Google announced last week that they would be using Facebook fan updates within real-time search results. Google’s real-time is set to therefore become the next barometer of search success for most brands. For a while now, I have been talking about the use of Social Media Optimisation (SMO), and now this becomes particularly relevant given most companies starting point on social media is Facebook.
So what does the change mean? Google had already started to go real-time with the use of Twitter, Jaiku etc feeds, but Facebook makes it very mainstream. It therefore makes it utterly prevalent for brands to not create pages which will end up being digital debris. A great way of thinking.
What can brands do? The first port of call is to stop creating pages which are digital debris, instead creating something that is part of a wider program. Campaigns in social media should act as a quick volume driver, not the only thing you do. Therefore, creating an ongoing strategy enables brands to maximise their pages and thus benefit from these real-time changes.
Within this program the brands should be creating content to drive conversation and thus think about “conversation reaction planning” rather than simply driving “engagement”. I would define conversation reaction planning as content or words or phrases which drive consumers to engage in conversation, not simply click on a video. Include in this is the thought that getting consumers to mention the key terms that you need for SEO/SMO performance becomes a really interesting benchmark for success – and is of immediate benefit through Google’s new real-time planning.
Digigen Strategy for Success:
1) Create a social media program, do away with the bits of digital debris that surround one-off campaigns. Use campaigns to drive volumes, but create a plan behind this for capitalising on conversation.
2) Plan for conversation reactions. A click and play of a video simply isn’t enough anymore, its what happens after the play that becomes interesting. Tying this into the actual keywords you want people to mention in conversation reactions is a really exciting direction for this.
3) Be consistent in your strategy and write with a consistent tone of voice/point of view. Far too often different people feel unaligned with the company standpoint and it looks highly unprofessional. Updates should be monitored and created by one person or the same highly trained group of experts.
