Why does that matter to your small business? Because using Twitter in your marketing mix means that it could also improve your visibility in the search engines. It's another way to gain exposure for your business, get your business listed higher on the search results pages, and get your brand mentioned more often in the web resources that users still turn to the most - the search engines.
Here are a few reasons Twitter has become so valuable as a small business marketing tool:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Like most small businesses, you probably have invested at least some time, money, or both into optimizing your web site for the search engines (and if you haven't, you already know that you should!). Being active on Twitter can support those efforts and make your investment in SEO even more valuable.
Studies show that nearly 80% of people still turn to search engines first (mostly Google) when they look for products and services on the web, and that's not likely to change any time soon. Getting your business to show up for your most important keywords and phrases is just as important as ever, and using Twitter can help attract the attention of the search engines, and improve the chances that they will include your business in the search results.
Qualified Traffic - Often, the traffic that comes from being active on Twitter is highly qualified, since users have already opted-in to follow you and are interested in what you have to say.
Real-Time Search - Social networking sites have really pushed the search engines into focusing on how to add real-time search to their results, since sites like Twitter are excellent at providing users with news as it happens. On Twitter, users can search for news and events and get instant, up-to-the-minute results, where a search engine's results may be hours, days, or even years old. It's only a matter of time before the search engines have real-time search rolled into their results, making your Twitter activity more powerful.
Viral Marketing - Because social networking is so popular with users, the information you provide to your Twitter followers can travel all over the web as they share your "tweets" with their networks of friends and colleagues, who then share with their networks, and so on. Your tweets are also not limited to Twitter users, either, since people can pull your tweets into their Facebook pages, link to them on a blog, put them in their bookmark lists on Delicious, etc.
Building Relationships - Twitter, as with other social networking sites, is all about providing something of value to your followers, and being a part of the overall conversation happening online today. Customers want to connect with the companies that they do business with, and they are participating with businesses in a whole new way. Twitter can help you build those strong relationships with customers that can increase brand loyalty and help you stay top-of-mind.
Constant Innovation - The speed with which new social networking applications, ideas, and features come out means your small business must find ways to stay in front of customers, no matter where those customers are. Twitter has only been in existence for a couple of years, which means it is just getting started in building up its repertoire of gadgets, widgets, and applications that people will find useful. By using Twitter now, your small business will be poised to take advantage of these new innovations as they come along. It can also give you a significant advantage over competitors who may have to play catch-up with building up followers and establishing their own presence in the social space.
No Time to Waste Twitter, like many other social networking sites, is changing the way small businesses market online, and it's a change for the better. Twitter is a free service, it's easy to use, can be customized, and is a great way to boost your presence online. Your Twitter efforts can also increase your customers' loyalty to your brand and your company, and meets a need that consumers themselves revealed to you by opting-in to follow you in the first place. And now that Google and Bing have announced the upcoming inclusion of Twitter "tweets" in their search results, Twitter can support your SEO efforts like never before as well.
Clearly, Twitter can be categorized as many different things (a viral marketing tool, customer service channel, SEO strategy, etc.), but a waste of time? Just the opposite.
Written by Lauren Hobson
