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Adam Broitman is the Director of Emerging and Creative Strategy at Morpheus Media where he works on high-profile accounts such as A&E, NYU, Kyocera and The New York Times. Prior to joining Morpheus, Adam worked at Digitas on the AMEX team. Adam is the author of the media blog Amediacirc.us. He holds an MA in Media Studies from the New School University.

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Socializing Search: How Search Marketers Can Evolve into Consumer Conversationalists

Written on
Feb 26, 2007 
Author
Adam Broitman  |
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Socializing Search: How Search Marketers Can Evolve into Consumer Conversationalists

As a first step, company X’s search team might build a set of keyword-based RSS feeds related to the brand they carry, as well as a set of generic keywords related to portable music players. As the team’s feed readers began to populate, they might start to notice trends relating to one or more of their products. For example, they might notice that Paris Hilton was just spotted with a new, lesser-known portable music device. Somewhere in the long tail, a die hard fan will undoubtedly be searching to buy the device that will liken her to Paris. The searcher enters the query, “Portable Music Device Paris Hilton” (or some query similar to this). If company X’s search team were paying attention and caught wind of this buzz fast enough, they would find themselves in a potentially lucrative situation.

On the other hand, if their competition beat them to the punch and started bidding, they might miss out entirely. If you jump into the game late and your competition has already built up some paid search engine equity, you will find yourself paying more money than your competition. Many search marketers take the approach of seeking out buzz, but it is not enough to find the buzz; you must find it first. No one said search engine marketing was easy.

In addition to monitoring buzz to leverage tangentially relevant keywords, it is also a good idea to listen to the conversation in order to tailor copy. Bloggers can be brutally honest with product reviews. Bloggers also tend to be tastemakers, so it is important never to underestimate a blogger’s influence. If you were closely monitoring your keyword-based feeds, you might notice trends or similar concerns among various bloggers. The ability for marketers to listen to consumers while they are speaking openly is not something to be taken for granted. Many public relations agencies are already taking advantage of such opportunities, but what are search marketers doing? The search marketer who works at the “speed of search” would address common concerns in their ad copy, thus joining the conversation.

Finding Relevant Conversation in the Abundant Noise

In an ongoing effort to monitor blog buzz (for search as well as other forms of marketing), I have been searching for platforms to aid in the process. At ad:tech this past November, I met up with Dan Lynn, CEO of Relevant Noise. He presented me with a product he had created to aid in the monitoring consumer conversations. While the product was not developed for search alone, I urge search marketers to meet with Dan for a test run. You will not be disappointed (disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Dan in any way that this statement could potentially be lucrative for me)!

Sure, Ad Age may claim that the concept of consumer conversations is a cliché, but how many marketers are actually making plans to join the conversation? Everyone seems to be paying lip service to the tenets of social media and user-generated media, but how many are actually taking tactical steps towards leveraging the ability to listen to consumers? Don’t just be a talker, be a consumer conversationalist.





Reader Comments.

I wanted to bring attention to what is happening with Web 2.0 applications that have the end user customizing their social profile pages as start pages and adding the custom content that is of interest to them and affinity groups of like minded spheres of friends. Companies like http://www.springwidgets.com are developing widgets for users to customize Myspace social network profiles and blogs as well as encouraging the users to bring the widget to their desktop. This is becoming a very important part of the Web 2.0 growth and becoming known as the “Widget Economy”. Just like the search methods mentioned in your last article, widgets will be the brand connection vehicle in which marketers will be able to pipe-in content and messaging to users and their spheres of influence while at the same time creating adoption patterns through the networks of social sites. As applications are developed to pull profile data across open and walled garden social networks, we will see the emergence of mega-networks that may cross from MySpace to FaceBook to HI5 and into Digg and De.lic.ous profiles within one widget application. Keeping up with paid search is just the tip of the iceberg as widgets with built in ad servicing and e-commerce capabilities start to roll out in the next several months. Now is the time to start building a Widget Strategy as Web 2.0 Widgets are creating the consumer connection we are so desperately looking for.

Posted by anunno | 4:19 pm on February 26, 2007.

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