How Get More Out of Google+ Status Updates and Posts

Even though Google+ is in its infancy, they had the insight to build in a few Easter eggs for us true nerds to figure out and play with. Many of us have been observing that one of the nice things about the platform is that is actually has the ability to be used for blogging. While Facebook sort of tried this with Notes, it never really took off. One of the reasons for that, in my opinion, is because it was only capable of plain text. While Google+ isn’t quite ready for full on HTML 5, they have given us a few formatting tricks that we can use to dress up our text.

Bold

Bold your text by doing the following:

Placing an asterisk on either side of your text like this: *this text will be bold* and it will look like this: this text will be bold

Italics

Italicize your text by doing this:

Place an underscore on either side of your text like this: _this text will be italicized_ and it will look like this: this text will be italicized

Strikethrough

You can throw a strikethrough on your text by doing the following:

Place a simple dash on either side of your text like this: –this text will be struck- and it will look like this: this text will be struck

Getting Fancy

You can combine some or all of these formatting  tactics to get more out of them. A cool observation I had is that you don’t even have to keep the modifiers in order. You can put them in any order.  Here’s a pretty extreme example:

This update will look *a lot* more clever tomorrow morning. I am curious to see if anyone will come back to it and _POSSIBLY_ comment on it. I am pretty certain that Google will roll out some enhanced features to enable Google+ to become _*an actual blogging platform*_ but first they will have to give users a way to -actually- _*EASILY*_ format their text and lay it out in an -_intuitive-_ *-logical*- quick way to make sure it looks good. There, I -_*DECLARED*_- said it.

and it shows up like this

This update will look a lot more clever tomorrow morning. I am curious to see if anyone will come back to it and POSSIBLY comment on it. I am pretty certain that Google will roll out some enhanced features to enable Google+ to become an actual blogging platform but first they will have to give users a way to actually EASILY format their text and lay it out in an intuitive  logical quick way to make sure it looks good. There, I DECLARED said it.

What this means to your business

If you are a community manager or just the person that updates your Google+ business page from time to time, you will be able to use this trick to put lead and section titles on your posts and make them look a bit more like something your viewers will find on your blog. There are relatively few people that use these tactics so you will stand out almost immediately. It will build consistency in your content and you will be in great shape when Google finally rolls out a formatting bar like you have in your Gmail account.  Have you come across any other tricks or workarounds for formatting your posts? Share them below so everyone can take advantage of them and you will look like a rock star.

-PH