Making it Happen — Now! How to Harness the Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing

Ever since the 2013 Super Bowl when Oreo’s ad agency delivered its famous blackout tweet 10 minutes into the power outage, real-time social media marketing has been all the rage.

“Out of sight, out of mind” has never been truer than it is in the age of Internet-everything, when online visibility is vital to traffic and digital success. It doesn’t end there, however; your visibility needs to be combined with relevance if you want to see results, and nothing is ever more relevant than what’s happening RIGHT NOW.

Harness news and events for your business blogging or social media marketing and you’ll enjoy the benefits of having unending, real-time subject matter that’s current and up-to-date, and which lends an extra dimension of credibility to your brand.

Follow Trending Topics

You can’t use what you don’t know about, so following trending topics is vital if you’re to be able to make use of them.

Twitter is, of course, the king of real-time and has been for some time, as even Donald Trump knows. Remember when the news broke about Michael Jackson’s death? While actual facts about who reported it first are murky, the initial announcement on CNN was worded “According to the news on Twitter, Michael Jackson has died.” As the top-ranking news source in the world, CNN got its facts from Twitter. You don’t get more trending than that, and if CNN can do it so can you.

So set up a Twitter account and follow sources of interest — people in the same industry as you are, thought leaders in related industries, celebrities and news outlets that focus on current affairs. Use hashtags to track the trends you want to follow.

You can also create alerts on Google Trends and Hot Searches to keep you up to date on what’s happening online and have these delivered daily to your inbox.

Mashable’s website also has a Trending Topics section that tracks a range of social platforms and television channels. It publishes the results as it gets them, so you can check in there at any time to see what issues are getting attention.

Have a Newsjacking Mindset

Getting the information is one thing; knowing how to use it is another. For tips, download and read David Meerman Scott’s book on Newsjacking, which will help to create the mindset you need to see material of value in anything that happens. It’s all about linking what’s happened to the message you want to deliver, using current affairs as a hook on which to hang your hat. This makes your content newsworthy and it’s one of the original principles of journalism — looking for the news value in something and shining the spotlight on it.

Be careful though — when Hurricane Sandy hit, clothing brands American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and Gap all jumped on the bandwagon with tweets that were considered in poor taste. These ranged from AA’s 36-hour email sale offering a hefty discount to relieve the boredom of the storm, to InStyle magazine’s cosmetic promotion for “5 beauty treatments to help you ride out the storm” for those stuck inside by the hurricane.

Create a Connection

Using real-time information as a marketing hook requires you to create a connection between what’s happening and your brand, and that’s the difficult part. Politics and celebrities’ antics have been used for years in this way, but it has only recently been given a name. The Oreo tweet (“You can still dunk in the dark”) remains one of the best examples of making a connection between the power outage and the company brand.

It also has to be timely. The unwritten rule of using real-time events is to do it within 48 hours of the news breaking, or it’s likely to be stale before you get it out. There again the Oreo tweet made it to the plate. And it has to be real rather than overly promotional. The Oreo tweet didn’t exhort anyone to buy their cookies — it merely made the point that you don’t need power to be able to enjoy them.

Remember Sarah Palin’s famous hair updo during her run for VP? Every hair stylist on the planet news jacked that one to publicize their services, even though chances were good few fashionable women wanted to imitate it. But it was a way to create a connection with something/someone newsworthy. Anyone searching online for Sarah Palin found their results pages full of links to local hair salons. A company selling security systems can link to a bank robbery to highlight the need for effective protection.

Getting it Right

The secret to using real-time marketing successfully is knowing what your readers want and giving it to them. And what they want is relevance. Topics are trending for a reason, so tap into the desire for information on the subject and use it as a vehicle to carry your message to the world. Sure, you might hit a few users who aren’t interested, but even in those instances, you’ll create awareness of your brand. And those who are interested in your products or services? Well, they will get to realize that you’re on the ball. And there’s nothing better than that for your credibility.