Did you see Google Buzz in your Gmail account? Couldn’t miss it, right? Well there’s been a bunch said about Google Buzz, and whether good or bad, here are 7 takeaways to using Google Buzz.
1. Early Adopers – Early adopters enjoy more followers. When a new technology or tool is introduced, everybody’s checking it out. In the beginning, it’s a good time to jump in and follow people, most likely those people will end up following you.
2. Gmail Integration – Google Buzz is part of Gmail. It’s a link that displays your stream of buzzes, buzzees and buzzers. This makes it kind of awkward at first because if you’ve had experience with other social networks, there is no real separate entity called Google Buzz to go to. However, since a lot of folks spend a lot of time in Gmail, Google Buzz is right there. Comment on someone in your stream and it becomes an email that you can find in your inbox as people comment. This doesn’t feel too good either if you’re trying to keep your email to a minimum.
3. Google Buzz Button – Are you a blogger? Do you want more ways for your readers to share your blog posts? If so, you can download the WPBuzzer WordPress plugin. You can find more ways to provide a Buzz button on your blog at 11 Fresh Google Buzz WordPress Plugins, but the WPBuzzer button provides a counter based on your bit.ly account to display how many times an article has been Buzzed. WPBuzzer will place a button like the Digg button or Twitter button in your blog post for readers to share on Google Reader, which gets shared on their Google Buzz stream where their followers will see it and hopefully click on it and come to your blog. WPBuzzer is the closest button that resembles the one at Mashable with a counter.
4. Buzz to Twitter – Want to send the messages you enter into Google Buzz to show up on twitter? Head on over to Read2Twitter and login using your twitter login (which uses OAuth), then provide your Google Reader Number ID and your optional bit.ly information. Now, everything you enter into your Google Buzz stream natively, will show up in your twitter feed.
5. Opt-Out – Don’t like Google Buzz? Feel like they’ve infiltrated your inbox without asking you? Well, you can opt-out. Go to your settings in Gmail and look for the ‘Buzz’ tab. There, you’ll find a few options that allow you to control the way Buzz is integrated into Gmail. You can make your list of followers public or private as well as hiding Google Buzz in Gmail. To completely remove Google Buzz, you can disable it. However, this action also deletes your Google profile as well.
6. Blog Promotion – With every new social network comes the opportunity to promote your blog post if you’re a blogger. One way to do that is via your blog’s feed. At Feedoor, you can connect your feed with Google Buzz.
7. Tips and Tricks – There’s always neat little tips and tricks that are undocumented or hard to find. Google Buzz is no exception. Check out 12 Undocumented Tricks for Google Buzz to improve your buzzing.
