12 Essential Strategies for Marketing in Real-Time
February 4th, 2010 by Jeremy
In the time it’s taken you to read this sentence, an approximate 1500-2000 people wrote a Tweet (more on this here), almost double that number of Facebook status updates occurred, and an hour of video was uploaded to YouTube. And many would argue we’re still in the early days of “update mania” and content creation. Now I don’t have any stats on the nature of those updates, but it’s fair to guesstimate that a decent chunk of them are people praising or lamenting about companies, products, and services. We’ve blogged before on how complex the modern era is for anyone in a company’s marketing department, and are following up with some specific strategies and advice for companies and other agencies to use.
- Decide on your overall real-time focus
Not *every* company need pay attention the same way to real-time content the same way. If you are a consumer-facing brand, you probably care a lot about how consumers talk about, use, and think about your product. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to use Twitter to vocalize their sentiment, further it’s entirely likely (and probable) that the cross-section of people who use Twitter to discuss your brand are not representative of the masses who use your brand. Facebook and MySpace, for example, might not be as hype-driven with regards to media coverage, but together boast over half a billion users. So before you jump into “real-time”, think about exactly what you want to accomplish, what you need to pay attention to/learn, and then identify the right strategy for those goals. - Think long-term before thinking about the instantaneous term
They don’t call it real-time for nothing! There are new tools and services cropping up literally every day that let you participate, monitor, interact, engage, observe, and otherwise pay attention to the real-time Web. If you attempt to use them all, you will inevitably fail in many, which will do more harm than good. I highly recommend you watch new hype-driven trends with caution until you see where they are going. This is doubly-true in Silicon Valley, where, as Chris Rock once said, “here today, gone to-day!” I recall back in the “getting hot” days of FriendFeed when Pepsi showed up and created a “Pepsi Room” – as an early adopter of FriendFeed, I was completely skeptical as to their purpose and intent of being there. They soon after abandoned their room, which made me feel even more like the company was trying to “buy their way in” to where technology influencers were spending their time online. Google Wave is another example of a new real-time service, this time from the hugeness that is Google, launched with much flair and hype, yet now in a bit of an idle state (from a media perspective). I’m not saying to ignore new technologies or trends, but to be aware of the simple reality that many technologies fail to yield the results often anticipated/associated with them. - Staff up accordingly
You can’t take the same PR/Marcom team you’ve been employing for eons and now tell them they also have to monitor a dozen new services, and be ready to respond in real-time. Further, there are different skills required for different mediums, and the reactions to deal with real-time issues are different from those who might plan out a longer term strategy. My strongest advice is to have someone on the team (or outsourced to a third party, if well-affiliated) who is a good “crisis-mode” kind of person. I’d suggest having your overall marketing planning/strategy get built with input from the combination of Team Planned Activity and Team Real-Time. Which leads me to… - Listen and React.
The classic line of social media marketers is “engage” (also known as “join the conversation”). This is nice and all, but it’s also about the how, when, and why you react. First, make sure you have built infrastructure and culture for absorbing feedback – I still meet many companies who have literally one person in charge of product strategy, and virtually no mechanisms of delivering customer feedback to that person. Real time content and sentiment monitoring is something that should be added to outreach programs, with a focus both on the media and consumers. It’s vastly different to watch Tweets and blog posts gauging the media’s reaction to your new product than it is to read your actual customers’ opinions after a feature update or new service addition. Make sure you are appropriately filtering this type of content to the right people. But… - Don’t (always) react in real-time!
Eons ago, when all you had to do to pay attention to social media was watch blogs, we often counseled folks to mostly ignore commentors. This is a bit of a “dangerous” topic (there happened to be a big debate on it yesterday), so let me explain my position. Ideally, comments allow anyone in the world to add a little, wait for it, commentary on a given blog post or topic they see. And if that were exactly how it was used, it’d be great. But this isn’t fiction, it’s reality, and in the real world, Internet commenting is just barely a notch more mature than the banter in Xbox Live gaming. For every bit of constructive discussion or actually added-value commentary, there’s the inevitable troll, attacker, competitor, or a variety of comments that bring the conversation way down. With the massive amounts of ways to “hear” people out there, you simply must assume there are people who you cannot appease. Use experience and judgment to figure out when a response is warranted versus when the topic will disappear into the ether. You cannot win them all, and you cannot possibly make everyone love you – I’m not advising not to try, but you do not need to correct every tweet, comment, status update, or other negative mention you find. This truly is the time when experience helps. - If you try something, give it a reasonable commitment
This goes into the “must-do” category. You are significantly worse off by jumping in to something new, playing around a teensy bit in a halfhearted manner, then bailing, than you are by never engaging in the first place. I’ve seen companies “half-listen” on Twitter, which only causes more frustration around their brands. Ditto for blog/commentor engagement and other real-time interactions. Pick something, create the plan of how you will fully commit to it and for how long, and then evaluate at the end as to future engagements. Further, you should communicate your policies – if you are only going to use Twitter to send out company updates, that’s fine (not really, but I understand), but then make sure you are clear about that policy. To complicate this more… - Try not to play favorites
While it’s understandable (and recommended) to engage with known influencers whenever possible, it’s just as important to engage with “regular folks” as well. In fact, if you ignore the random people and only pay attention to “named individuals” you are going to have the opposite effect you are seeking by interacting with these services. You’ll be considered elitist and alienating to your actual customers. This really ties back in with the aforementioned “staff up” comment – the bigger your brand and the wider your customer base, the more you open yourself up to a radically high quantity of people to engage with. For organizations that deal with the wider masses of consumers, I recommend having a team in place for dealing with Twitter, Facebook, and any other service where you plan to engage in real-time, and have a system for how to make sure literally nobody falls through the cracks. - Clearly communicate your policies
If you can only monitor Twitter from 9-5 EST, tell people. If you don’t plan to respond to comments, make that clear. Whatever you are (or are not) going to do, your customers and the media should know. Further, as I’ve stated a few times, whatever you commit to, stick to. Consistency is huge. - Be personable
Nobody wants to directly engage with “a brand”, they want to talk to “people at a brand.” When I see companies having named individuals participate on twitter, communities, forums, or even in comment discussions, I see much more directly engaged users. This is a major change in thinking for bigger brands, where there’s a “company-first” policy of virtually everything, but in the social media landscape, specifically true in the real-time Web, personalized engagement trumps bland company messaging everytime. Oh, and this should go without saying, but just in case: don’t make up personas/fake people! - Pick the right tools for the job
Google alerts, even if delivered “as it happens” are slow in comparison with Twitter feeds, RSS, and virtually any monitoring software. There are a lot of tools to pay attention to real-time activities. I am not going to endorse nor recommend any specific company, since your needs will unlikely be the same as mine, or someone else’s. I will say this much: try free stuff, but allocate some budget if you are going to take the space seriously. Just like anything else, the more you put in, the more you get out. That said, try not to get fleeced along the way! Also, you should unquestionably get free trials of services prior to shelling out a dime. And you should also make sure you’ve had the team who will be using the tools give their feedback – you don’t want to forcefeed technology on the wrong people. - Feel free to experiment
The real-time Web isn’t exactly the Wild West, but it is safe to say there’s so much in flux that there’s exactly a specific blueprint we can all follow. Much of my advice here is on how to formulate your strategy. The tools and services used today may be gone next year or next month, or may be growing like the weeds in my garden. While you should have a sound plan in place to execute upon, it’s certainly okay to try new things and see how they go. Maybe a Retweet contest will put your brand into the limelight, or maybe it’ll get ignored. Learn from it, adapt, try again, etc. - Beware false prophets
The number of people who can honestly say they’ve mastered these skills is roughly zero. The rules are changing far too fast, and there’s far too short a history to claim true expertise. If you are hiring individuals, consultants, or agencies, ask very specific questions and look for very specific answers before making decisions. Just because someone can advise you on how to create a Twitter account doesn’t mean they know what to do when a behind-the-scenes video leaks onto YouTube! Community engagement is not the same as crisis management. Blog writing and engaging on forums are different skills. Sure, some people will be capable of managing all of this, but think through your needs deeply, and don’t accept glib responses, internet-famous people, nor shallow resumes to manage such critical work!
I hope this is helpful for any company seeking to engage with consumers in new, fun, interesting, and productive ways. We feel like we’re still learning a lot of this here at Stage Two, and will start putting up some product/service reviews in the coming weeks. Looking forward to comments on what areas we may have missed!
