Today, we’re offering a little snippet of audio for our business savvy readers: a short interview with Michael Synk. Michael is a Business Strategy Coach and coordinates the In-Synk Executive Huddle, a peer group for entrepreneurs and CEOs. He has also formed a Business Book Club, which he describes as “the book club for people who don’t have time to read the book.” The event referenced in the interview, the review of Blue Ocean Strategy, took place this morning. You can stay up-to-date on future book club meetings here.

After you listen in, find Michael on the web at www.in-synk.com, or on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook!

And sure, there are plenty of benefits to real-time search. It’s got lots of sparkle and shine to it – the idea that you can search literally everything that’s being said about a given topic on the web right at this instant. It’s a fascinating innovation, but it comes with huge risk factors.

"Annoying Noises Prohibitted (sic)" by BarelyFitz on Flickr

As businesses become aware that their Facebook page – which may only have a hundred or so fans – is being indexed by Google, the temptation will be great to deck out updates with SEO-friendly terms and inundate the stream to grab that coveted top spot in the search. With search results automatically updating in real time, one post a day isn’t going to cut it. If you update about tomato soup in the morning and someone searches for tomato soup in the afternoon, your update likely won’t appear – it will have been pushed down by all the other people who’ve raved about tomato soup since 9 a.m.

Ultimately, while businesses can benefit greatly from being involved in social media, these platforms were not created for businesses. They were created for individual users. Still, very often a business’s presence on Facebook is a good thing for those individual users – as fans, they get benefits like exclusive deals and discounts and they can keep up with events at their favorite local venues. But Google is dangling a pretty tasty looking carrot in front of businesses with real-time search; if they bite, the utilities of social sites for individuals may soon be overshadowed by superfluous, constant updates that are a huge turn-off for most every user.

It’s certainly not surprising that a business would go to great lengths to nab the No. 1 spot in a Google search. Before now, that might have involved expensive SEO consulting and tedious copy writing to try to get in good with the algorithm. Real-time search is like a secret passageway, letting them bypass the algorithm entirely simply by having a social media presence.

But for those of us hanging out on Facebook, and not on the Google results page? As the Grinch himself once said, all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise! We’re going to see much more of it on Facebook and Twitter. We may soon find businesses posting anything and everything to up their search rankings. But is that ranking more important than genuine fans or followers who are interested in your message or your product/service? If it’s the Google ranking, eventually those fans may go by the wayside, either by removing your page entirely or hiding your updates from their feeds.

There’s a fine line to walk. It would be foolish to ignore the possibilities of real-time search. You shouldn’t completely throw SEO principles out the window. But this does inject one more artificial aspect into the conversation that may push people away if not handled correctly. If it weren’t for the people using these networks, they wouldn’t have any value. If businesses turn up the noise too much those users are going to retreat. The back channel will have truly gone mainstream, and the value for the individual will wane quickly.

As for Google’s motives with this, we can’t help but feel like we’ve run into another snake-oil salesman. Hey, Facebook and Twitter and MySpace! We’ll give your sites lots of search love by listing real-time web updates in our search results. Sound good?

On the surface, it does. But if this results in increased noise, it may eventually be a detriment to these social sites. The habits of traditional marketing are hard to kick, and it won’t take long before businesses start picking up their megaphones. Our word to businesses? Be careful. Be smart and be savvy — you don’t want to get left in the dust — but be careful.

"Stormy Weather: Lightning" by Sabrina Campagna on Flickr."

EDIT: A direct message from MLGW on Twitter requested that we change the headline to reflect that they weren’t aiming for attention, but rather that they were just trying to help. That’s the main point of this story, so we’re happy to comply. (Once again, thanks for the good work, MLGW!)

Severe weather tore through Memphis Friday, June 12.  The weather knocked out the transmitter for the local public radio station, and the digital television switch ensured that anyone left without a converter box couldn’t rely on local television for breaking weather news (and several thousand Memphians were left without power anyway). So where did people turn for the news?

They turned to cell phone-friendly microblogging service Twitter.

When the storms hit, even local news turned to Twitter for information about how people were faring. The Commercial Appeal was the only news source actively tweeting during the event, though its news was scant at first  (it’s hard to tweet from a cell phone in a basement with neither WiFi nor cell service), but once they got out of the basement, the main source that the CA was using was the suddenly very active Twitter stream of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water.

MLGW, over the course of about 72 hours from early Friday evening to mid-morning Monday, sent out over 880 tweets, mostly either @replies or information directly relating to the outages. Only the people at MLGW know how many direct messages they sent, but judging from how many times they told people to check their DMs, it’s up there around that 880 mark.

And though their followers have drastically increased (1,265, up from around 400 early Friday evening), what really sets their tweeting apart is that they haven’t changed their tactic: responding to every customer question possible.

For any business to pull this off in a time of emergency is remarkable – and admirable. With Memphis’ summer heat kicking in, a lack of power for fans and air conditioning really is an emergency situation, and MLGW’s willingness to connect with customers through social media (especially via a service that can function as SMS text messages) has truly shown their respect for their community, and their eagerness to help that community get back to normal as quickly as possible.

That respect extends all the way up MLGW’s totem pole, too. Jerry Collins, president of MLGW, took a few minutes to answer customer questions, in what amounts to a grassroots press conference.

It wasn’t just homes without power, either. Many local businesses (ourselves included) were affected by the outages as well. Our own Dave Barger, who had been following MLGW for the better part of a year, noticed on Friday how their updates begin showing up more and more.

It started with some updates about the service status, letting their customers know how many people were without power and how long it would be out. Then they posted some phone numbers, both for emergencies and simple outage reporting. Barger immediately took advantage of the phone numbers.

“I called the number,” he said. “I don’t think the automatic system gave me an option for business, so then I tweeted my report. I got a pretty quick response. They were very responsive.”

Susan Mealer, of Answering Advantage, found a similar situation. Because she is not the building manager at her office, she wasn’t sure if she had the appropriate information for reporting an outage over the phone. So she tweeted it. She too, got a very quick response. Though MLGW said they passed the information on, Mealer said that she was pleased just “knowing that [report] was heard.”

Having that online communication with her local power company was convenient for Mealer, too – she was on vacation at Disneyland when the storms hit. When she found out about the storms, she was naturally concerned about her employees and customers. She said it was comforting to know that MLGW was there and taking care of the electricity situation.

Which is exactly what MLGW wanted. Richard Thompson, who runs the MLGW Twitter account, says that the real focus this weekend has been “getting people information about what’s going on and when power can be restored. That’s what’s most important to us right now.”

For Thompson, the decision to tweet MLGW updates was merely a practical one. “Hopefully we’ll continue to integrate Twitter into our communications, but we’re not there yet.”

Mealer had kind words for MLGW’s use of Twitter during the outages. “The buzzword here is ‘transparency,’” she said. “We can all see how they respond to everyone. It really allowed them to shine. It really showed that they heard their customers and that they were responding.”

Barger had high compliments for the sense of community that MLGW’s transparency instilled in him. “You definitely feel part of a community which is going through the same sort of problems. There’s this camaraderie sort of thing that kicks in. You know that the guy across the street has limbs down, that his power’s out.”

For the record, chances are quickly diminishing that you or the guy across the street have their power out. MLGW is working around the clock to get power restored, and as of 4 p.m. Monday, only 32,285 customers are still affected by outages. This is down from a peak of over 130,000 Friday evening.

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blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.