Google Buzz! Changing the Game!
Published February 16, 2010 | 
Google’s launch of Google Buzz (a service for sharing thoughts, multimedia, and your social media feeds with your friends utilizing Gmail as the conduit) really caught most people by surprise, simply because they weren’t expecting the potential game changer that Google Buzz is, but it didn’t take everyone long to take notice, especially after the Google Buzz posts and comments were averaging over 160,000 per hour nearly right after launching.
It was evident from beginning this was no average launch of an “oh by the way, if you have time check it out,” kind of application, and no one could have predicted it would become so popular, so fast.
Why has it grown so fast? And more importantly, what does the release of Google Buzz mean to the social media world, especially Twitter and Facebook?
Speculating as to what Google might do if it wanted to make things interesting for developers it might offer ad revenue sharing for the creation of Google Buzz apps, and start building its very own app store, specifically for the crazy mobile market. Gmail advertising is already extremely will developed, and next time you sign on to Buzz, notice that Google ads are already being placed, and by offering the ability to monetize apps with the Google Buzz structure would almost immediately pull development resources that currently are focused on Twitter, Facebook, and other mobile platforms (i.e. Android, iPhone, etc.).
The name of the game now is momentum for everyone from users to developers, to businesses both big and small that now have to keep a close eye to what is taking place on Google Buzz, especially in anticipation of methods to drive traffic, or a viral event that takes off with a life of its own, and finally to keep up with additional features that might be released in the future.
The social media landscape continues to quickly evolve, but with the release of Google Buzz it has been permanently altered, and anyone with more than just a passing interest in social media should ignore what is taking place at their own peril, which would be a huge mistake, since we are looking a real game-changer in Google Buzz.
Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How!
Simple Genius! Google Buzz!
Published February 15, 2010 | 
There is an endless steady stream of comments and thoughts about Google Buzz (Google’s new social networking platform addition to Gmail), since it was released a few days ago to much curiosity from users in the social networking universe, and with Google’s eye on the Mobile Market, look for even more tools on the horizon….
…. But will it catch on? Does the world need another news-sharing device? ….
Why You Should Develop Buzz and Word of Mouth Tactics
Published June 17, 2009 | 
“Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product or service, and that bring friends with them.” –W. Edwards Deming
Marketing is one of the most critical parts of business that entrepreneurs must learn and understand to maximize their potential for success in today’s volatile marketplace, as the cost effectiveness alone is enough to help insure the successful impact of the effective marketing strategies on the bottom line of business. Most of today’s marketing still focuses on how to use advertising and other tools to influence each customer individually, ignoring the fact that purchasing is part of a “social process,” and Buzz and Word-of Mouth don’t just happen without some effort that starts the “social process,” instead, they must be carefully cultivated and strategically crafted with an underlying architecture to direct the “natural forces” to a specific outcome.
An entrepreneur’s marketing agenda is vastly different than that of a member of the Fortune 500, although it is important to know that some of the same principles are the same and never change, and it is in the details where we find the differences, and it is just as important to understand the theory of creating buzz or word-of-mouth has the primary investments of time, energy, and imagination, so in other words, you are shooting for a high “return on imagination” as opposed to a high return on investment.
The public has long known the value of word-of-mouth recommendations, which is one of the most powerful methods of building perceived value for products and services, and no one creates value like family and friends, and networks of family, friends and social contacts. According to over 25 years of research, Americans today are far more likely to turn to friends, family, and other personal experts for value reinforcement than to use the traditional media for ideas and information. Thus the huge changes in marketing strategies from institutional hard-print media to methods of strategically placed and highly targeted messages using social media tools designed to create Buzz and grow Word-of-Mouth to the ultimate goal of the viral stage.
More than eight in ten people say that their personal networks are among the two to three best sources for new information for any service or products they are interested in purchasing, and this is extremely significant, since the response is nearly 50 percent higher than all other traditional advertising sources combined.
Word-of-Mouth doesn’t affect all businesses in the same way, and the role it plays in your business depends on four factors including the nature of your products, the people you are trying to reach, your customer connectivity, and the strategies used in your particular industry.
By the very nature of Word-of-Mouth communications, it is not possible to spread the message too widely, and luckily due to the six degrees of separation and the 90/10 rule there is no need to. The 90/10 rule, by which word-of-mouth is governed, says that 90 percent of the world is influenced by the other 10 percent, and a word-of-mouth campaign therefore must be based on such targeted communications.
Carefully chart and archive all official and unofficial opinion leaders, as a disproportionate amount of selling time can and should be aimed at highly-reputable, would-be adopters, and sales incentives should be encouraged and added when working with early-adopters. Also, events that pair happy new customers with a wider audience can and should be staged, user newsletters can be established, then circulated to targeted non-users, and testimonials can be systematically gathered and circulated. I highly recommend that all of these programs and others should be put together in a detailed, written, step-by-step Buzz and Word-of-Mouth plan.
A formal Buzz and Word-of-Mouth strategic plan need not be complicated to be effective, and a lot can be achieved by 
simply covering topics including discussion of the nature of your products or services, the idea or messages you are trying to spread, identity of your network hubs and connectors, are they individual people, or organizations, and include discussion of your customer networks and how they are connected, how often and how regular they interact, what influences them and their behavior, and what specific tactics you will employ to create Word-of-Mouth marketing.
How to Understand Viral Marketing Online
Published June 8, 2009 | 
The “bottom line” is that online marketing presents you with an extraordinary opportunity to get a lot more marketing bang for your buck compared to much more traditional marketing and this is particularly true if you think of online marketing as viral.
As you know “viral marketing” often refers to a type of marketing that promote something through word-of-mouth and personal contacts, and the idea is to create a buzz for the subject matter you are trying to promote. It is important to always remember that any creating the “buzz”, your goal should be to create enough word-of-mouth momentum to get the idea/buzz to spread quickly, and the faster it spreads the more viral the effect. Now the most important thing to remember is that the conduit for the momentum you are trying to build are people, and if you get it right, and entire product or service can become an established success with little or no paid marketing, and this is the beauty of viral marketing.
A classic example of viral marketing is a situation that involved Red Bull the energy drink when it was first introduced in Europe. Rumors spread that the drink was an aphrodisiac and nobody knows who started the rumors, the Red Bull became very popular to say the least, and it’s been evolved into a mixer for alcoholic drinks in nightclubs and of course, the rest is history. While it is a hugely popular drink product, it is clear that much of the popularity arose from this word-of-mouth or viral process.
Viral marketing online works in much the same way as the Red Bull story with the primary difference being that it tends to happen much quicker than in the real world, as the Internet is full of forums and social media networks where like-minded people tend to congregate and share information with each other on a nearly moment by moment basis. So a new, cool product, idea or service can blow up a site almost overnight, and if you don’t believe me, consider the wild success of the MySpace platform, Facebook platform, Twitter platform, eBay platform, and many others. The one thing all of these platforms have in common is people, and most of them quickly grew into the huge successes they are because of word-of-mouth endorsements, not paid advertising.
Obviously, viral marketing online can lead to tremendous success both in market exposure and associated revenue, but unfortunately, it isn’t particularly easy to accomplish this since everyone is trying to do it, which means you really need to be pushing something unique whether it is a product or an idea, and if you can come up with something, it is time to hit forums and other sites to begin the process of creating a buzz.
A relatively easy way to pursue viral marketing online is to offer a free e-book rather than the traditional sales approach, and the book will detail your thoughts on some subject matter, which could be marketing or gardening, or cooking, or any one of hundreds of subjects that people have a strong interest in. One makes the book available for downloading and also allows people to send it to others in a viral manner, and if you are offering something of quality, the book should spread quickly to thousands and thousands of people. The success of using this strategy is the potential traffic to your website that can be generated which can result in thousands of dollars in advertising revenue, and all of this can be accomplished without selling anything.
The ultimate goal is to promote it over and over until hundreds of thousands of people have read it, and at that point, the right and other e-book which you can then sell for $3-$5, and if people liked the first book, they will buy the second, and If 100,000 read the first one and only 10% of by the second you will have 10,000 sales, and the thing 
to remember is this form of viral marketing online has been pursued over and over by many authors, and even if you decide to continue to give away the e-books that you create the advertising revenue can be significant enough to continue with the same success formula you started with.
It’s important to know that marketing online with viral strategies is hit and miss, but the large online global communities make it a viable strategy to pursue, even with a lot of people trying to do it.
The Buzz! Google Buzz is Now Official!
So it’s now official as Google has just announced Google Buzz, its newest push into the social media foray, and Google Buzz is easily the company’s strongest and boldest attempt to-date to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz!
Following are five key features that define Google Buzz:
- Key feature #1: Auto-following
- Key feature #2: Rich, fast sharing experience
- Key feature #3: Public and private sharing
- Key feature #4: Inbox integration
- Key feature #5: Just the good stuff
Google Buzz Aims To Social-Network Gmail Users
Google Goes Social with Google Buzz
If Google Wave is the Future, Google Buzz is the Present