When I read this morning that Twitter plans to index content in the near future, much like a search engine does, my head began to buzz with ideas on why businesses both large and small should take note of this. In fact, it is going to become increasingly important for business owners everywhere to make sure they not only have representation on Twitter but that they are deeply involved as well.
Twitter Search currently searches the text of Twitter posts. Using the service may help users discover conversations taking place around any particular topic such as a breaking news story, reviews of a business or product and the like.
Twitter wants to enhance this by crawling the links included in tweets and indexing the content of those pages. This will make Twitter Search a much more complete index of what’s happening in real time on the Web. At the same time, it will make them a more formidable competitor to Google Search with regards to people looking for very timely content.
As of now, I have encouraged our clients to get involved on Twitter so they can interact with other Twitter users who are discussing their products and/or services. Now, I’m going to point out the added benefit of making sure their content gets indexed by Twitter Search. And unlike traditional search engine crawlers, that is only going to happen if the business itself posts links to their web pages or Twitter users do so.
Along with indexing content, Twitter Search is also going to get a “reputation” ranking system. In other words, Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet and rank the search results in part based on that.
While they have yet to sort out exactly how this ranking algorithm will work, I think we can safely assume that it may be based on things like how many followers the Twitter user has, how many updates they have, how often they have been “retweeted” and possibly how often they tweet about any particular subject.
So it is not just going to be about getting on Twitter and posting links but rather building a quality Twitter profile and getting deeply involved in the service.
We are already seeing trends where companies are seeking to hire employees whose specific task entails managing the company’s Twitter accounts. This was most recently evident when Pizza Hut put out a request to bring on a “Twitter intern” who would be expected to tweet about all things Pizza Hut.
In light of these future developments within Twitter Search combined with Twitter’s ever-growing popularity, business owners can no longer ignore the fact that they have to get involved. This is going to require a lot of hard work and some pretty ingenious strategy.
While I won’t go into great detail here on how to effectively market yourself on Twitter, I will provide a quick bullet-style list of steps that at least I think one should take. Every business will be unique in how they can engage the Twitterverse as well as what they can offer but the basic steps to get involved should be similar among all companies.
- If not already on Twitter, sign up! Try to use your company or brand name as your Twitter user name (e.g., @Starbucks, @JetBlue).
- If your company does not have a blog, what are you waiting for? Every company who has a web site should also have a blog and start blogging.
- If you do have a blog, make sure every new blog post is also “tweeted” (posted to your Twitter profile). This is easy to do if running a WordPress blog. Just use a plug-in such as Twitter Tools which will automatically feed new blog posts to your Twitter feed.
- Crank out great content on your blog. Easier said than done but necessary.
- Make sure that great content is submitted to various social media sites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, Mixx, etc.
- Build a following to your blog with the combination of good content as well as making it easy for readers of your blog to follow your RSS feed.
- Invite your blog readers to follow you on Twitter. This can easily be done by adding a “follow us on Twitter” type of badge and placing it somewhere prominent on your blog as well as your company’s contact and about pages.
- Get involved with Twitter. This is also easier said then done. And keep in mind that you do not have to get involved with the entire Twitter community.
- Use Twitter Search to find users that are talking about your brand, your products or even topics related to your business. Then interact with them and maybe even follow them. You may discover these Twitter users following you back which over time can greatly increase your over-all following.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list but should provide some guidelines to at least get a running start for businesses that have yet to embrace Twitter.
Just as it has become crucial to have good visibility in organic search, especially Google, having a quality presence in Twitter is only going to become increasingly important over time to the success of businesses both large and small.
David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful search engine and social media marketing campaigns for large and small businesses.
I think its going to take a little creativity and some time to figure out how tweets x twitter users x links x pages x time = usefulness. Here are my thoughts.
1) I could see this helping people find out who tweeted a URL first, and this in time might be able to help divide the true first movers of a topic from the the retweets and followers. Maybe a ranking system of twitter users and topics can be created. So, I log onto twitter advanced search and type in “nate is gay” and you are the expert on the topic nate is gay cause you have tweeted the more pages discussing it.
2) There new URL index + tweets could help detect how a story moves viraly. That information would help PR people better plan campaigns online because they can pin-point how to distribute them more appropriately. For example, does some one tweet a story from the company blog first, or a PRWeb release? Then after the first tweet where is it going.
Though we all fear change, I think this just might be a good change. Both organizations and individuals will be better able to establish, maintain, track and protect their brands.
I agree that companies should certainly be on Twitter – if they don’t claim their brand name there’s a good chance someone else will, which is quite a loss. A plan is important but to some extent you also just have to jump in and learn.
Twitter search is becoming more interesting, but it has some limitations to overcome.
Twitter Search’s greatest advantage over Google search would probably have to be the real time indexing of the content. This will put Twitter in a much more reliable, timely, and up to date position. Thanks!
Indexing content from Twitter is a great idea. This brings a whole new element to understanding some sort of return on time spent using the platform.
I think with the advent of twitter into the search market it will crush all the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This is the great news for those who are already in the twitter and sad news for those who are still relying on Google to get business for their products and services. I admit that every business owner will have a twitter enthusiast in their business.