Tag people in your Blogger posts with a linked Google+ profile

If you still don't have a Google+ profile (and take your brand on social media seriously), you're missing a opportunity here; but let's assume that you have one for now.

Google has made no great secret about the fact that it wants to continue integrating services (and long may it continue) and the ability to tag people on a blogging platform has historically relied on either tagging someone's @Username when posting the link to your blog to Twitter, likewise on Facebook or by including someone's twitter name in the title to a post.

Blogger and Google+ allow you to actually do this in a much smoother way.  When creating a post, there's often times when you mention someone or 'somebrand'; by providing a link to their 'presence' (website, social network etc.) it creates a unidirectional connection for your reader, but it doesn't necessarily let the person tagged know.

By linking your Google+ and Blogger profiles (aside from giving you a very easy way to publish your blog to your Google+ account), allows you to tag people by using the exact same function as you would from inside Google+.

For example, I sometimes write about +The Freecycle Network, a global charity I work with both on their social media strategy and the UK specific charity wing for the organisation.  The exact same process is used whether it's a brand (for example, the creative handmade styles of +Southern Home Hookin') or an individual heads up (+Kelly Head dominates my timeline presently, so I'll use her as an example).  This is now a simple way to engage new conversations.

I simply hit "+" and start typing their name to find them.

This is another step from Google in reinforcing the "social" in social media.  Will other platforms want to follow suit in this type of cross platform cooperation?  Will they even be able to?  Time will tell.