Breaking Down the (Google) Buzz, or Do I Really Need This?
Need help taking the guesswork out of Google Buzz and other social sites? SpiderWriters assists businesses and non-profits with proper social media marketing via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and now Google Buzz. Contact us today at 757-499-1990, ext. 104 for a free consultation.
What’s the best way to annoy a novice social media marketer? Introduce one more thing for them to master. In this line of work, one may spend hours upon hours training an entrepreneur or marketing manager to learn the finer points of building and maintaining social profiles in order to achieve high online visibility and, one hopes, an increased customer/client base. With many business owners we encounter, many are peripheral users of Facebook and Twitter – they know these sites exist, and maybe have logged once or twice, but they do understand their importance in new media marketing and work to utilize them correctly.
Of course, in the Internet world, things move forward. Just when you think you’ve learned everything you need to know, along comes something like Google Buzz and you’re a student all over again. If you missed all the “buzz”, for lack of a more original term, about Google’s latest social networking venture, Google Buzz is poised to compete with the likes of Twitter and similar micro-blogging platforms while allowing for integration. Right now, it appears Buzz is designed to accept feeds from your Twitter, Flickr, and blog accounts, and tech folks are working furiously to add Google Buzz buttons and tools to their blogs (ClickOnf5.org has a Wordpress plug-in ready to go) while everybody else settles in to determine if signing on to one more social network is worth the time invested.
If you already use GMail for business or personal correspondence, you have the advantage of a quicker setup than others who aren’t registered. As you initialize activity and explore your options with Buzz, you may find you aren’t immediately deluged with followers. That’s okay – very likely when you signed on to Twitter and Facebook that wasn’t the case either – but with Buzz you do have the added advantage of possible connections with your current Google mail contacts. As each of them sign on to Buzz, you stand a chance of building a following in a more timely fashion.
How does Google Buzz work? Basically, once configured a colorful icon appears under your Inbox link in GMail. Clicking through takes you to a feed of posts by the people you follow, with a status box above for you to post news, links, etc. Clicking on the Connected Sites option allows you to integrate your Twitter, Picasa, and other select accounts into Buzz, so every time you tweet or post a photo it shows in your feed. If you have not already configured your Google profile, it’s best to do so now if you want to maximize the benefits of Google Buzz.
In your profile, you can offer as much information about yourself as you wish, everything from a spiffy avatar to work contact information to little known revelations about yourself like your personal “superpower” (mine is thinking of a particular song, then turning on the radio to hear it playing). You can also add links to every single website and social profile you own, and truly create the virtual calling card. Once that’s complete, you will have another URL to display with the rest of your social profiles (marked as http://www.google.com/profiles/[your GMail ID here]) and since it’s also available in a feed you can implement the RSS into a blog, your Twitter account, or create a handy widget for display online.
Do you need Google Buzz? Will it become a force in social interaction, or just one more thing that spikes in the first month of use before the novelty fades? Critics have already said their peace on the platform, calling it “too little too late” when Yahoo has had something similar out for a while. Nonetheless, as Google shows no signs of fading there may be something in Buzz that’s of use to your social marketing strategy. Depending on your existing number of contacts through mail or Google Friend Connect, Buzz may make updating to this set audience easier, and in turn go viral to bring more followers.
For now, integrate what you have active into the system. The more you “buzz” around, especially as the overall network of users grows, you might find it’s worth adding to your marketing schedules.
Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.
