Anatomy of a Google+ post - a viable blogging platform?

Blogs come in all forms - for better or for worse, depending on the artistic common-sense of the blogger. *Traditional* blogs on platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger allow plenty of customization options. You can opt for a simple, minimalist approach, or a psychedelic overload. Depends on what audience you are trying to reach out to.

With the advent of social networking these days, the look and functionality (more on this later) may differ, but essence of blogging still remains. After all, you are still reaching out to some audience (general public or limited audience, depending on the privacy and content control capabilities of the social network in question).

As I mentioned in my previous post, blogging without pictures, a blog is merely a platform to express oneself and communicate with an online audience. No need to adhere to a fixed template or appearance.

Let's look at Google+, as it is today, and how it compares to an "open / highly customizable" blogging platform such as Blogger.

The screen shot above is what you will see as a user of Google+. In the place of "Share what's new" you can type away, limited only by practicality. It's quite easy to guess what the icons to the right symbolize - options to upload photos, a video, a calendar event (the least obvious) and lastly a web link.

One thing about Google+, there are no text formatting options. Very much like Twitter, only you're not restricted to just 140 characters.

Although there are those 4 icons above, you'll find that you can only select one when making a post. Thus, it's not possible to make a "multi-media" post as you could in, say, Blogger.

If you've keyed in a URL, Google+ will automatically pick up the first one and display a small preview at the bottom of your text. You can delete the picture, description, or the whole thing.

The way I see it, using Google+ requires a more focused approach when posting. You can't really make a list of say, top 10 movies of the year, with individual links for each movie, all in a single post. What you CAN do is make 10 different posts, and sum them all up in the 11th post. Or, post it elsewhere on a more conducive blogging platform and link to that post in Google+.... :)

Photos uploaded in Google+ are not compressed (though add up towards a limited quota if they are too large), so quite an attractive option for photo bloggers.

A Google+ post is also devoid of labels or tags, which means you can't group or categorize posts. So, there's not going to be any tag cloud. This may or may not be a great loss, though, as when was the last time you read a blog by category?

Absent too is the blog archive, where posts are grouped by posting date by year and month. Again, this is one feature that readers don't really use (unless your posts are seasonal AND timely).

Lastly, there's no way to add a dedicate title to your posts on Google+. You can't even type it into the body of the text and underline it, due to lack of formatting features. On the plus side, no need to crack your head to think up a title for your post - just start typing! However, since only a preview of the text is visible in Google+, to draw attention to your post, you'll need to make use of an interesting photo (which may be more tedious and difficult to find that a good title) or make the first few lines of your post as an "executive summary" to hook the reader to expand the post.

As the look and feel of Google+ is fixed, you'll have to consider how to fit in your photos and other media to support your written content. This does put the emphasis on writing and content.

For those of you who have been blogging on traditional platforms and have tried out Google+, what are your opinions? Which platform best fits your style and which one enables you to better interact with your readers?