The topic of Twitter’s use has certainly taken center stage over the last year and there is surely more to come. The fact remains that the landscape of Twitter is in constant flux. Meanwhile, as new features, uses, trends, add-ons and conceptual designs are released, the robust nature of this tool is becoming increasingly enhanced. Here are some reasons why marketers can no longer afford to ignore it.
1. Subscribed & Published Lists
Twitter “Lists” continue to mold the face of Twitter. With the widespread use of the Lists gadget, your tweets are bound to appear in many different places throughout the web. Tweets are now popping up in blogs and other sites related to your niche. This increases the mass reach of your tweets by an exponential number if you are effectively targeting the right audience on Twitter.
2. Complete Transparency and Openness
Twitter is now presented to other audiences such as Facebook and various social networks. With this in mind, your tweets are no longer contained solely within just the spectrum of Twitter itself. The sharing of valuable tweets amongst more people across numerous online mediums is more rampant than ever. This gives your tweets an even bigger pool of prospects from which to target.
3. It’s All About Relationships
The book ‘Twitter for Dummies’ states that your success with Twitter breaks down to 4 basic rules: listen, learn, care and serve. Twitter is very much a community and your ability to listen to it will create an opportunity to learn from it. Once you show you care about your peers (or your audience) you will better understand how you might serve them best. By “serving” your community we mean to say that you are contributing something of value. Without value, your chances of reaping rewards from Twitter are slim to none.
4. Targeted, Caring Traffic
Twitter will bring you a fair share of traffic “just stopping by” or those you might consider random. But the tool is also well set up to bring you a highly targeted audience that honestly cares about the niche you represent. The ability of users to “retweet” your information becomes increasingly important in this regard. If a person is willing to retweet your content, they are in essence giving you a testimonial of sorts. This form of public support goes a long way in attracting dedicated followers.
5. Always Current
Showing up in real-time Twitter searches, which is becoming an increasingly important area of focus for many search engines, provides a load of opportunity for added online exposure. The goal of remaining relevant in present time is becoming more and more imperative to the engines and Twitter is the best example of this today.
6. Attracting Local Customers
Yes, even Twitter gives you the ability to connect with a local customer base. Downloadable tools such as TwellowHood give you the ability to find and attract Twitter users in your immediate locale. Related to Steamboat Springs marketing, using Twitter could be as targeted as the Steamboat Today or Steamboat Pilot for advertising purposes. As the emphasis on creating better tools to target users locally increases (which it is, as seen in the Google “Social Search” example) people’s user profiles will naturally become another means by which savvy marketers direct their efforts.
7. Still A Young Gun!
Considering that Twitter is still being developed into an application that will ultimately fit into the grand scheme of overall search, its current state is still that of a fledgling. Even with the thousands of current apps designed to give Twitter more productivity, developers have only scratched the surface of what it might do. Everyday uses of Twitter by various people and businesses both locally and internationally is growing daily. Chances are good that if you closed your eyes and thought of what you might like to see from Twitter in the future, there is probably somebody already working on its creation.
