There are a lot of separate parts to Google+ as a whole, which can be daunting for a new user. This series of articles will clear up the confusion in small bite sized chunks.
At it’s most basic level Google+ can be considered a broadcast medium. That is, you can create a public post which anyone can see, +1 and share.
Creating your first Google+ post
When viewing your Home stream, you will see the following box.
You can see that there are several options to choose from. Today we will be concentrating on the Text and Link options.
Adding text
As you can see, the Text option is highlighted by default. To enter some text, click inside the field above where it says “Share what’s new…”
You’ll notice the main box move to the centre of your home stream. As it does so it gets larger and pushes anything else in your stream out of the way. The contents of the main box will also be a little different, as you can see below.
I entered the message “Hello world!” in the screen shot above (it’s old school programming tradition) and if I wanted to share it with everyone (Public is pre-selected), all I would need to do is click on the Share button.
Adding links
You can paste links directly into the main text area, or use the link field by clicking on the Link button.
Google+ will detect that a link is there and create a snippet from the information available.
If there is more than one image available as a thumbnail, just hover the mouse over the image and click the arrows until you find the one you want to use. You can also remove the thumbnail by clicking on the x as you hover over the image, or even the entire snippet by clicking Remove on the right hand side.
Formatting your text
Google+ allows you to control the appearance of the text inside a post. You can make things bold, italic or cross things out with a strikthrough strikethrough.
To do that, simply surround the text you wish to format with one of these special characters.
- * (asterisk) either side makes something bold.
- _ (underscore) either side makes something italic.
- – (hyphen) either side adds a strikethrough.
Here is an example of the text being entered.
Here is that same example once it has been shared with others.
That is the basics of creating a post in Google+. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!