Blogger Help Get Started with Google Buzz: A Guide for Bloggers. Be more social


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Blogger Help Get Started with Google Buzz


Google Buzz is here, arriving to a chorus of "Why do we need another social media platform?". A more useful question, I believe, is "How can I use Buzz to build my blog?". It's a question I'm still exploring, but I'm optimistic about the potential I see so far.


This is Google, after all, and Google is huge. So is Buzz's potential for changing the landscape of social media. Buzz is not to be ignored, and there's no reason to do so, since the setup is so easy (see below). Why not embrace Buzz as yet another way to share your blog with the world?


Blogger Help What is Buzz?
Google Buzz publishes your feed, complete with images, to a follower's Gmail page, where a post looks like this (click the image to see it larger):


Blogger Help 

Followers have the option of "liking" (a la Facebook) the post and/or commenting on it. The follower can also share the post via email or send it directly to another user's stream by adding a comment prefaced by inserting "@" followed by another user's email address.


Responses to your Buzz postings are sent right to your Gmail inbox. You can respond from there, too. Like Facebook, your followers view your posts on their own turf, making accessing and responding to the info you offer extremely convenient.


Blogger Help Getting Started buzz:
Click the Buzz link underneath your inbox link in Gmail to get started, or go to Buzz.Google.com. You'll need a public Google profile. If you blog using Blogger, you probably already have a profile, but even if you do, you should check it to make sure you're sharing only the information you want to share. You can also decide whether you want to show a list of accounts you're following and who are following you on your profile.


You can create a custom link to your profile. Mine looks like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/BabyCheapskate#buzz. You'll find the option at the bottom of your "edit profile" page. You can direct readers to your Buzz profile by adding #buzz to the end (http://www.google.com/profiles/BabyCheapskate#buzz) and sharing that link.


The next step is to select the sites you want to be part of your Buzz stream. Right now, you can choose from Blogger blogs, your Google Reader account (the posts you share will show up in your stream) Twitter account, Flickr account, or Picasa account. You can do this through Gmail (find the "Buzz" link right under your inbox link on the left side of the page) or through the main Buzz page. From Gmail, you can also edit your list of followers.


Note: If you're a Wordpress user, your posts will show up on Buzz if you connect your Twitter account and post blog updates there.


Adding Buzz to your Blogger Blog:


Soon, you'll be able to easily add a "Buzz This" button to your Blogger posts. You can do it now, but because the platform is so new, you'll need to manually add code to your blog template. It doesn't look too hard. There's already a plug in for those with self-hosted WordPress blogs as well, which is a little embarassing, since Google owns Blogger.com

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