Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Using Twitter to Generate Buzz on Your Sales Site

By Dominic D. Johnstone

With just 140 keystrokes, people send a brief message to friends and followers to answer the question, what are you doing right now?

Who could have imagined that a social network like Twitter.com would become so prolific with the online community?

Pretty well everyone we know knows about Facebook. The reason it is interesting is because we can see into the daily lives of our friends in a way never before seen. People post photos, websites, interesting news, and even their status at the moment. Who would have imagined that a site dedicated to nothing but status updates would become so universal?

We all know about Twitter.com by this point. This new and very forward thinking site is becoming the new rage on the Internet, and it has captured the interest of Internet marketers worldwide.

Regardless if your sophisticated mindset deems the concept at first glance, it is a very powerful tool. Just a few years ago not many people would have thought anyone would care if say for example - I am going for a venti valencia cappaccino at Starbucks with Bill. Nowadays, people are very interested in the minutia of each others day to day lives. Well add that to the exponential growth rate of memberships on these viral networking sites, and it introduces a very powerful Internet marketing tool.

You see at Twitter.com you can post as many updates as you can and want to in as short a time as you feel like. Most people dont want to be viewed as annoying or spammy with their posts, but many people do add multiple status updates per week.

Furthermore, Twitter.com allows you to post your website address as a hyperlink into the update. The benefit here is twofold. First of all, those who are subscribing to your updates on Twitter.com will see your hyperlink and may click onto your website. Secondly, Twitter is gaining a great reputation in the Internet world, and you may find that Google regards links from highly active user profile pages as being from a positive neighborhood.

Just have a look at the profile page of Chris Knight. Chris Knight is an editor at EZineArticles.com. His page is http://www.twitter.com/ChrisKnight. Many thousands of people subscribe to his updates. He subscribes to thousands more. His profile page is ranked 5 by google which is quite an accomplishment.

The benefit of the second factor is that Google will see the numerous links inbound to your site from higher page rank sites. While your own page rank may not be a critical factor, the inbound links is still fairly important.

In summary, Twitter.com is a new and fairly rudimentary website at first glance. Yet under the surface it is clearly a very effective viral marketing tool. When you consider the considerable growth experienced by sites like YouTube.com and Bankrate.com due to the introduction of viral growth mechanisms such as inviting friends and following people, you can understand the importance of using new and burgeoning sites like Twitter.com.

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