Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

Are you tuned into the web today?

My guess is that if you are reading here, you’re already familiar with the importance of monitoring your listening posts to stay in the know about your favorite subjects, your name and anything else that’s important to your life or business.

And guess what!  Google Plus has built in the ability to set up listening posts right inside your dashboard with a feature called Sparks.

About Google Plus Sparks

Google Plus Sparks might be one of the coolest and most overlooked features that Google Plus has offered us in the field test.  Essentially, it seems to be an easier-to-use version of Google alerts with the advantage of being built directly into your Google Plus dash board.

What makes Google Plus Sparks valuable is that once the content is delivered as a result of your search, you can immediately share it across your circles with one simple click. There’s no need for any coping or pasting or even the use of a browser plugin or applet.

While theres a lot of room for sparks to grow with enhancements, for now it can be a pretty effective tool if you know your way around boolean search operators.  For reference, that link back there will take you to a complete list of boolean search operators that you can bookmark and use to narrow down your results. What you search for is directly related to what interests you have, so you searches will be different than mine.

A Few Examples of My Searches in Google Plus Sparks

But, here’s some examples of what I’m playing with. Feel free to look off these and create your own:

• “Columbus Ohio” OR “Columbus OH” AND Jobs — this search allows me to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the job market in Columbus Ohio. As a blogger and someone who has a pretty decent presence on LinkedIn, I get contacted by recruiters and job seekers looking for help all the time. While I can’t stop to help everyone, using Google Plus Sparks helps me to at least stay in the know as to what opportunities I can share here as well as across my other networks and by word of mouth. It’s just one more arrow of interesting and relevant content I keep in my quiver.
• “nate riggs” OR “nateriggs.com” OR “@nateriggs” – using this search, I can keep track of who’s talking about me online. A lot of you are already doing this inside of Google Reader using alerts, but it makes sense to shift this over to Google Plus, once you are in. Brand name monitoring is important, no matter who you are or what you are trying to do on the web.
• “Google+” OR “google plus” OR “Google +” – As with any new social network, the early adopters (in this case, the field testers) always seem to want to talk about the actual network itself. That’s probably good for everyone involved as it gives companies like Google the ability to lean on experienced users to make minor adjustments and enhancements before the releasing it to the masses. I use this search to try and stay in the know with interesting stuff that’s coming out each day on Google Plus. This one is tricky in that Google does not seem to actually recognize the “+” symbol in searches.

Features Requests for Google Plus Sparks

Eventually, it would be most excellent if Google set up an advance search feature similar to what you see on your normal search engine page. I’m guessing this is already in the rollout plans for new releases.

As of the time of this post, Google Plus does not give us a way to edit searches or even organize them.

The addition an easy to use drag and drop folder system as well as the ability to edit each search without deleting it and creating it all over again will be critical to garnering wider use of Google Plus Sparks. Likewise, I’d personally like to see a scheduler so that I could set up content to be distributed at specific times of the day.

For now, when you are setting up your search operators, remember to start broadly and then work to narrow it down. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new searchers that fall outside of the listening posts you already have set up.

How are you using Google Plus Sparks?  What searches to you have set up and how are they working for you?

nateriggs

I advise mid-sized & large organizations on how to adopt and use social media to market through organizational culture and better serve their clients. I'm also a blended family dad who enjoys music, photography and distance racing. When I'm not writing here, you can find me writing over at the Content Marketing Institute. Like what you've read so far? Then why not subscribe HERE?

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