Google Buzz – A Search and Marketing Perspective
Google recently released their new product, Google Buzz. Buzz can be compared to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Here is a video that shows what Buzz is capable of doing.
So what does this mean from a search and marketing perspective for businesses? Well, most will treat it similar to Facebook and Twitter where they will be sending out business information and updates to consumers. They will be able to follow their customers and competitors alike, just like in other social media sites.
But it can open up other possibilities that those other sites might not be capable of doing. The quickness of responses from other people in your network would be much higher than that of Facebook, even though they are both in real time. Google Buzz is based on Gmail, and if people get involved with Buzz on the business side, they would never leave their email all day, considering that anything posted on Buzz would show up in your inbox if it is important. Facebook is more of a check and leave type social media. People there go on every once in a while to check updates, etc, and then leave.
On the search side of things, Buzz may offer more than what can be shown on other media sites. Buzz updates could be integrated with social search, which can be very important for the business uses of social media. When a customer does a Google search, and they are connected to a business that is part of their social circle, anything relevant from the business will be shown up near the top of their search results.
It would be interesting to see if this feature would extend outside the first degree of contacts in the customer’s social circle. For example, if a customer’s friend did the same search, would they see the same results due to the business being two degrees of separation away? This could open up many possibilities and would make connections in Buzz that much more important for businesses.