How to optimize your Google Plus post for high CTR in notifications

Google plus brought in top designers to get the tech company to appealing design, and now see one example of what's come out of it: Notifications. 

Here is a picture of some random notifications I got when writing this post, lets take a closer look.

What does each tile show me? 

1. Face or logo
That's great, if I know the person or company well enough. Favoring big brands - personal and companies.

2. Name and 'Shared a post' 
Shared a post once on the flap might be good, but on each tile?

3. Copy
Looks like it is showing the first ~ 45 to 50 characters of a post or if no copy is in the post it shows where it is coming from.


This being the notifications I see to alert me of new posts, the picture / logo can be used branding, and the first 50 characters can be used to convert to a click through. 
This seems to be fairly similar to the browser title for pages - 'frontload' your post with a relevant keyword and call to action, to capture attention and get a click through. 

Apart from this optimization aspect, I hope that Google will integrate more info into each box - for example swapping for the superfluous 'shared a link'. Would be great to see any of these or a combination:

• Topic category
• one of the new wonderful auto-hashtags
• a bit more copy 
• the number of +1 or comments on the post.

Each of these would help me decide which of the hundreds of post are worth checking out. Now that would be great design to have it in there and not look cramped.