By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2011-03-08 21:38:40 | Word Count: 664
Did you know that you can perform a non tweet or non-person search on Twitter? Although most people turn to Google when they first think to search, you can search for just about anything while on Twitter.
You might be thinking, Why would I want to search on Twitter when I can just do it on Google? Well, two reasons. The first is that you’ll get more real-time information from Twitter. Seriously, the next time you want to find out the current score to a game being played right now, check Google and then check Twitter. The one with the most readily available up to date info is might not be Google. In fact, you’ll probably have to wait for the game to finish to see only the final results on Google.
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In contrast, on Twitter people post content on whatever they’re interested in minute by minute. You’ll know the current score instantly by tapping into the hive mind, which brings me to the second reason:
Searching on Twitter let’s you search the hive mind. Imagine you’re a social media marketer and you want to share your interests, those of your company or your clients with the hive mind? Well, the fact that the hive mind is searchable means that it is actually a gold mine for locating your target audience.
Say you want to generate traffic to a site that provides acid reflux relief, do a Twitter search for heartburn, acid reflux, upset stomach, etc, and build a network populated by people complaining about these symptoms. Then use the micro-platform Twitter offers you by tweeting the URL of the acid reflux website to all these interested parties. You are bound to increase traffic by some measure to the site. Every so often you can Twit the link with any promotions to the same group.
There was, at one point, conversations across the Web discussing whether the real time results that Twitter offers could pose a real threat to Google. To be sure, for some news items (such as the game score listed above) Twitter is the place to go for the most up to date information. However, Google has stepped up to combat the possibility of being replaced for this type of news in a few ways.
First the search engine giant added Twitter results to its SERPs with a dedicated sidebar tool labeled “Realtime”. Although you may rarely find a Twitter listing on pages 1-3 of the SERPs, if you click on this sidebar tool you will see pretty much only Twitter links. This is great if you know how to manipulate Twitter to generate traffic to your site, because now your tweets will also show up on Google.
Next, this year Google introduced its new indexing upgrade Google Caffeine, which captures only the most up to date content. This faster indexing has actually made it a little more difficult to rank on SERPs because a steady stream of new, relevant, well written, useful content is required to both reach and maintain a top ranking. E-businesses have to step up their SEO content output while maintaining the quality, since Google’s algorithms can detect badly written, redundant copy.
Twitter’s search function thus gives online business and their marketing departments another tool to push the company brand /product offline. It’s pretty easy to understand: if competition gets harder online, offline becomes even more important. Plus, because of the “Realtime” bar, offline efforts can lead to online visibility.
Social Media marketing hasn’t slowed down since its inception. When Twitter adds a search function, you’d better figure out (or let a professional figure out) how you can use it to enhance your bottom line and your SERP ranking to reach users. Contact us and we can tell you how Twitter can help your marketing efforts. Call us 1-800-736-9618.
