There’s quite a lot to be learned from this year’s Super Bowl, and we’re not even talking game strategy, unless your game is real-time marketing. February 3^rd’s game between the Ravens and 49ers was, as usual, a serious marketing bonanza with the expected crop of big-ticket ad campaigns. But some of the best marketing opportunities came not only for those companies that planned far ahead and paid for those prime commercial slots, but for those that were on the ball in real time.

Much of that real-time marketing took place on Twitter, which scored big during this year’s game with an estimated 24.1 million Super Bowl-related tweets. Their Tweets Per Minute (TPM) analytics showed that Beyonce’s appearance during the halftime show brought in a whopping 268,000 TPM, and the now-infamous power outage was a close second at 231,500 TPM.

The power outage, while unfortunate, was a great real-time marketing opportunity, and companies that recognized this chance jumped in with quickly laid out graphics and clever tweets

• Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) tweeted, “Power out? No problem.” They accompanied this text with a graphic of an Oreo in semi-darkness with the words, “You can still dunk in the dark,” and the Oreo logo. Simple, fast, and clever.

• Tide (@tide) tweeted, “We can’t get your #blackout, but we can get your stains out.” They included the hash tags #SuperBowl #TidePower and a black graphic surrounded by brand imaging (logo and tagline) with the tweet’s content in white lettering. By including the #SuperBowl hashtag and anticipating that #blackout would start trending on Twitter, Tide ensured that their clever tweet would reach a broader audience than just those people who already follow their feed.

Small business owners may not have Oreo or Tide’s 70,000 to 80,000 followers, but they can take a knee here and learn from their real-time marketing successes:

1. Be quick to respond to events in pop culture, sports, and news.
2. Tie your product or service to a currently trending hashtag.
3. Remember that a TwitPic is worth a thousand words (or maybe retweets). It’s not expensive to train one or two of the people responsible for your social media in Adobe Illustrator or a similar graphic design program for the purpose of making simple images or memes for tweets and marketing materials.

Do you tweet during major events, or do you only tweet about your own activities? How do you use twitter for business?