Twitter: is your business a leader or a follower on Twitter?
A ‘tweet’ used to be what birds do in the trees in the morning, but now the word ‘tweet’ has different connotations. Twitter has become a major force on the Internet and it’s becoming a major player in many Internet marketing and social media optimisation plans.
Even now, many businesses assume that Twitter is all about social chat. A quick reference to the search engine listings, however, will show you just how powerful a business tool Twitter can be. It doesn’t take much knowledge of how search works to see that Twitter’s influence over the search engines, and many users, can be significant.
The micro-blogging format of Twitter presents unique challenges for the average business. Once you’ve mastered the terminology – tweets, retweets, followers and more – you need to master the social nuances of the site. The time investment you put in can be worthwhile, but only if your campaign is a smart one.
The many, many uses of Twitter
The benefits of making Twitter part of your Internet marketing campaign move far outside of the confines of the website itself. In fact, you don’t even need to be an active user for it to benefit your business. Twitter can be used:
- For customer research – Twitter’s audience represents a great cross-sample of Internet users. Research tools help to analyse its statistics and work out when users are chatting about topics relevant to your business
- For SEO keyword research – like many social sites, Twitter allows quite complex keyword searches. This can be invaluable when you’re performing keyword research for SEO
- As a marketing avenue – once you build an audience on Twitter, you can use the site as a free news stream, although it’s wise to manage this carefully
- As a way to build reputation – Twitter followers tend to be quite loyal. Mounting a campaign of quality tweets can build you into an authority in your field
- To touch base with Google’s top search results – at times, it’s surprisingly easy to be top in Google’s latest results using a simple tweet; there are obvious business advantages to this
- To become popular – many businesses have flown to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) thanks to Twitter; when something is popular on Twitter, it spreads fast. Twitter’s format encourages the speed of sharing, so when you catch attention it can swiftly turn viral
What if I don’t tweet?
An active Twitter campaign takes time and effort, so it’s not suited to everyone; not every business is going to be comfortable with a Twitter campaign. With the level of influence the site has, both on and off the net, it is wise to at least understand what Twitter is about.
Would your business benefit from a presence on Twitter?
If you want to see how Twitter can help spread your business wings, speak to our team at Engage Web.
