Twitter with 200 Million users is, at the moment, the web real time search. Twitter reaches 200 million users and 110 million tweets per day .

If you put on the top of that the fact that the Tweets are appearing in Google and Bing search queries it becomes even bigger its impact. But last not least, is the snow ball effect through all the other tools, widgets, and websites aggregated in the Twitter network.

Eric Schmidt accepts, as stated in an interview to Wired magazine UK,  that Google has made mistakes on this field. For instance in allowing Twitter to dominate the market of real-time search.

This fact, that Twitter is a powerful search engine, it’s  a fact hardly ever mentioned.  Twitter search has an increasing amount of data (that now is stored in the US Library of the Congress, that acquired the entire Twitter archive) due to its 110 million Tweets per day.

As a real time search engine Twitter indeed controls a big portion of the present web scene and influences it in different ways. With its 100 million Tweets a day is part of the real time data and search in the whole web and, as the CEO of Google admitted, Twitter has managed to control most of the real time web search in a very short period of time. As Google’s Marissa Mayer announced, Google partly started indexing Twitter in order to have in is own algorithm that important part of the web:

“At Google, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world. In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Besides, Twitter is as well part of the influential local and mobile data, have a look at this study: Twitter users are mobile, urban, and engaged online. You have to remind that a lot of the activities on Twitter are executed through mobile. Bing also did the same and even has a deal with Twitter to index its results.

Then, both Google and Bing are indexing Twitter on real time and displaying its results. So any tweet with a link you publish in Twitter counts as a search engine link building activity, though it has a no follow attribute it influences more and more the global search results.

Other influential factor is the PR and influential attributes of Twitter. Most of the 200 million users of Twitter are professional and experts in their fields. So their Tweeting is very powerful for the PR effect of search (PR online is one of the most influential factors to Google algorithm). Controlling such a powerful area is making Twitter not just as search influencial player but also as an authority vehicle for almost all the industries worldwide and, in some areas, is driving actually more traffic than Google, entertainment, video and mainstream media.

Another important area of the search relevance of Twitter is their very good management of Spam. Twitter is very sophisticated dealing with spamming. It gets read of it very fast with its filtering tools such as Twit Cleaner, TwitBlock and StopTweet. Also tools to Block Automatic Tweets from Games, quizzles, polls, LOLquiz.

While Google has been facing a lot of issues with its increasing spamming, Twitter as been managing it smoothly and taking a lot of attention to it. And in the same way, is creating a platform that has a faithful audience and its complete engagement. This quality or the strong effort in this direction is making Twitter a powerful web asset for search. And that is partly another one of the reasons Google and Bing are as well indexing it more and more as a relevant area for quality search.

Some considerations and guidelines about Twitter

• It is one powerful web with various tools and multiple ways of using it;
• You cannot control… only influence;
• On Twitter you should “listen” first and only then do anything;
• It is all about satisfaction, good content and micro-communication;
• You have to tell a good story (and repeat it otherwise people will not remember);
• The key drivers in Twitter and for everything regarding trust and closeness are “quality and service”;
• It starts and goes in a cycle among personal message, or corporative product/service – staff – customers – suppliers – consumers;
• Twitter as other Social Media players opens companies up to more criticism and griping;
• Twitter gives critics a forum, but of course in the other hand that means one can study them as well, understand them better and answer;
• Twitter is not the ultimate online tool, social media website(s)…;
• Monitorise what people are talking about you; or your company, your brands and your products;
• Twitter doesn’t replace direct traditional marketing and so forth…

The way to go with Twitter is to participate where it makes sense not in all of the discussions or social media tools or devices. With this tool you can monitor what’s being said about customers, competitors and help to protect brand, or at least understand where the problems are.  Also Twitter is an important vehicule to talk about your brand and products make it useful. Give advice. Blog posts, pictures,  etc.

Some direct strategy to use Twitter:

Twitter can be used as a sub site / micro site for marketing or public relations channel almost like an extension to a corporate blogs

Tool to Drive traffic and SEO Link Building Machine

Twitter drives SEO through its real time search engine. Using Twitter is a way of creating SEO/link building for a company. If the twitter is relevant and the channel is strong and has followers it can be a strong and fast way of creating links. Google indexes Twitter faster than almost any other website. Twitter partially because of all the applications and channels that are using twitter all enter the internet, most of them very important sources of data even for Google.

Also because of twitter Search – that is quite Impressive with its real time results -, you can drive traffic to a web site or free Twitter has become one or the top non-search referrer sources for a website. It might be sending even more that one is able to measure

Indirect strategy to use Twitter:

Some companies use Twitter is to let their employees tweet instead. Its employees use Twitter to enhance their own personal reputations, the company’s reputation is also enhanced by proxy.

Internal versus extremely communication tools:

Some companies use Twitter internally to share public Ideas or communicate about what projects they’re working on.

lnbound Signaling:

Using search tools like search.twitter.com or desktop applications like Twitter Deck, Hootsuite are easy ways to keep track of what’s being said about the company, its competitors, or the industry as a whole. Smart companies are tuning to these micro-conversations to get early warnings of problems and in collect Feedback on product issues or ideas.

If you use Twitter for brand awareness and to publicize what your company is doing there are a lot of interesting ways of doing it. You can use it as Newsfeed, online PR and Viral Marketing. Twitter is an opinion poll and a viral tool that breaks news and all sort of information faster than other sources and in this we just have to use it. Twitter is also a powerful web tool for delivering brand, product information, and sponsorships. It is as well powerful tool for keep the flows of information and to communicate with customers in a fast and in effective way. Twitter is also starting to deliver a substantial amount of quality traffic for websites and creating much more brand awareness and a great tool to monitor what is being said about your brand.

Conclusion

“We’re moving from the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ to ‘Wisdom of Friends’. Dan Rose from Facebook stated recently in the #dld11 conference in Munich check the link: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-02/02/dld-conference-eric-schmidt

Twitter multiple importance and capacities are massive whether we like it or not. Its various layers of reach and influence are unique and still in its inception, once its community and aggregated networks are still in its infancy.

In an article published Brian Solis discussed the following “Is Twitter The CNN Of The New Media Generation?”  he went though the following ideas:

“If media is fragmented and distributed, perhaps what we’re now witnessing is that the framework for publishing news is physically and financially constraining its ability to evolve and adapt in “Twitter time.”

He continues defending that the new challenges, shift is aiming towards the fact that:

• “It’s about real people.
• It’s about emotion.
• It’s about empathy. “

I would add: it is about the technology and business answering ASAP to all of that and about the philosophy of friend’s indexation through the social / search web.

Related articles

• Techmeme, Twitter and Real Time Search (broadstuff.com)