We are all anticipating the arrival of the Google Buzz icon in our gmail inboxes.  Google has announced that it will be rolling out its new product within the next few days and if you already have a Gmail account, you will automatically have a Google Buzz account.  Buzz will also start following the people you chat and e-mail with the most.  Search Engine Land has a thorough article about everything the new product will offer, but here are some key features that are exciting us for Google Buzz:

No sign-up or setup.

Sharing pictures, websites, status updates, messages, etc. can be completely public or limited to just your friends.

Buzz can display updates from other sites like Flickr, Picasa and Twitter.

Buzz will recommend other people’s updates and put them in your feed according to your interests (and it has a ‘not interested’ feature).

Buzz Mobile will have all of these features, but additionally, will focus on more location-specific updates.

Check out this demo on YouTube:

What do you think about the addition of Buzz to your social media arsenal?  Is it going to be a Twitter or Facebook killer?  For location-specific posts, it will be very interesting to see how it interacts with the blogging world.

Photo courtesy of HubSpot's blog

We know that blogging is becoming a more integral part of search engine marketing (as seen in our post here), but many businesses struggle not with traffic, but generating comments on the blog in order to keep it relevant and fresh.  I found this great article by Alisa Bowman posted on SEOgroup.net and thought it to be helpful.  Here are a few of her tips for generating more comments on a blog:

1) Giveaways encourage people to comment right away.  You will get a lot of comments (that is, if you have followers), naturally, because people love freebies.  Alisa instituted a “Reader of the Month” giveaway, which she tracked with the My Top Commentators widget.

2) Discuss relevant topics to your readers.  This might seem simple but you need to stick to your business’s specific niche on your blog.  If you jump from topic-to-topic, it will inhibit comments.

3) Pose questions within your post and in bold letters at the end of posts.  This will engage readers and they will be able to share their similar experiences.

4) Don’t be afraid to expose weakness or struggle.  It is easy for people to relate and they may also be inclined to offer insight or advice.

Photo courtesy of getclickz.com

Happy New Year everyone!  The new decade is being ushered in with the onset of Google Caffeine, but does not have a debut date just yet.  According to Official Wire, Caffeine is actually just a souped-up version of the Google we already know- with faster speed, emphasis on real-time search results and slight changes to the way Google indexes websites.  It is imperative; however, that websites stay up-to-date in order to maintain relevancy in the search results.  Things like blogs, press releases, social media, etc. will need to be integrated into your business marketing and maintained with the introduction of Caffeine.  Most users might not notice a difference in their web results, but “keeping websites fresh through regular updates will be important to ensure that they are crawled by Caffeine” (Crisafi).

Source: Peter Crisafi, Official Wire