Have A Plan to Act In Real-Time

Politics aside, I think that few people will argue the fact that President Obama's campaign staff has done a wonderful job of leveraging digital communications and social media during both of his campaigns. So while it shouldn't come as a surprise, the team's decision to purchase keywords trending on Twitter during the vice presidential debate is just another example of their leadership in this space.

As Mashable points out, the campaign purchased not only "malarkey" (which was purchased for paid search purposes as well) but the trending terms "Jack Kennedy," "#VPDebate" and "Afghanistan in 2014" too. And I'm actually surprised that they didn't include the word "friend" based on Vice President Biden's repeated use of the word.

Though I was in class at the time, we were following the trending topics on Twitter in conjunction with the week's lecture, and using Zeebox, I noticed that NBC's debate coverage was drawing 895 tweets per minute at its peak. Sadly, I wasn't able to determine the total number of tweets per minute through Zeebox, but this limited sample goes to show the volume of conversation surrounding the live event compared to other programming at the same time.

Listening to the conversation and purchasing keywords in real-time is obviously important, but perhaps even more important is having the ability to act immediately when you see an opportunity. In my own career in corporate communications [and based on anecdotes from my peers], I've found that leadership can often be reluctant to give individuals the power to act upon such things without running the proverbial flag pole. Sadly, this can result in missed opportunities or worse, enabling the competition to act.

Similar to a crisis communications plan, PR and communications teams who handle paid search or promoted tweets should have processes in place to enable members of the team to act immediately if needed. Here are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Identify a few key individuals who will be responsible for activating the campaign. No one person should have this responsibility; we all have busy lives and don't spend every moment in front of a computer, so multiple people need to have the ability to act when needed. This should include someone who manages your website in the event that content needs to be added or updated.
• Establish criteria for determining when it's appropriate to activate a campaign. Does there need to be a specific amount of volume around a key term? Does sentiment around the word matter? 
• Determine how much are you willing to bid or pay for keywords.
• Create a roadmap with a variety of scenarios so you know where you'll be directing your traffic. In the case of the presidential campaign, this should be fairly easy as users can be directed to pages containing the candidate's view on a particular platform.
• Develop a reporting process to notify leadership once a campaign is live.  

Now, I know there are a handful of things I'm omitting here, but the idea remains the same: have a plan. The last thing you want is to try to play catch up, and in our real-time world, it's something you can't afford.

Social Vs Search In Driving Online Purchases

Are we potentially over-estimating the power of social media and underestimating search in driving online shopping? The answer is yes according to the latest Forrester Research report, which found that less than one percent of online purchases were influenced by social networks while organic and paid search were responsible for driving 39 percent of new customer sales.

We've spent the past two weeks in my internet and interactive marketing class talking about the importance of SEO and paid search, so while this really shouldn't come as a surprise to me, it does. I talked about the potential power of electronic word-of-mouth in my previous post regarding Myspace, but what I failed to consider was the fact that in some cases, consumers know what they want to purchase when they go online. So rather than turning to their social networks for recommendations or ideas, they turn to search. Forrester calls these individuals "spear fishers."

Utilizing SEO and/or paid search to reach consumers and drive sales online seems like such a simple, logical idea, but it certainly isn't the first thing that pops into my mind. And I imagine I'm not the only one. As marketers, advertisers and PR professionals, we can't let the flashiness of social media distract us from some of the tried and true tools we have at our disposal. Granted, each situation isn't the same, and we have to choose those tools that fit our strategy, but we really have to remember to explore all of our options--not just those with the most buzz. As Forrester's report goes to show, sometimes the flashy tool isn't the most effective one.