What Google Buzz Means for Marketing

Google introduced Google Buzz today, successfully integrating social media into email. This seems like a perfectly logical combination, and in fact, GMAIL is not the first to attempt this. Currently, Facebook is working on an email client to rival GMAIL by integrating email into its social media platform.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin on hand for the launch of Google Buzz Photo: REUTERS

Naturally, the launch of Buzz creates a flurry of conversation and speculation about what this means for the different social media giants (i.e. Facebook and Twitter). But from a marketing standpoint, this launch signifies a larger, industry trend. While 2009 saw explosive growth of Facebook usage, Twitter usage, and the birth of thousands of one-off applications that launched on these platforms, recent occurrences in 2010 signify that consolidation of the social media space is imminent. The current list of social media tools is daunting, at best, and consumers are looking for ways to simplify and find more value in their social media efforts. Marketers and trainers should do the same.

One of the paint points of social media marketing is relevance. Questions such as “do our followers care” and “who are my messages reaching” are prominent, and important.  In fact, one of the most important principles of interactive marketing and training is delivering content worth interacting with. This is perhaps Buzz’s most important factor for marketers. Relevant content will spread more quickly (to more relevant audiences) with Buzz – should you be positioned to seize the opportunity.

This is a win for both consumers, and marketers as Google Buzz will help quality content spread through quality channels. And with the Google Analytics suite, I’m sure plug-ins to track it are not too far behind.  So how can you take advantage of it? Should you be looking at extending your marketing into the social media domain, I recommend the following 4 tips:

1. Further narrow and profile your audience to find the most relevant adopters
2. Better understand what is most relevant to this audience
3. Deliver targeted and relevant content specific to each profile-type in more ways (words, pictures and video), paying special attention to clearly articulate a concise value proposition
4. Monitor the conversation (and be a part of it)

Want to learn more about Google Buzz? Watch the video below and check out the Google Buzz home page.

What do you think? What else does Google Buzz mean for marketing? What about training?

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