Google recently announced the integration of real time data into their web search results page. Real time data includes Twitter feeds, news updates, blog posts, even craigslist ads displayed up to the minute with the traditional search results. Google has also reportedly partnered with Facebook and MySpace to incorporate other forms of real time data such as status updates into their search results. How these changes will impact the marketing landscape will be an interesting question in the near future.
The following three items immediately came to mind as important considerations in order to successfully adapt your brand (or message) to real time search.
Social media presence and optimization. Focusing at least some of the marketing efforts towards social media is more important than ever. The more active a brand is online through social media channels such as blogging, Twitter, YouTube, etc., the more social content will be available to bump your brand to the top of the real time search results. Utilizing social media with the intent of leveraging real time search results could also increase the performance of online web campaigns and drive additional traffic to your website.
Customer interaction and engagement. Marketers should encourage their customers to interact with the brand community online while paying careful attention to the conversations that are occurring. These conversations may end up at the top of the search result page, so it is more important than ever to promote positive customer interaction and customer engagement. A brand seen as providing good customer engagement (especially online) will generate positive social chatter which can help boost brand awareness and credibility. An overall positive customer experience goes a long way with attracting and retaining customers.
Search engine optimization. How real time search will ultimately impact search engine optimization (SEO) has yet to be determined. At the very least, producing frequent content will be an important consideration to incorporate within the overall SEO strategy. A key challenge will be attempting to measure or quantify the effects of competitive brand (or even Spam) content impacting your current SEO efforts. To combat this, additional emphasis may need to be placed on pay per click (PPC) since these advertisements typically show up higher in the search results page.
There are countless other ways in which real time search will impact the traditional online marketing scene. It will be exciting to see how marketers take advantage of the evolving real time web in the coming months. To impatient information maniacs like me, real time search is a very exciting web innovation. To marketers, the real time web can present a new challenge with positive upside.
How are you planning to adapt?
