The newest social media option that is getting a lot of buzz online is aptly named Google BUZZ. A Google Account and Profile are necessary to get any tingles from your BUZZ action. After that, there are more toys and tools for you.
My experience is that BUZZ can be most useful with professional benefit when connected to a Google account where the user has a GOOGLE PROFILE. I set one of those up about a year ago. I actually set up more than one as I learned the hard way how to make this profile a professional tool for me. I used a Google account that is specifically aimed at my professional name. Then, I completed the profile with as much information as I have. That was a year ago, so today, I updated the information. My Google Profile is Judy Lorenz | Bar JD Communications
When you set up a profile Google will inform you that you are eligible to have your profile featured on Google. The eligibility involves some solid tips about how to make this profile more useful.
- Make your profile keyword rich for the people you want to find your profile. Make the profile information unique to YOU, especially if your name is fairly common. Remember the Google measure where the first 150 characters are the ones that will show up in the meta description on a Google search.
- Link out at your website, blog, online photo album, == These links will be working with you or against you with Google BUZZ (more warnings later).
- Follow thru and verify your name with Google so you can get a “Verified” badge on the profile (Mine is a bright green box)
- Verify alternate addresses on your Google account. (This will be useful at the lowest form when you forget your password after a year — please don’t ask me how I know about that)
Christina Warren wrote an article that I saw on Mashable entitled: How To: Integrate Google Buzz into Your WordPress Blog. The buttons are limited to self-hosted WordPress blogs or websites. You may have to test drive some of them to see which ones work best for your needs. They will put that social share button on your blog post with other bookmarking tools.
BUZZing your content through the Google Buzz ER plugin will put your content into a designated spot on the sidebar. At publication of the article, comments were not displayed, although readers could comment in connection with the display.
WordPress offers some all inclusive solutions to share your comment content, covering for that little thing.
So, how much do you want to BUZZ? Maya Payne Smart, The Writing Coach posted a tweet on twitter featuring an article which Nicolas Carlson wrote for the Business Insider about his concerns in a post entitled “WARNING: Google Buzz has Huge Privacy Flaw” According to Carlson, when you set up your Profile and add Google BUZZ, you must look into some default settings to control what is visible to the public about whom you follow on BUZZ and who is following you. A matter that concerns Carlson is that the public list of people you follow is populated by people you most frequently email and chat with…no matter what. Carlson says there is a box (small) that you can select so that your follower list is not public.
On my Google Profile account, this box was a checked item when I selected to make my first post. It asks about making your follower list public. Additionally, on the post form, you can decide if the post will be public or private. I’m not sure this is a legitimate ‘bug’ or simply one of those things where each person had better pay attention, read the fine print or ‘take it on the chin.” Carlson put on the BUZZ police hat with concerns that you won’t notice these boxes and options and will make your posts public. Of particular concern are personal chats that could get you in hot water with your boss or spouse. Now you’ve been warned. Pay attention or pay the piper.
