The Internet itself had the same reaction: “this too shall pass” everyone said. But the Internet remains, and continues to grow in importance, as strange as that seems, every single day. Now Twitter is getting ‘the treatment’, people in marketing, sales and virtually every walk of life are telling anyone who will listen that Twitter is a waste of time. They know this to be true.
I commented on a MediaPost research report on the demographic survey that the Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released, largely because people who should have known better took the opportunity to discount any value in Twitter. Their use of words such as “hype,” “worthless” and “bias” called me into action. Here is my take on Twitter, or at least the slice of it that I posted as a comment:
I find that comments about how Twitter is used by the masses ignores how Twitter is used by the professionals. Social Media is a faster, and some might argue more powerful, SEO tool than traditional SEO. The technology of Twitter is what is important, not the content found in any random sampling of the Twitter stream. Links are indexed by search engines almost immediately and they last forever and they get very fast response. Good content attracts large traffic numbers if posted to Twitter by a dependable source who has built a significant following.
Don’t be fooled by looking only at the surface. Twitter search, now lists, and some of the associated tools such as foursquare are changing the way money is made on the Web, customers are served, dialogs with prospects are initiated, and audiences are assembled. Twitter has powerful Google juice and it is up to the wise to tap into it.
I had a similar response to a friend, Mike Schneider, when he was curious about how few college juniors were using Twitter:
I just taught a similar class last week at the NE School of Photography. Similar results of the poll. Different reason why, though. These are photographers trying to get work in a world where there are more cameras than there are people. I tell people Twitter is pure Google Juice. Say it on Twitter with a good number of followers and read about it on Google within hours. Talk about your blog post or someone else’s on Twitter and watch the visitor stats go through the roof. I tell them that it is one of the few nets that will be tossed into more pools than they can find on their own, meaning that what they say can, and most likely will be if it’s crafted correctly, spread out to others’ lists of followers without any effort on their part. Some day the shelf life of Twitter content will probably be measured in centuries.
Social media is about leveraging technology to get found. I’ve taught that class to groups of older sole practitioners, college students, ad agencies, and professionals sharpening their self-promotion skills and darn close to 100% of them do not see it for that.
Twitter is SEO for everyman. As with all change, you have a choice as to how long you want to stay where you are and deny yourself the advantage of that change. I put it off for a while, but I am grateful to Aaron Strout for waking me up to the power of social media in general, and Twitter in specific .
If you want to start driving traffic to your efforts, get into Twitter and start reading the many tutorials on how to leverage it. If you need help, contact me.
Excellent post.
I think the Google juice factor is huge. Correct me, but isn't it a relatively recent phenomenon? as in, the last few months? It certainly helps explain why my blog is getting steady increases in traffic. Word is leaking out, courtesy Google hits.
For me, the Twitter story unfolded gradually -
After a rocky start (February), what got me engaged (May) was an ability to index rich content using hashtags, and the ability to follow topic streams easily in tools like Tweetdeck. Exploration of the chat metaphor (Jun-Oct) yielded unexpected dividends, as a group of us built a phenomenal network of thought leaders and practitioners that would not have been possible without Twitter. But don't forget blogs: they are much needed to back up the tweets with content. As my blog matured (Aug-Nov), the virtual workflow fell into place .. innovators, insights, connections, context .. and now, content .. all the resources we'd need to collaborate our way to better places.
For more on the above, insights from my journey are here -
http://sourcepov.wordpress.com/category/new-media...
Only point I want to make: the benefits of Twitter are still not obvious to everyone. It took awhile for me to connect all the dots. Now that I have, as with your internet comparison, it's hard to imagine networking, brainstorming and researching without it.
Perhaps most important: I've made a great many friends on a number of continents.
Count me in as a die hard Twitter supporter. More will be joining our ranks, I think. But the true Twitter innovators are already moving in to leverage the gains available to early adopters. Remember the man who called out to the explorer, "Is it safe out there?" and the explorer called back: "Sure. Do you want to buy some land?"
See you online. Looking forward to learning more.
Chris,
Sounds like you were able to gain some fast results - I look forward to learning more via your link. As for how recent the Google Juice response is, I don't think it's as recent as you think. The rise in blogs were the writing on the walls of search engines: they could no longer wait more than a few hours to spider any site that demonstrated "blog patterns" of daily content additions. There are now so many other sources and site types of course, but all that came after most of the search contenders got a handle on the sea change in their world.
Thanks for the input, I'm looking forward to crossing paths soon!