Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.

Here is real time search can drive business results:

• Increased reach of your messages
• Growth in social equity
• Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now have to come to terms with:

• Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
• Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond when issues arise on the fly
• Brands must be more strategic when posting updates on facebook and consider what keywords to use

The article is timely, since I wrote about how brands should be living in the conversational stream earlier this week.