In the year or so since Collections came along, response to my posts has plummeted. I've tried various collections, as well as regular G+ posts, uploads to and sharing through Google Photos, and various content types like photos, video and albums. I've tried sharing to large groups. Nothing seems to work well.
Am I doing something significantly wrong under the newer Collections and/or Google Photos features, or has the Google+ community itself changed that much over the past year?
Comments
Well +Jeff Sullivan .. I will be very interested to hear some of the official answers to your very valid query. I have quite a few thoughts on this but would like to see other feedback from perhaps more informed comment first.
+Steve Kruger Crickets. (Chirp, chirp.)
+Jeff Sullivan Hmm.. maybe they are all asleep still.
I adopted Collections right from the start, and have had two featured. Those two collections have taken off, follower wise, while the others have been quiter, mainly because I haven't done much posting to them.
My overall follower numbers have dropped off, and my number of +1's and views are significantly lower.
I previously was able to have my posts featured in Whats Hot, and that significantly boosted views.
In my case the change may be because I am not posting as frequently because of my remote travelling.
I cannot explain your changes, as I believe your Collections are of excellent quality and you are posting on a regular basis.
Well all I can say is "Go figure" !!
Good luck .
+Jeff Sullivan Me again.. just had a thought about Collections..if a "Follower" doesn't turn on Notifications, I wonder if they ever see your posts, except if they actually visit the Collection. So maybe our posts have less visibility, rather than more??
+Jeff Sullivan, I wonder if this might be not a change in the overall G+ community, but perhaps [instead or also] an equalizing effect between users now that collections are being used more.
In your case, I see that you have nearly 2 million followers, which I guess means that you have been on one or another list of "suggested users" in the past?
If you've had a good deal of activity on your posts because of being suggested to new users in the past, you might see a decline in activity now that collections instead of users are suggested to people joining the platform.
For other users (including myself), the amount of plusses and comments you still seem to get regularly aren't really "low". It's just due to one of my collections being featured that I've had more than 100 plusses on a single post for the first time recently. 🙂
+Steve Kruger, posts to a public collection are still public, so a "profile follower" should see the posts you post to a collection (and not just the non-collection public ones).
Hi +Jeff Sullivan and my mate +Steve Kruger In my experience, my featured Sunrise….Collection took off and my views have gone up by a million a week. My followers have gone up overall, somewhat, but the followers to that collection are almost 4x to the following on my regular page. It has made my notification feed a bit of a nightmare, but I am not complaining. I used to be happy with 60 plusses to my pics, but now my pics can get over 500.
On my other collections, and public posts, some have gone down in plusses, but I don't post there as often either. The key is to get a collection featured. I started doing collections early on, just to do some organization, and was completely surprised when it happened. So luck and an early start to collections was on my side. Cheers!
+Trudy Grossman That's what I suspected. Unfortunately, when performance is tied to something so random and out of control of the content creator, G+ operates a bit like a lottery.
+Jeff Sullivan I agree. I am not a professional and I know there are much better quality collections out there. However, people still have to be willing to follow you, even if you are featured. This still beats FB any day in my opinion. Have a great day +Jeff Sullivan!
My experience is similar enough. My featured collections get activity, especially from people who appear to be new to G+, but my views on new posts, activity on posts, and follower growth are down otherwise. Google has graciously featured many of my collections; in the absence of being featured, collections have no net activity (i.e. follower numbers essentially the same as my profile, modest reaction to new posts, and nobody going back through the whole collection very often).