Whether you love it, hate it, or are still completely confused by it, Twitter is here to stay. If you’ve been asking one of the biggest questions associated with Twitter: why use Twitter in the first place, consider these 5 reasons for why to use Twitter and make it a part of your marketing umbrella.
Why Use Twitter
1. First, LOTS of people are on the network. In the years since Twitter went live, it’s reached roughly 350 million regular monthly users worldwide.
When you consider that most of those people signed up in just the last couple of years since it has really taken off then you can take a guess at where the trend is going to keep going from here.
That’s tens and hundreds of thousands of people signing up EACH DAY, many of whom are interested in what you are or should be tweeting about.
If you write interesting and thought provoking content, those people will retweet your tweet so that others will see what you’ve written and potentially share it over and over with others.
2. Secondly, signing up for Twitter not only enables you to connect with its users, but just the fact that you utilize it and advertise that you use it shows that you are a relevant and current company/website which is up on the latest trends.
Whenever I see a website which does NOT advertise their Twitter URL, a part of me can’t help but view them as a dinosaur who is very quickly getting left behind. Even television sponsors are beginning to list their Twitter and Facebook pages at some point in their commercials, even in place of listing their website.
3. Google loves Twitter and social media.
Google is constantly looking at the algorithm which they use to grade web pages and determine where they should be placed in the search engines. We know that at least one of the roughly 200 factors which they use in that algorithm is your content’s popularity on the various social media sites, most notably Twitter and Facebook. Now that it’s 2011, Google has announced that it will place a greater emphasis in the algorithm on these social media networks, so as time goes on we’ll continue to see social proof in relation to Twitter play a decisive role in a web page’s ranking, so really go for those retweets.
4. Some people are even beginning to turn their backs on the conventional search engines altogether.
It’s kind of a shocking thought, but some people see Twitter and Facebook not just as guiding search engines like Google in the future, but instead going so far as to take THE PLACE OF search engines, making search engines obsolete. I’m not going so far as to buy into that myself, but I do see a continuing trend of more and more people embracing social media and ignoring conventional search engines.
5. Also, Twitter can significantly improve your copy.
The fact that it confines your tweets to 280 characters is a blessing. With these constraints, you have to pick and choose your words carefully to get the most out of your limited space while still conveying your message as succinctly as possible, and this will improve your writing across the board in other areas as this is a good habit to get into. I have an entire post on how Twitter improves your copy so be on the look out for that very soon.
6. Bonus reason!
Finally, you can use it to keep abreast of the latest and greatest info and tips from your peers by following them. Hint hint, follow me at https://twitter.com/convertcopy and don’t forget to check out my resources on how to get more followers on Twitter and how to make a Twitter background.