Google Wave in Blogger
I finally got around to finding out how to add a Google Wave to my Blog – you can see it here on the right – please feel free to contribute.
So what’s this about – well I have been thinking of Google Wave a lot and how it might be helpful to business. One of the master strokes in my opinion was the ability to make waves public. The vision is that Google Wave is a whole other outlet to your client base that is 100% responsive. Anyone can reply and send you feedback… Moderation is possible, but for the first time you have the ability to ‘chat’ directly with Clients and Customers in real time – with people you don’t know. This is not about getting anyone to sign up to anything – they just contact you.
Ground Rules – there is definitely a need for Ground rules – You need to set up a Google Wave specifically for customer service or one that is client facing – you can then make it ‘public’. I won’t go into detail how to do this here, but what you end up with is a two way channel where customers can write anything they like.
Don’t worry it’s your wave so you can delete anything you really don’t like, but the most common way for people to find you was to do a search on Google Wave itself (the application). You just type in ‘with:public’ and your search term.
Well and good – you’ll get a list of all public waves that include your search term, that level of searching is probably going to be far more powerful than Google – as you not looking for a website or product – but you’re looking for what other people have said about your search term.
In practice then – let’s say you want to learn how to grow vegetables… well instead of a normal Google search where you’ll see results from every shop/site/news and sundry about where to buy X or how to plant Y. With Google Wave you just get the hints and tips part of that process… Sure you’ll probably find people recommending X & Y product – but there aren’t any shops on Google Wave you can’t be ‘sold’ to. it’s much nicer.
So back to what needs to be done… you’ve set up the Public wave – but now you want your customers to find it… not many will through Google Wave itself – so you need to include it on your Blog in your website and where you ‘meet’ your customers… I have added my public facing Google Wave here on the right – it’s seems a good place to start.
Follow these instructions and in a very short time you’ll be able to add yours as well.
http://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-embed-google-wave-into-blog-sidebar-chat-box.html
If you want help obviously let me know – through my wave please…