Google Wave – Catch the Wave Now!

Over the past month I’ve been following Chris Lang who is one of Google’s Analysts and is one of the Beta testers for Google Wave on his website TheGwave.net website.

Chris and I first met at my Phoenix SEO and Internet Marketing MeetUp in July where he invited me to his first public demonstration of Google’s new social media platform last week here in Phoenix.

First off if you think that Google Wave is just some other social media tool such as Twitter, Facebook or whatever you are WRONG!

Google is an entirely new platform for communication and collaboration with your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone else.

Utilizing Google Wave people can communicate and work together in real time with formatted text, photos, videos, maps and much more.

Any participant in your Wave Network can edit, reply and add content to your wave at any time and other participants can play back the Wave to see what was changed, by whom and when.

A Wave is live in real time. As you type other participants in your Wave can see edits and interact in real time.

The first step that you’ll need to participate in Google Wave is to have a Google Profile, here is a link to mine:

http://www.google.com/profiles/RoyReyer

How to Create a Google Profile

If you don’t already have a Google profile you will need to create one, the process is fairly simple;

Step One:    Get a Gmail Account.

Do not make the fatal mistake of registering some wacky name or using your business name for your main profile. Remember this “People using Social Media hate to be marketed to, however they love to buy stuff”.

What does this mean? Well think of it this way, if you saw someone using a name of a business you may have second thoughts of adding this contact to your network because of spam. However if the person used their real name with a photograph, you may be more inclined to adding them to your network.

Step Two:    Create a Google Profile

a) While you are signed into your Gmail account, click the link that says “Settings”
b) Go to the Google Account Settings tab and click on the “Google Account Settings” link
c) Now your Profile (or lack of a profile) should be displayed.
d) Click on the “Edit Profile” link

Step Three:    Edit Your Profile

Start with the tab “About Me”

Put in your name and contact information. If you would like to have your full name displayed in Google’s search put in a check mark.

If you want to allow people to contact you without Google showing your email address, put a check there.

Add a short bio, make it interesting.

Add links to your favorite websites

Check your profile URL and then press the “Save Changes” button

If you have any photos that you would like to add to your profile, go to the Photos tab

To change/modify your contact info and to allow who gets to see your full contact info check the appropriate boxes.

Get Started with Google Friend Connect

The next step is to create a Google Friend Connect Account:

http://www.google.com/friendconnect

Here is a short video explaining how it works:

Step One:    At the login screen determine if you adding Google Friend Connect to a Standard website or a Blogger account. For this tutorial we will explain the steps on how to add Friend Connect to a standard website.

Step Two:    Provide Google the name of your website, the home page URL and the language of the website

Step Three:    Download the two files to your computer.

Step Four:    Use an FTP program to upload the two files to the root directory of your website.

Step Five:    Press the “Test to finalize setup” button

Step Six:    Set up your member’s gadget and then copy the code to your website

When it’s done it should look something like this (yes I know I don’t have many friends yet. If you enjoy this post please add yourself as a friend)

Joining Blogs and Adding Friends

Now that you have a Google Profile and a Google Friend Connect widget on your website click the “join” button and confirm that you want to join.

Next you can add friends by clicking the avatar of other users in the Friends Connect Gadget.

Google Reader

The most important tool in your Internet Marketing arsenal is having a Google Reader Account.

When I owned and operated my Radarbusters network I used the Google Reader to “spy” on my competitors, used it for reputation management and to keep alert of any trends in my industry.

Another benefit is that Google monitors the subscribers to your RSS feeds as an indicator of your websites quality.

When someone joins your network thru GFC, your RSS feed is automatically added to THEIR Google reader by default in their shared items.

Now your Google Friend Connect Friends can “share your feeds” with a note and add comments.

I encourange anyone that is involoved in Intertnet Marketing to Catch the Google Wave now before your caught up in the undertow later and to sign up now!