Google+ Collections - More Interesting than You May Think

Image credit: Flickr

I've written previously about what you can do with Public Collections, but you can also set up collections with various levels of restricted visibility.

In this post I'll talk a bit about "Only you" visibility collections.

The visibility of collection, meaning who can see it, is set when you create the collection. Visibility cannot be changed afterwards, so you will need to have a good overview of the purpose you are creating the collection for when creating a limited visibility or private collection.

So what would be the point of creating a collection that is only visible to you? 

You could use an "only you" collection for things like bookmarking posts from others, building a read later list, saving this to share later etc.

If you share most things to public it can be a pain getting back to private posts you have shared with others. So an "Only you" collection makes a great bucket for all your limited posts. It's like your "Sent mail box", but better.

More than you can see ...

I shared the image above with the text: "All (bar one) of +Ford Europe's Collections ...".

All the collections ...

No one (except Page managers) can see this collection. It will be used for "Limited posts" which could be outreach, customer support, anything where the Page is not posting public.

It's important to note that you cannot move limited visibility posts into the collection after they have been made. So in order to reap the benefits you should post your "direct messages" to the collection while mentioning the recipient.

I've been using collections for a while: personally, on my "hobby page" and for work.

I'm now using Private collections more widely. They do need a little more thinking about in terms of what do you want them for: but being able to have a separate "place" (the collection URL) where only you can see all your private communications with different people in my opinion makes them well worth thinking about.

Do you use Collections: Public, Limited and Private?