The Bloggers Guide to Using Google+ Effectively - Hovercards

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and today I'm here with Jean Layton for another in the series of the Hangouts we're doing on the Blogger's Guide to Using Google+ Effectively. And it's been a real big success so far, we've got a lot of great questions and we've given you some information to help you have more fun on Google+ because we both really love Google+. We drank the Kool-Aid, we're loving life here. And we want you to be happy like we are. So I'm glad you're here today. As usual, before we get started, if you have questions, leave them in the comment bar and we will do our best to answer them. And actually, we're gonna field a little bit more off-topic questions today if we get done with our HoverCard presentation pretty quickly, which I think we will be. So, you know, stay tuned for those and you can ask some questions from the past episodes or anything else that's on your mind. And make sure you let your friends know about this if they don't already. Share the link, share the series, let them know, you know, we're here to help them. And get them to enjoy the experience. So I'm gonna turn it over to Jean Layton and we're gonna get started on hovercrafts. Hey Jean!

Hey, hi everybody! So we kind of touched on hovercards when we did the profile setup because they are intricately intertwined, but in case you didn't come to that profile setup, I'm gonna go back in time a teeny bit. The definition of hovercard is the information that comes up on the Google stream and 22 other places in the internet when somebody mouses over your image along with whatever post. So if you go through the home stream of what you've got coming from people and you push your little mouse over their picture, you're going to get their hover card. It's the profile picture along with their tagline, where they work, where they live, and it all comes out of their profile. I'm going to go into screen share as soon as I can get it to do that. We're going to look at my profile page. Hmm, I'm sorry about the extra page there. Okay, so my— excuse me guys, this is the wonders of computers, they sometimes decide they want to talk to you. So I have gone in the right-hand column, I went down to my profile, and this is what we have. We've got the picture and this area that's the blurred close-up of the main picture is what's the hovercard. My profile image, name, where I work, where I go to school, where I live. If you go to the actual post I wrote about it over on wingwomanproductions.com, you're going to see pictures that I took, screenshots I took as I went along. This is the hovercard. This is what happens when you mouse over my name in an event or anybody else's event. I'm going to swing over to— this is our event page. I reshared just a minute ago. You can go over anybody's card. I'm just going to pick Laura. You can see all of her information. What she does, where she lives, how many circles I have her in. Because I have circle count, there's some information that pops up as well. We're going to talk about circle count further on in our series. In order to change what's on this hover card, you have to go into each individual place. For tagline, you go into story. The thing you have to remember about doing this change is that it has to be pretty short. In the post, I talk about having a second window open so that you can make your edits on this tagline line and get it to fit on the hovercard. Otherwise, you can actually have it fall off your card. That's never an impressive way to do it. The introduction that happens doesn't show up anywhere else. In some ways, you don't have to really put much in there. For me, it's a convenient place to put the URLs of my two blogs. Then bragging rights, which we don't really care about in this case. The work pops into a blue, and this— the work, the essential line of work is where you have employment. And you see I've got both my URLs as my employment, and then current needs to be checked. But when you go back to my hover card, you see Wing Woman Productions. It's a Google default that your most recently attended job is the one that shows up as current, even if you have them both checked off, which is what I do. Since I've been blogging since 2006 and I've only started Wingwoman Productions last year, that's the one that shows up. The Wingwoman Productions is what shows up on my cover card. So that's kind of an interesting way of manipulating which piece of information you want to have up. And then the next line down is your school. So you go to the little graduation cap, and it's this first section, this changing— I have changing lives through information as mine. And you again have to make sure that you check this current box. Now, this is a change from when we did the profile, which is only 3— this is our 5th, so 4 weeks ago. It used to be that education would say attends, and it would have that word before whatever you put. That has changed. Now, whatever you put is what's on the card. So you don't have to worry about trying to make a grammatical sentence with the words attends or attended any longer. You can just type in what you want, but keep it short. This is kind of like Twitter here, you know, 140 characters is roughly what you got and nothing more than that. So figure out what you want to say. It's even closer than an amount than elevator speech. And then the final one is, where do you live? And this is where I put my actual town because I am geographically between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, Washington and not really close to either one, a couple hours from either one, or an hour and a half. I put where I actually live so that brands and people who want me to come to events know that it means a drive for me. You can put Pacific Northwest. I've seen that. I've seen Seattle area, I've seen any kind of geographic location that you might want. This is not the place to put Neverland or something facetious. Google really does want to know where the heck you are. There's that. When you edit all of that, and this is how you can, and I've got the snapshots of all the different things, you are All done. At that point, that's your hover card. And what'll happen is when you are in an event— I'm gonna find me again— when you are in an event, it will show— my gosh, lots of people talking— it'll pop up just like that as you are in the event or in a stream. It gives you a lot of information and If you haven't connected with CircleCount and you're in any way curious about statistics, do that because they maintain the best statistics in the world of Google+. They and CircleScope give you a lot of information to work with. Even though I am not a stat watcher, it is really helpful when you mouse over something to see, okay, is this somebody with a ton of followers or is this a new person? Because that changes how I talk to people. If I see somebody with 200 followers, I have to assume that they're fairly new in Google+ and they may not have the depth of information available to them about the question they've got. It gives a lot of information. It also tells you how important they are in their own country, which I don't know, for some people that may mean something. To me it's just more stray information. So I'm gonna un-screen share and that's really it. That's a hovercard. So let's go to some information that people need.

One thing too I wanted to mention on the hovercard, like we were talking about the last one coming up first, and I had that problem and I realized that if you uncheck one of them, one of the current ones, save it, then you can go back and check it again and the other one will become first. So if you have a problem with what's in that line and you want to change it, that's all you really have to do. And that can let you manipulate your hovercard a little bit more too. But you know, you really— it is important to use this because, you know, I get so many follows a day and I don't get a chance to see them all, but I will hover over their name to see if they're worth looking at more.. Okay, and then going to their profile to see. So, you know, sometimes your first impression is the only impression you're going to get to make. And I did see a place you can actually order business cards that look like your hovercards. And I think it was— I don't know if it was from Moo that does it.

I think it is Moo. They tend to be on the cutting edge.

And they were really cool.

So, yeah, one thing I did want to say is, like all of my posts, I try and go back into my my personal community, which is where I store information that I see on Google+ and then push it back out. So down at the bottom of my post, there's a connection to Janna Nyström from Finland who wrote a great Google post about Circles. There's Steffen Hovhannian's post about hovercards. He's the man when you want to talk about hovercards. He's the one that first brought it to my attention and I think most of Google+'s attention about how connected this piece of information really is. And then of course there's Ronnie Binzer who talks about CircleCount. I would make sure to go and check those 3 connections. Like everything in Google+, this stuff changes so rapidly that having the history as well as where it's moved to to be able to know where it's likely to move on is important. And please, please, please make sure you change your photo because the thing I use when I'm looking at a new person is if they haven't changed their default photo from that graphic rainbow, to me it's like they're not here yet because that's basic. If you don't have even one photo to change out.

And also too, I know a lot of people are making these compilation photos of their images, and they're really great when you're on your homepage and you're looking at them, but check how it looks on your hover card because sometimes those images really get lost. So, you know, it may not matter to you, but again, it's your first impression, you know, it's an important one, and sometimes you have to pick a picture that blurs better than others will because sometimes the blur just doesn't look right behind I'm hoping Google would change that and just put a solid color in or do something else with it. Give us some default options to put something else in there that would blur better. But yeah, so think about your appearance. Remember, this is your first impression to a lot of people, so the hover card is more important than you would think.

It truly is. And one thing I've noticed about Google+ is if you don't like something about Google+, find the correct area. I mean, there's of course Plus, Google+, but there's also Helpouts and Communities, and there is a profile for the various areas within Google+. Send them a note and say, as a new photographer online, I would really love to be able to just have my profile centered on a teal blue box instead of having the blur. And if they get enough people saying it, they'll change it. They're still very willing to make the changes, so ask for what you want.

We used to be able to use hashtag feedback in a comment, and sometimes that was getting to them pretty good because they do monitor more than you think. They really are helpful.

They absolutely do. They monitor everything. So do we want to start looking at some comments?

Sure, well I have one from Jenny Field. Good advice, Jean Layton. Makes me sad to see the ellipsis— is that how you say that? Ellipsis?

Mm-hmm.

At the end of a tagline. The parentheses dot dot dot is not so great. Nice to see a succinct tagline without the ellipsis. And it really is, again, first impressions are important.

It just tells people honestly I've looked at this and I understand. That's important to know. I like this one. Ah, Lori, yes. CircleCount has lagging information concerning followers on their stats. It has me 200 lighter, not on the site but on the hovercard info. Yes, it seems to be about roughly a week of lag before it hits the hovercard. Don't know why. If it's crucial for you to have follower stat numbers for someone, absolutely go to your profile. But so far I haven't had any brands asking me my follower count on Google+.

And Lori, actually, if you hover over your hovercard, your very own or someone else's, because sometimes I'll hover on someone's and I know they have more followers than it's saying, you have to hit the update. And if you hit the update, most times it will update it to the current Yeah, I just love this one.

Lucia is joining us in sipping the G+ Kool-Aid. I love that one. Gotta love it.

Brooks had one. Did you see? Here we go. Jean Layton, which is the best practice for the profile hover card? To list the exact city you reside in or the major metropolitan city closest to you?

It depends on your needs. For me, because my city, even though we're a university town and everything else, I am an hour and a half from Vancouver, BC and I am 2 hours from Seattle. If a brand is looking at me to attend a restaurant opening, unless I'm already going to Seattle, love them all, love the invites. But I'm not doing 4 hours of driving to go to a restaurant opening. And for me, it's easier to have that information available to a brand right up front than have to do the email back and forth. Although I love to talk to all those PR people, it saves us all a little bit of work. And that's my interpretation. If you are in any way uncomfortable about saying your city by all means, make it broader. For Google's purposes, they just want to be able to put a pin in a map, and that map is a pretty big area in a small space.

Now I tend to use the area for mine because when I lived in New Jersey, it was a small town that most people would never have heard of, so I had Philadelphia area, and that seemed to give me a broader reach. So if brands were looking for me, they might not know where Oakland was, but they knew where Philadelphia was. In that instance, if you live in a small area or perhaps you don't want to give your exact location, that's a good opportunity. Now I have the Orlando area because everybody knows where Kissimmee is, but actually Orlando sounds bigger, like more metropolitan, and I'm close enough to it. It's not a 2-hour drive, so I'm okay with that.

Okay, so the next question I brought up is, do you know how to— you know how you have a plugin that shows your hover card on your website? Do you have a link for that plugin? Wingwoman Productions is a Blogger site. I have it redirected but it is a Blogger site. Of course since it is in Google's hands, they have an automatic one. You can get a plugin. You can get the file. Gosh, that's a little complicated. Yes, you can get the file. You can drop it into your WordPress. I did have it on my WordPress blog which is GlutenFreeDoctor.com. There's a tag. I will put it into my post after this event because it's not as simple as I can speak through it. In fact, I think I actually— yep, I did. I took the hover card off of my WordPress because the hover card on my WordPress was making things go into a very slow update. Mode. So that's the other side of it. Wingwoman Productions is on Blogger, so it's really simple.

Now I do have the badge, basically is what the hovercard is pretty much on mine. And I did have an issue with that, Jeanne. I'm glad you said that. And my host was actually shutting me down continuously, and I pulled them off, and then I had my the person that redid my blog for me, Keeta, however she put them in, I don't have the problem anymore. But when I put them on, for whatever reason, oh my God, it was taking forever and they were just pulling me down because I was using all my allotted time on these.

Yeah, and that's the thing I'm beginning to notice, that Blogger blogs are really not as inconvenient or uncomfortable as they were when I made the decision to switch my Blogger blog to WordPress. I'm seriously considering moving back because it's so darn simple to make a post happen. I'm sure my web designer is screaming in the background somewhere because we've done a lot of work on my site. It's far easier for me to post on my Wingwoman Productions than it is on my Gluten Free Doctor.

You're going to hear a lot of web designers screaming.

I know.

People start moving back to Blogger, and I totally agree with you. It always amazed me that with the power of Google, they hadn't developed a better platform and let everybody migrate over to WordPress simply because of the SEO benefits. I guess they were just waiting their time going, hmm.

I think they figure they're going to have people coming back because the SEO at Google+ is really worth it. This is Mark Seidel. Thank you, Mark, for finding it. The link to Creative Badge is developers.google.com/+web-badge/. So please look for Mark's remark in the event, and he's got that in there for you. Thank you, Mark. Really appreciate that.

Here's one for you, Betsy Eaves. I'm seeing in some hovercards the tagline is a short descriptive sentence, and others have a few keywords. Which do you think is better?

You're talking to people, have a tagline. Keywords talk to a computer. That's me. We're still talking to actual people here.

You got to remember that.

That's what I think. Everything about Google is can you communicate, not can you keyword, can you communicate. Okay, so Biting Edge put up the same link.

Here's Orlitha Smith, besides CircleCount, what was the other circle site? And that was CircleScope, Orlitha.

Yes, CircleScope.

CircleScope, and they are working on that to make it more user-friendly. It has been a little bumpy, but Christine DeGraaff is working on that now and she's helping.

Yeah. I think Circuloscope was actually doing a very big change of their structure and it's coming in this year. Hi Kate! Kate saying, I tried to change my nickname as you touched on in session 1 but I got a message that I was violating Google+ nickname policy. Can you address this and how best to work with this please? Thanks in advance. Google's nickname policy is one of those Important things to keep in mind: they do not want your brand name as your nickname. They want, if your name is Catherine, they want your nickname to be Kate. Or they want it to be something you're known as regularly. They don't want to see brand names. They don't want to see hyphens because they assume nobody has a hyphenated name. I tried Gluten Free Doctor, doesn't work. I have to shove it all together. In the wonderful world of can I use my nickname to talk about my brand, I think the best thing to do is say it's not there. Since I know Kate McDermott is known very prominently as Art of the Pie, she was probably trying some variation of that. I think Google looks at that as a brand name. That's probably why they shut her down.

I have seen some bloggers that use their blog name as their nickname and it will show up in parentheses. Johnny Dash as Boulder Locovore. I don't know if there is an instance when you can get away with it or not.

I think if you throw it into parentheses, they let more go past. But if you try and put it up nickname as your name, I think that's where you get into hassles. You get to choose as you put your nickname in. Play with it. If you get the warning, believe it. It is not something to attempt to work around. Google will shut your account down. I think they're back to shutting down more people again. I keep hearing it happening. Thanks for the clarification. Mine still says attended and works at. Am I doing something wrong? Michelle Lawson. Michelle, I have to guess that one of two things. Google is in the midst of a rollout, which is how they push new information out to the world and you may just be at that end of the rollout that I've already gotten it and you haven't. I would just try and structure a sentence that works with that information by default there and then move forward when it changes. Like I said, they don't announce every change, they just roll it out and you get to enjoy it then.

Yes. Yeah, they do do things in phases, so be patient if you don't see it. Here's one from Amy. Yes, Chef Dennis Littley, here's a link to a great article, an easy-to-follow guide for changing your cover photos to best communicate your interest visually. And she does give the link to it, and it's from Jenny Melrose, the Melrose Family. So if you have any questions, you can check that out too.

Okay, so Annalise, but what if you're setting up a brand page? I don't think it's inappropriate to set it up with my name and then the brand because sometimes people move on. How do they think about this? I get that G+ wants people to communicate with people, not companies, but it seems like a glitch. Okay, what we've been talking about is only in personal profiles. Brand pages are very different, and I'm not sure exactly which date we move into brand— into pages. But we'll definitely be addressing this then. On a page, they would rather have the business name and not the personal name, which is where they make the distinction. Yes, people do move on in business pages, and that's how they allow pages to actually have multiple managers in order to forestall that. But, uh, Beyond that much, I think we just end up going off into a Pages conversation. Is Pages the end of this month?

Pages is coming up, I know.

It's pretty soon.

I remember seeing it when I made up the post for it. Here's Brooks Walker. I found if you play nice, Google will play nice. Just sayin'. That's about the rule of the world, Brooks. It's not just Google. If you play nice with most people, they're going to play nice with you. You too. I have to keep remembering that I'm in the South now and play nice all the time because being from the Northeast, I got a little edgy sometimes.

When using Circuloscope, use the templates, they work great. That's great advice, Adam. Thank you so much because yes, the templates actually help you not have to reinvent the wheel and I'm a big fan of that. Amy is saying that she had the badge and it was super slow to load so she removed it I've got to admit, I think it's one of those situations where WordPress is not playing well with Google, and that happens. Ah, easy-to-read article. Can you erase "works at" and just put your job title? As far as I know, the answer is no. You have to say what industry or company you work at, and you have the ability to put your job title in the second block but it doesn't show on your hover card. So there's that. Thank you, Gunta. I love each and every step and can understand. It should be explained slowly and clearly for all, Google. I believe Gunta is actually having to use the translate tool in order to read it. I appreciate that feedback, thank you.

The Google Translate tool is a wonderful thing. I've heard some people commenting the other day about they have comments on their posts and they're in other languages and should I— are they spam, should I delete them, should I report them? Read them, translate them and see what they say and if they're appropriate, just go with it.

Here's Andrew Hatchett. If anybody's looking for information about Hangouts, Andrew is the guy you really want to talk to. He runs a Hangout Helpers talk line in association with the Hangout Mastery group that Ronnie Binzer runs. This gentleman puts more time into making sure people look good on camera than anybody I know. He goes down the Kool-Aid hole. Love it, Andrew. Thank you for coming. JD, how do you treat people who follow you but you find their hovercards creepy, pornographic, etc.? I have experienced some bad moments going to profiles to block people. Sometimes you can just hit X and they'll go away. What gives? Gotta go back to YouTube to hear broadcast. Event page too crowded for good playback. Okay, gosh, JD, it's really simple for me. I go with my gut. If I clicked on somebody's hovercard and my gut says absolutely not, I block the person. It's very simple. I rarely find anybody putting something that I have that reaction when I see their hovercard. I don't see them having much in their profile that I'm interested in. And yes, I block people regularly. And if somebody doesn't like it, I don't have to have everybody in the world love me. It's not my problem.

No, although most people do love you, Gina. Don't worry about that.

It's worked well for me over the world, over the time I've been here.

And always remember too that just because someone follows you doesn't mean that you have to follow them. And you know, if they are abusive— like this morning I blocked someone that had left a crude remark on one of the posts I shared to stop sharing that poopy, okay? Google actually flagged it as spam and I just blocked him that way. Don't worry, you won't have to see any more of my poopy because I'm not sharing with you anymore.

Yeah, I have to admit I can't follow everyone who follows me back. I would go over the 5,000 follower limit. If you're not quite there yet, realize you're going to get there. The thing about who you follow is It needs to be people who are interesting, engaging, talking about topics that are interesting to you and people that you're getting information from that you want to continue to share on to your followers. That's what Google+ is all about. Let's talk about real life. Let's talk about amazing work that happens in prosthetics or social media even. I got to admit, for all of us food bloggers, we're the fluff here. We're the ones talking about cakes and pastries and feeling great eating gluten-free. But to the Techies who've been here forever, we're the fluff. And that's okay. I don't mind being in that place.

Not at all. I mean, because they take a break from doing all the stuff that they have to think really hard for and see our chicken wings or our cakes and just drool a little and run home and remember they haven't had lunch.

Right, right. And then they come to our blogs looking for the recipe. I think Roxanne is talking to you, Chef Dennis Littley, about how to be in the South. Just smile and say hello or nod your head as you walk past people.

I find that they want to talk to you too all the time, which is kind of a new thing. Everyone's friendly, even the toll booth people will ask you how you're doing today and mean it. They're not just trying to move you along, so it's been interesting.

Exactly. Mark Seidel, who has been here for a while and has gotten his own sense of instincts up, another thing, I do not follow people who have no profile picture. Profile picture or about. I use the, if they haven't changed their profile picture they're just lazy and I don't need to listen to them around. Especially if they're a blue head, I do not follow any blue heads. Blue heads are the people who haven't even put a profile picture in.

That's why we tell you how important it is because I still go to profiles, people asking to be in the Food Blog Community and they don't have down that they're a food blogger and if I don't recognize the them by name, I don't know. So your profile, your picture, everything is so important.

Yep. And Laura Williams saying, "I agree, use your instincts. You have them for a reason. It's okay to depend on them." Joe Ray is saying, "Translate has enabled me to create good friends that I could not have any other way. I only speak Southern English." Jenny Field made a comment.

Thanks for being here again today, Jenny. I didn't realize that education showed up on the hovercard. Jean Layton, now I have another line on my card that tells more about me. Thank you.

Yes, yes. Oh, and just so everybody who looks at my hovercard, I have a stray line that I honestly do not know how I put it in and I don't know how to edit it now. I asked Stephen about it because like I said, he's the hovercard master and he said, "I have no clue." We're thinking it's this digital, it's the GFdoctor.com right under my name. I don't know how I put it in. It must have been something I was able to edit. Back when I first did my hovercard and they've changed and I can't edit it anymore, which is okay because it's my URL. It's one of my redirect URLs, but it's one of those things. In my post, I explain how Google sometimes like grandfathers people if you have a particular thing in your profile, you can keep it if you don't change it, and if you do change it, it automatically goes to the newest edition. So I talk about Ronnie Binzer having the 5 rolling pictures because he's held on to his profile when everybody had 5 pictures.

He hasn't changed it, so he's still got it.

We have some Southerners. I grew up in the South and always say good morning, good afternoon when I pass somebody.

I know I can tell now when I say that and people don't respond that they're either not local or they're just from the north.

Mm-hmm. So Adrian Urban asks, where is the best place to write food blogger, Chef Dennis?

I take a little different approach than Jean did on the tagline, and on my tagline I have chef, culinary instructor, food blogger. I don't have more of a statement about myself, so I have that. And I've also on mine was allowed to put my work down, and I put works at my food blog community. I don't have an actual place of work, so that shows up on my header card too.

Now, Chef Dennis Littley has actually talked to people at Google, so it's not that you've actually got that in you've got that ability, is it?

I think it could be the grandfather thing like you say, it's just because I might have had it, maybe they didn't change it. Sometimes, like I still have works at and attends on mine, so they haven't rolled it to me and you would think if somebody was on the list, I might be on it.

Wow, I didn't expect to have something before you. Biting Edge, which is a business, you only need to circle people who are sharing and engaging. If they aren't sharing anything, then you don't need to circle. Just engage when you see them in comments. That's a really good idea. Don't worry about every person who's talking to you.

Engage with your friends and make new friends. You really have to work at engaging. Don't expect because you left one comment or you +1 something or shared something that they're your new BFF. It doesn't work that way. I've spent 3 months cultivating a relationship with someone that I wanted to connect with on Google+ and I had far more followers than they do. So you would think that they would be more easily to make that connection, but you really have to work at it if it's important to you, if it's someone you respect, if it's someone you want to make that connection with and you want to follow and you want to become friends with. It's like anything else in life. Some people just click right away and you become friends, and other times you really have to work at it.

Well, and the thing about follower counts is that so many people are moving over to Google+ and they may have hundreds, thousands of followers on other platforms, but because they're new here, they're not there yet. But because they've got all those followers on other platforms, They're still trying to keep the conversation moving on all those other platforms. So don't take it personally if somebody you really kind of want to connect with doesn't respond to you rapidly. Keep talking with them. Keep commenting on their posts. And please comment with more than "fabulous post." Read the whole thing. Come up with some original ideas and talk to them. It's the only way you're ever going to make the connection.

And if you want to stand a chance at them responding, put their Plus name in the comment. Okay, because they're going to get a notification about the Plus name then, and it's going to be not an annoying notification, it's going to be someone is talking to them as a person. Okay, not just a drive-by.

Yes, and we've got somebody here, yeah, I need to get rid of the profile pic with my dog and his Christmas hat within the next few days. Do it today because a dog is not a person and Google can shut you down. So please, take 2 minutes and go change it to a person. If you want, it can be you.

Some of you put in some really great pictures and that's great. I love the ones where people are looking off or up or they're covering half their face or they're holding their camera in front of them and you can't see it. Eventually it's going to catch up to you. You can use it now, but just remember, we told you, when facial recognition becomes more of a fact, you want to see the eyes. So Google is going to make that an important part of it.

Scott Skrokoff is saying, "I agree, the profile image is so important. That could be a topic for a program." We touched on it in our profile setup. Yes, just that one aspect of can both your eyes be seen, are you visible, well-lit, so many details because Google is going to facial recognition. The more they know that that's you, the more likely your posts are going to show up, more likely that you'll find other pictures of you tagged correctly. For bloggers, a lot of us go to big conferences and we're inadvertently photobombing somebody's photo. If Google can identify you, they'll tag you correctly. Whether that's a benefit or not, we'll all make our own decisions. If I'm standing in the background behind somebody, I'd rather be tagged correctly than mistagged.

Absolutely. Here's a note from Mark. Hey, Chef Dennis, enough with the northern people remarks regardless of how true they are. You know, Mark, I am a southerner by birth, so I think— I don't know if Florida is really a southern state, but it is a little closer to home than New Jersey where everyone will always say, yo, what exit are you from?

Hey, Dennis, I'm a Jersey girl, so watch it, and I'm not from an exit.

There you go. Well, I wasn't either, but you know, that's funny.

I'm from Bergen County, I'm up by the George Washington Bridge.

I know when you would tell people you're from New Jersey, sometimes they would slowly move away from you.

Well, actually what I get is, "You're from Jersey?" Because I don't sound like it, but I had a mother who wanted to make certain that her children didn't sound like they came from Jersey.

Remember Joe Piscopo used to do that on Saturday Night Live? "You're from Jersey?

I'm from Jersey!" I'm from Jersey, yes. Interesting. Okay, and I think this might be Orphalee. What I'm learning is quantity is not quality. On G+, I get to make quality connections, not just like list likes. Yes, exactly. You get to make connections with people who will want to hear what you're saying. Share it. What more can we ask?

Roxanne, can we change our picture from our face to an image certain times of the year?

I wouldn't do that, Roxanne. What I would do is take your profile picture, drop it into PicMonkey, add a hat, scatter Easter eggs across the bottom, put in a St. Patty's Day shamrock, but I would not removed your face. Even Mr. Jingles, the little bell that tells you about notifications, gets dressed for the holidays. He had on an ugly sweater at Christmas and he had on 2014 glasses for the New Year. But it was still Mr. Jingles underneath and that's Google's choice.

If you want to change something, change your banner. Change, you know, make adjustments to your banner. You can put all kinds of neat holiday things up in there. You know, I routinely change my pictures and change what I put up there, so you know, that's not a bad thing.

So we've gone over time again.

Again, that's okay.

That's okay. We're trying to answer all your questions because so many of you have reached out at various points during the week.

Here's one again. Catherine, really, both eyes have to be seen in your profile photo? Yes.

Yes, they prefer to see both eyes. So yeah, we've got a couple people going, oh, time to go get new ones taken.

Here's Kirsten, so Chef Dennis, the first stop on the way back from getting my hair done will be a full face photo and to remember all the places to change it. You know, and that's also a good point. If you change it here change it on Twitter, change it on Facebook, change it around.

Yeah, and because of the auto updates, sometimes I know if you change it on Facebook, it can change it on Twitter and vice versa. May I ask about names, please? I remember Chef Dennis said not to have anything like Adrienne@HolmNewMom is my name on my profile page, but I have seen folks with something like Adrienne Urban Holm New Mom. Is that Kosher. Yes, it's kosher. They're using the nickname to get that whole New Mom in there. With the parentheses, it seems like it goes in. That's the way to do it. Use the parentheses and get it in there.

Yep, that way you get the best of both worlds. You can also have, like I said, have a banner made with your blog name on it. Again, you're winning that way. If you're good at Photoshop, overlay it on a picture and put it up as your banner. There's a lot of ways ways around having your business name appear. So it's easy. And make sure you put the links, put it in your About section, put it where people can easily find you. And even in your works at, you know, Whole New Mom, and that way it's there. People are going to recognize you and get to make that connection with you as a real person, which is really important.

That's the thing about Google more than anything else is You want to be you, not behind your brand. You are your brand, and Google's kind of pushing people to be their brand. So since they're the biggest search engine in the world, we can either embrace that and move forward, or we can go to Bing. Yeah, go to Bing. Bing's got its own When I was doing the profile, I was coming upon things that Bing is attempting to do like Google. I think we'll see more and more interaction that way. So, all right.

So shall we call it a day?

I think so. I think we're— overtime equals engaging. I'm sorry. Thanks, Brooke. Brooke's— sorry, Brooke Walker. Leah is trying to come in. Is it still happening?

Oh well.

Kate McDermott put a seasonal pie picture in her banner. There's what she did, which is fine because the blur comes up behind you. Especially for Christmas, put something with lots of sparkly lights in your banner and you'll have those sparkly lights come up as broken behind you.

You can have a lot of fun with your banner. I mean, use that as a tool and put all kinds of pictures up, draw people in. Again, it's your way of personalizing your page here, so take advantage of it. You can change it as often as you like.

If you use some photo editing program, PicMonkey or Photoshop or whatever, you can make a collage So you want to have one little square with your brand name on it and a solid background and then other pictures, you can do that too.

Absolutely. The world is your oyster.

Yes, thanks Mark. Great point. We are our brand. Yes, we are.

And that's really the important thing to remember here on Google+. You are your brand. You are your brand ambassador. People are going to come to your blog because they like you as a person, not so much because they're attracted to your blog.

Okay, I will go and do that right now. I was going to do the banner as well. There we go. Okay, so I think we've answered everybody's questions. Chef Dennis, I managed to walk away from my calendar without knowing what next week's topic is. Do you remember?

Uh, let me pull it up for you. Real quickly.

I can do that. Awesome.

Well, thank you, thank you very much. Shared. Yeah, I should remember, but my brain is like a sieve most days. Oh, guess what we're doing next week? Pages.

Is Pages? Pages is next week. Okay, I was like, I started a post on Pages. Pages is next week. So for everybody who works with the brand. Anybody who wants to have a brand page, that's what we'll be talking about next week. We'll do the basic setup. It's going to be like we did for the profiles event, but we're working on pages. And Annalise, I'll make sure to have that answer for you within the post. Absolutely.

Alright guys, thanks so much for coming by today for our Blogger's Guide to Using Google effectively. We're having a lot of fun with this, and I think you guys are coming around. And spread the word, alright? Bring some friends with you. We want everyone to have such a great time here that they'll forget about Facebook and not even worry about the changes they're making. And don't let it affect you. There's always places you can engage, have a good time, and really get some good viewership for you too at the same time.

And if somebody missed it, they can always watch the YouTube and I keep checking back on the actual event page for about a week after each event, so if there's a question, either plus mention me and I'll get it that way, or put it on the event and I'll see it as long as it's within the next week. Thanks so much for coming.

We'll see you next week. Have a great day.