too, so I'm going to follow them." So you're helping the person you share and you're helping yourself at the same time. So that first 15 minutes, spend it— if you can give longer, by all means give longer. But if you're saying, I don't have time for G+, I really can't fit one more thing into my schedule, well, you need to, especially this. So spend your first 15 minutes going through your friends. Spend the next 15 minutes you come on going through your stream. So go through your stream for all these people that you really don't know, that you really don't interact with, and start. Okay, start interacting with some people that may have a lot more following. They may just ignore you, they may not, you never know. Or if you've left them 3 comments, they may start talking to you even more. Okay, I've got some people that would follow me and drop me, follow me and drop me, follow me and drop me, and all of a sudden now, you know, it's like the third or fourth time is a charm, now they stay with me. And there's some pretty big people. So you have to prove yourself sometimes to them. But that's a good way through interactions. So again, if we go back to the stream, am I on it? Home. So I mean, I'll go back and forth because I honestly spend way too much time. I'll spend hours a day on this. Oh, look at that pizza. Isn't that nice?. Alright, but I'll go through my stream and I have so many food bloggers now and we are so prolific that a lot of them come up. But as more and more regular people show up with pictures or something that I know, I'll be plus— I actually will be plus oneing a lot of these. Frank is pretty funny. He posts a lot of different strange, strange things. That's kind of neat. So I mean, go through it, make friends. If you see something you like, leave a comment and set yourself apart by leaving a comment with their name in it. Because now they are going to say, hey, let me go see at least who this person is. They just gave me a little push by putting my name in here. Michael's funny, I like him.

Bren?

Okay, so we see Life Hacker, that's a geeky kind of tech person. And they are probably not going to follow you back, but someone in that's leaving them comments might see your comment too and wonder who you are. Cat picture. Oh God. Some of the things on here just really make me laugh. So that's worth it in itself. So go down your stream, find some interesting things. Some times of the day are better than others. Some times of the day I just don't see anything and I'll go back to my food bloggers. And then I'll wait, you know, and I'll go back on later and look for something. Ooh, that's pretty. So like I said, I spend way too much time doing this, but it's fun. I connect, I diversify, I share some strange things of food or some beautiful food with my circles. They love it and then they'll share it and then more of their people will come over. So again, it's a matter of just getting yourself out there and working the system a little.

Okay.

Dennis, can I ask you a question?

Sure.

Okay. When you are getting folks come to your blog from Google+, will that show up in your Google Analytics?

Analytics.

Okay, as being coming from Google?

Google+. It will show up plus. There's a couple different ways you're going to see it and you'll see it as a referral. Look under your referrals mostly because the ones that just say Google are going to be your organic searches. Right, that's what I thought.

I haven't been doing this right. I always share things to circles when I do, which is really rarely. So I'm sure I haven't seen much anyway, but I'll change that and do it to the public. Share. And share more.

And share, start with a photo. I mean, because again, it's the impact. It's what draws anybody in, the visual. We can't smell it. We can't taste it but we can drool over the picture. So the impact of the picture is what's really going to get people coming to you. Honestly, it's not going to happen overnight. You're not going to see tons of people following you from Google itself but the side benefit to this is that your organic searches are going to go up.

Alright?

Yep.

Somebody was complaining that they weren't seeing I don't see anything on analytics from people coming from G+. Well, I don't see anybody from Twitter coming to me. I mean, I'm not using it right, I know that, but I still don't see people coming over. Facebook, I get some. I actually am getting more traffic since they changed things and it's bizarre. But I also started posting pictures and a link instead of just the link, so that might be why. You're not going to see this great influx of people coming to you from G+. I won't lie to you and tell you that. I get more than I get from Facebook and Twitter combined, but with the amount that I'm getting from organic searches from G+ and more from direct from my blog now, it's not anywhere near that number. My number one source is organic searches from Google. My number 2 source is my blog itself. And number 3 goes from Pinterest to— I don't know what else.

I forget what else.

Every now and then somebody will stumble on something still or I'll get something from one of the food porn sites. But for the most part, they just really don't compete anymore. So the side benefit is— the biggest benefit of this whole thing is what you're you're going to do in your organic searches. That's where it's going to come from eventually. Yes.

Dennis, I have a quick question.

Mm-hmm.

Is anybody else sitting in extremes? Like, I run between food blogger and social media advisor in marketing, so I find that I have two extremes and I don't know whether I'm, you know, putting out too much of one or too much on the other and if that's going to compromise the people who follow me.

I had a question about that from a food blogger yesterday and she loves photography. She was going to start a separate page. I related a story that when I was in karate years ago and we watch TV so we think, "Well, I should learn this style and this style and this style and it will make me that much stronger." Dennis Littley equated it to a man who was digging holes. He says if you dig one hole, you're going to reach your destination a lot quicker than if you start digging holes all over the field. Now, how that relates to what you said was, I would keep posting what you're posting if it's what you enjoy. Okay, so if you like what you post, I think you're just going to find your niche of people that way. Besides just your food blog, I'm sorry, your other one was social media?

Yeah, I do a lot with social media and I do advising for small businesses.

Well, I would keep that up there and just put that out. Start using hashtags and find out what social media, what hashtags are relevant to what you're doing and people will find you that way. But you know, food bloggers need social media.

Yeah.

So I mean, you're really relevant to us. And I know so very little about it. I know how to work this, but I mean, Twitter or Facebook are still a mystery to me. I mean, I don't know why I have 3,300 followers on Twitter. I'm never on there. I don't understand some things. So I would think that they would still tie in good, but you're going to draw these other people that are coming to you for social media to your food site. And I think vice versa, you might find someone who's a blogger who needs help or who has a small business and needs help too. So I think it's gonna behoove you to keep doing what you're doing, how you're doing it, just to find a balance that makes you happy and that works for you. Like maybe one day you'll post social media, one day you post food. The biggest thing I can tell you not to do is not to over-promote yourself. It's just like on Twitter, they tell you not to post more than twice the same thing. People come on here and I'll see them posting the same thing over and over again, or 3 and 4 times a day. They go into a little box, a little circle that I have that's called "post too much." That's off. Every now and then I go in that and look to see if they're still posting too much. But when that happens, when I'll get in a period of 2 minutes, if I see 8 or 10 posts that are all about themselves, they go into that circle. Because that's really, when you stop and think about it, you're spamming people. So as long as you're not doing that with what you're posting, Tricia, I think you're fine. What, Stephanie?

Winnie's showing off her cat.

Oh, I know. Well, that's all right. The other night on a Hangout, I had a guy doing that with his kid, and only the kid was going face right to the camera, so that's all I saw. You never know. That's all right, Winnie. We're recording this, Winnie. Did you know that?

I can bring Daisy over.

There you go. Now she left. There she is.

No, here I am.

The cat left.

So did that answer your question, Tricia, or—

Yes, it did. Yeah, I mean, it did.

I think being a well-rounded person, if you're doing things that you enjoy and keeping them in there just shows you more as a person, makes you more personable, and helps your brand. I mean, if a time comes when you want to just do social media and specialize, then maybe you break it off into a brand page, you know. But I, you know, I would wait for Google to fix that a little because I think it's really hard to have a brand page right now. But there's nothing wrong with putting that information in your profile. Do you have that in your profile too that you do all that?

Yeah, everything is in the profile.

Have links to your company and—

Yes, there are links to the main company and then all the links to my food blog.

Good, yeah, because that's the only thing. You just want to share the information so if they are interested in that area area of your life they can connect with you. That's all. Any other questions?

I do have a question. Does this relate— are there any ways that this relates to monetization for your brand, Dennis?

You did ask that. I'm glad you brought it back up. On G+, no. If you're making a YouTube video, I guess you get paid for those, don't you?

If you set it up.

If you set it up.

Turn it on, yeah.

But, okay, again, 40% of my hits come from Google searches. There's my monetization. Okay, I'm getting rewarded for being a good pluser by Google by having more visibility in the search engine. So it is paying you in the long run. It's not like Twitter doesn't— you can't monetize Twitter, right? Or Facebook, I don't think, you know, you can't. So you can't think of it in those terms, but it's going to bring you much greater return eventually. You got to be patient, you got to give it some time. It might be 3 months before you really see any real action come from it. It might not be that long, but it might be. It might be 6 months. But it's going to happen, and when it starts to happen, then it's going to start happening faster. So it's running the race the way it needs to be run. And just remembering that eventually this is really going to pay off. If you're spending an hour a day on Facebook, that's not going to get you anywhere in the search engines. If you spend an hour a day on Twitter, that's not going to get you anywhere in the search If you spend an hour a day on Google+, that's going to get you somewhere. So here's where your return of investment is. That's how you have to think of it. These days Facebook wants you to monetize them. Right. I mean, you can see the writing on the wall. He wouldn't part with his stock for love nor money. Google+ appears and all of a sudden he's gone public. And then the stock dropped, right? So he's got more money. But people with money know how to make more money. That's how it works. So I read something a few days ago, and I asked the Google people about it. And they just kind of laugh when I ask them something that kind of hits home, is that Google is not looking to be the number one social media. That's not their goal. Their goal is to integrate themselves into every aspect of your life. Scary but true. Okay, that's what they want to do. It's just like, what do we say now? We're looking something up. We don't look it up, we Google it. Okay, they own us, but they're benevolent masters. Okay, they're giving us more, so With their Google+, they're going to keep adding more and more things to it. They've told us that at meetings. There's more that we can do. We don't want to overwhelm you. We don't want to give you too much at one time so that you— it just becomes too much to do and you leave. A lot of people have left already because of that. It was just they didn't understand it. They didn't understand how to use it. And they just abandon ship saying it's not working. It's like anything else, it's not so much the product, it's how you use the product or if you read the instructions on how to use the product. And where I see a lot of failings is people just don't set their profile up and all they do is come on and promote themselves and you're never going to get any kind of following if that's all you do.

Dennis, did you mention about the COVID photo thing that I figured out yesterday?

No, I did not. You're talking about putting in the top photo?

Right. Those of you who are newer to Google+ might notice on people who have been on it for a while that they have like 5 food pictures. Across the top of their profile. That's now a legacy thing, so if you're changing or adding your profile now, you cannot do that. But you can create a cover photo that you can do it yourself and put it in, but you can't actually— what it is, is it's using their scrapbook, and that's no longer an option. So, because I tried to do it yesterday.

Yeah, you can't do the 5 anymore, that's gone. And yeah, I'm not doing that either. I have one picture. I switched over— let me go to screen share. I think everybody should be familiar with this, but let's go to it. I mean, everybody knows how easy it is once you're on your homepage to edit your profile. You just click Edit Profile. If you wanted to change the COVID photo, you can put any of your blog photos up here. You can put any photo you want up here. Okay, it's just that simple to change a cover photo. And then you reposition it to what looks best for what you got up here. So with a blog photo, sometimes it's a little difficult, and I saw it on my phone and it looked completely— it actually looks better on my phone, looks completely different, this picture. And when you're done editing, I mean, you can get it anywhere from there too, but that— I change it, I don't know, every time I think of it and I have something that fits. I'll change this picture just to keep it interesting. So if you have something nice, if you're doing cakes or cookies or pies or something that you can get a nice image in this bar, you know, it's good. You're only going to attract more people. Change your profile photo if you have something else you want to rotate it with. Some people do that all the time. Just keep it interesting, mix it up. The only thing with changing your profile is you don't want to confuse people because sometimes then they won't recognize you.

Dennis, do you want to show them my profile just so they can see what I was talking about?

Sure. Let me find you. Um, having trouble here. Here we go. There you go.

So what I did was I actually edited that on a black background to the specs of the size so that I could showcase 3 pictures, but that's one image.

I think there are sites extensions that will do that for you too now. I think I remembered seeing that somewhere. I'm just kind of— I kind of like the big picture now. I've gotten used to it. It took me a while, but now I kind of like it, so I use that. It's like Impact again. But again, that's personal preference. That's all. That's why there's vanilla and chocolate and Lord knows how many other flavors. Do what feels right for you. Do what feels best for you. And have fun. Because you gotta have fun doing what you're doing. Okay. Anything else? This was a great hangout. I'm looking to see if there's anything else. Okay. Hashtags, authorship. Oh, here we go. Back to screen share. I'm sorry. I'm reading sidebars every now and then as I laugh. Select the window. Now I forgot what I was going to do. Oh, okay. Local. This is another really good thing to do if you're not doing it. Again, bonus points from Google. Google owns Zagat. In every Google office, there is a community officer or as a GATT representative. Okay, good to know, good people to work with. Nobody's really doing this, so they're really happy when you do it. Okay, I tend to go in here and I'll leave maybe 3 or 4 at a time. I don't eat out that often, but I won't go in and just leave one, and if I did, it probably wouldn't be a good one because I'd be upset. I go in there and do 3 or 4 at a time. After I've eaten a few places. But you can look, search for restaurants, hotels, hairdressers, car waxers, doctors, anybody that provides a service that you want to leave a comment about, you can. And by going in here and doing this, I mean, you can rate people. You can open up a restaurant and give them a food rating, decor rating, a service rating, and what the average cost is. Leave your comments about it.. And then people will actually tag it that have come here because people that are traveling, now they're getting used to looking for Google and they'll see what people think of your reviews if they find it most useful. I don't think people have found that too useful.

Okay.

Oh well. So anyway, that's another aspect of G+ to consider is the local button. You'll make some friends with the community managers, the ZGAT managers, because they'll be happy that you're using it. While we're here, let's go to events. I want to make sure everyone knows how to schedule an event if by chance they want to do one. Okay, very simple to do an event. Alright, and here, speaking of the ZGAT, here's a reviews day. And that started today. It's— we've missed it, but it was at 9 AM, and they went on to do different reviews for Zicat. Okay, so when you come in here to create an event, you click on the red box. Very simple. Event options is the first thing you want to do so you don't forget if you want this to be on air. Click advanced, make this an on-air event. Now what that means is all the people that haven't been able to get in today can watch this live as it's happening streaming from my G+ page. If I decide to put this on the sidebar of my blog, it's very easy to embed links they tell me. I haven't done it yet, but you can embed the links so there's a little YouTube box on the side of your blog page and anyone who happens to be there could watch it live while it's happening. Okay, so you can create an on-air event. You can come in here and change your themes to be whatever you want them to be. These are all the seasonal ones. You click on Change Themes and you can go on the featured, different ones that they'll have. They have some with motion in them. You can pick any of these out that are relevant. Stationary are pretty static. Or you can always upload your own photo. There's the cat. You can upload your own photo of something that you want to put in here. Okay, so that's how you set this. Now you just put in your day with your time. Pick your time. You can put an end time in if you want to. Location bar you'll fill in after you start your Hangout. So once you set this up, just leave that blank for now. And you can write your details in here of what you're gonna do, what you expect, what you want. And then you come in here and then you just invite whoever you want to invite. And you make that an event. Alright, so you set that up and you hit invite and all your invitations will go out and your event's set up. So then all you have to do when you're ready is come in to start a Hangout, click on that. It's not going to let me because I'm already in one, but that's what will happen. Alright, and then you'll set your Hangout up, you'll type in the sidebar here, it will ask you for a name for it, and then up in the very top— let's go back to this one— you'll see a Start Broadcast. Can everybody see the red button on mine? Is that on yours too? Should be at the very top of the screen. Well, if not, when you start a Hangout, there is a Start Broadcast, a red button, and that'll make your YouTube video. So you don't have to make a video if you don't want one. Say you just want to hang out with Laura today and talk to her and talk about pies. You don't have to make that an event, or you don't have to make that live broadcast YouTube video. You can just have a nice little chat with her, share a cup of coffee, and catch up with a friend.. So this is great for this too. Or you can have 8 of your friends on. Maybe you want to get your sorority sisters or your fraternity brothers or just people from your family in another town together for dinner. This is one of the things I do, Chef Hangout classes on cooking. I use this for that. I'll set up 2 cameras when I do that and I bring people on live and we cook together. Now I've had families come on. I had 2 in Amsterdam and 2 in Texas. So when you're done teaching them whatever you're teaching, you can leave and they stay on and they have a meal together. So this is a great way to bring people from all over the country together, just like we're doing today, uh, for any other purpose. Say you wanna talk to your friends that are anywhere else and you wanna have a drink with them, or you wanna share a new cocktail recipe, or you wanna share a new pie recipe or whatever you want to share with them. This is a great thing you can use to do that too. Okay, so that's getting a little off topic, but talking about Hangouts and how to do the events. Alright, any questions?

We good?

Great.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Well, thank you all for coming today. I'm gonna go watch the storm for a while, and if you have any questions, please email me, send me a message on Google Google+. Don't be afraid to do that. It's easy to use. Just take everything out of the box and put my name in. Just make sure you're not— if you're asking something you don't want anybody else to see, don't make it public accidentally and put my name in. Just make sure whoever you're sending the message to is just addressed to them and no one else will see it. You can ask me anything you like, and if I can help you, I'll be very happy to help you. I would ask you to contact any other food bloggers that you may know and try and motivate them a little to come on to Google+. Because we really want to build this community and we're looking right now, Laura's going to help me and we're going to start building this community up some and seeing where we can take it and seeing what we can do. Because I'd really like to have a festival that I could go to that would be a lot of fun since FoodBuzz died this year. May they rest in peace. Anyway, or in pieces as it is with Federated. But just, you know, we could really do something with this, I think, and make this into a lot more than it is and really be very popular among the community. I have a slogan for us too. Our food bloggers' slogan is now—

Oh!

Sorry about that.

That's okay. Oh, that was anticlimactic. Alright, let's try this again. My food blogger slogan is, come for the food, stay for the conversation. Okay, because you'll come to Google+ to share your food and to show your food, but once you take some time to diversify, you're going to stay for the conversation because you're going to meet a lot of really neat people on G+. Okay?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll see you all later.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.