Going on the social websites is like wading through mud sometimes. People just get on and do updates and Tweets about things that have nothing to do with anything that matters. At least, it does not matter to you and your business. It would be so much easier if you could weed out all that nonsense and only listen to talk that relates to your company or products. With Google Realtime, you can do just that.
Google Realtime is a fairly new service that allows you to glean the material from the social networks that is most relevant to you. The results show up on a constantly updating stream of content from social networks, the latest blog posts and up-to-the minute news.
Your first step is to choose a keyword phrase to search for in the social websites. Remember that people do not converse on social networks the same way that they choose keywords for search engines. They are using the words and rhythms of natural speech, so forget about cumbersome long-tailed keywords.
If you do use several good, descriptive words, put them all in one set of brackets for Google Realtime if you want to limit your results to those that use all those words. The best choice is to choose something fairly distinctive that someone would actually say in a normal conversation. For instance, if you sell curtains, “window treatments” might not be the best keyword phrase because it might not be a casually mentioned phrase on a social network. A better phrase might be something like “new curtains” or “buy curtains.”
You can also choose a location for Google Realtime, so that your results are limited to one geographical area. Sometimes this will reduce your results to zero, but sometimes it will give you some very valuable information. You will want to know where the nearby demand for your products or services is, especially if you specialize in one location.
Of course, there is a goal to all this searching through social networks. Once you find conversations that revolve around your products or services, you can jump into the conversations if it is appropriate to do so. Always remember that your expertise and information is more valuable to others than your sales pitch. However, you will reach a more targeted group by narrowing your search through Google Realtime.
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