This doesn't prevent you from G+'ing your own content though if you've added the sharing buttons, which you have.

opinion/If you don't mind a suggestion: get at least the major sharing buttons out in the open rather than hide them behind the "Share" button. Less clicks required for users can result in more sharing of your content.
/opinion

However, the forum thread contained some code that I modified and it seems to be working for me. Still not quite what I wanted as it's not really a "Follow Me" button, but it will work until I find the button I want. Then I can just use the modified code I have to make it work with the new button.

Thanks so much for this recommendation!!

https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/google-publisher-code-with-badge-and-1-button?replies=26

All I want is a button that says either "Follow on Google+" or "Larry McJunkin on Google+". I can easily get the later on that Google resource page I linked to, BUT...it has to be inserted with JavaScript...which I know I can't do.

Forget everything to this point :-) All I want is a button on my blog that will link people with my Google+ page. I know the code to do that...no problem. What I don't have is the "static" button...the image itself, to add to WP Media and then put into the existing Text Widget that has my other Follow buttons. Again...no code necessary...just need the button, but I'm not finding it. I can find a gazillion red "G+" buttons...but I want one like is automatically generated by the Google JavaScript that is for "Following"...not for "Sharing".

Hope I didn't confuse things more. Thanks!

Did you mean these? https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/

Here's an earlier discussion about adding the G+ symbol to your sidebar. Yes, it is an image in a text widget with a link to your G+ profile.

FWIW the "follow me" and add to a circle dropdown demonstrated on the Google Developers page only worked when I was logged in to Google. Logged out, clicking on that button brought me to a G+ log-in page. See my note about twitter above. :)

I am looking to simply have an "official" button for "Follow on Google+" but simply have that button linked to my Google+ page. That part is simple...getting an official button is not, as on google.com the resource buttons are automatically generated...and even say "Larry McJunkin on Google+", but the button is not an image I can grab. I suppose I could take a screenshot and then make a button out of it. But even being in technology all my life I hate working with images :-(

I'll probably just settle for some image I find on Google Images and then link it to my homepage. But in a perfect world I'd like to have the option of using one of the buttons (and code) from the following page:

https://developers.google.com/+/web/+1button/

...but I know that's not possible. Thanks, Jennifer :-)

Being such a long-time user of WordPress.com, you are probably aware of the code restrictions we have. So what are you hoping will work differently here? (Honest question, not intended as a criticism.)

It's nice, simple way to host a blog (WordPress.com) but I'm starting to have second thoughts. Perhaps I should have just went with an ISP that is WordPress enabled so I'd have more flexibility in things like this. I understand why I can't add JS here...but sometimes I feel they should at least make widgets for all the primary social media sites. That's something every blogger wants to display.

Thanks for your help...I'll go search some more for a static image.

Add google+ image in widget and make image click-able using HTML link.

If you want people to share it on their google+ use

https://plus.google.com/share?url=your-page-url

All of Google's code includes JavaScript, which won't work in a text widget. All I want to do is add a simple button that links to the URL of my Google+ page. I don't need the interactivity of automatically adding to circles, etc. Just a basic "click on the button to go to my Google+ page" will be fine.

I've searched the internet for this as well as these forums....nothing that I can find. Thanks for any help.

As Timethief says, Google has not provided any way for WordPress, or anyone else, to do this automatically via publicize.

Authorship is an increasingly important part of search, and search is as important as ever. You can't blame Google for not doing all the work for you - they have their own blogging platform after all, where I imagine such things are easier to arrange.

I've been waiting patiently for a year for WordPress to catch up to this, (as the workaround above doesn't work for multi-user blogs) and I hope they will.

Authorship is an important enough thing to allow those of us with only a basic knowledge of the web to get access to, from within the wonderful framework that is wordpress.com.

Hopefully they'll agree with me eventually!

Have a look as this very informative article:

http://graphiclineweb.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/relauthor/

And maybe try signing off each post with your G+ authorship.

Basically you need a theme that supports the inclusion of a text widget (go appearances -- widgets and look for a Text Box option).

Then you need to put a link to your G+ profile with the rel=author after it. To get an example with a logo you want to do something like this:

<br /> <a href="https://plus.google.com/111599604216232194300" rel="author"><span style="display:inline-block;font-weight:bold;vertical-align:top;margin-right:5px;margin-top:8px;">Mike Horner</span><span style="display:inline-block;vertical-align:top;margin-right:15px;margin-top:8px;">on</span><img style="border:0;width:32px;height:32px;" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-32.png" alt="" /></a><br />

Obviously that looks worse than it is, you only have to change the name to your name and the G+ Profile number to your own.

This will create a link to your G+ profile with the rel=author attribute on every page of your blog. Test is with Google's Rich Snippets Testing Tool and the rest should write itself.

Hope it helps.