Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6232887

Did you know that you could use Twitter to be found in the search engines? That’s correct. Twitter is for more than just talking to your friends about what you are eating for dinner. Simply by answering the seemingly pointless question of “Whatcha doin’?”, you can help your website be found on the search engines.

Well, you might ask; how can I use Twitter to be found on the search engines like Google? That’s a great question. I’m so glad you asked that.

Many people wonder how they’re going to do that when they sign up to join Twitter. Many people can’t believe that all they have to do is type in the answer to a simple question and they’ll be found on the search engines. In this article you’ll discover ways you can use Twitter to help your website be found in the search engines.

One way that you can use your social media profile to be found is to populate your profile with the keywords you wish to be found in.

For example, if you are a virtual assistant, you want people to see the word virtual assistant in your profile. If you’re a writer, be sure you put the word writer in your profile. The more words related to what you do, the easier it will be for the people searching for you to find you. Also, if you have a particular niche that you serve, be certain to include that niche in your profile as well. People looking for that niche will use that keyword in their search. Also be sure to include your website url in your profile. Ideally this will be some type of opt in list so you can collect people’s email address. This is important because you still want to be able to connect with these people should something bad happen to Twitter.

Additionally you want to make sure that the information you are posting to your profile is information that is relevant to your niche. In other words, if you write for small businesses, be sure to post information related to small business. This helps you to be seen as an authority figure in your subject matter or area of expertise. Also, this type of information gets retweeted a lot. If at all possible, post relevant resources and content on your website and then post the link to that content on Twitter. That is a great way to get your website noticed by the search engine.

Twitter is an outstanding tool to use to get your website found in the search engines. Follow the steps mentioned above and you’ll be well on your way to being a Twitter rock star! Oh yeah, and you’ll be getting lots and lots of search engine love, too.

Have you heard of social media optimization? Test Marketing?

Social media optimization or in other words social media that markets through using information gathered from social communities.

A few examples of social media optimization tools and websites include blogging/RSS feeds for blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, BEBO and incorporating third-party applications to communities like Facebook and Myspace. Social media optimization is similar to search engine optimization, but differs in many ways, Mostly, the focal point is on driving traffic from sources within Social bookmarking sites and communities other than directing traffic from search engines.

The number of social media websites has exploded in the last year and each of these new social networking websites is different, they all attract different audiences with individual and diverse interests. More and more businesses want to experiment with social media optimization and you can see this in the explosion in popularity of Twitter. 

Twitter, one of the newest social networking websites, it uses micro-blogging and many people are getting actively involved in generating publicity through this form of social media. When you “twitter” or micro-blog, post pictures, and/or links you are inviting others into your life to comment and ultimately approve or reject what you are offering. This type of immediate response is an incredible way to gather “up to the minute” targeted information.

Why is this important might you ask?

Getting feedback about your product and services is very important and can help immensely when branding your company. Business reputation is very important in branding and marketing and up to date immediate feedback is considered an integral part of an online reputation management system. That is why many executives are now seeing the worth of using social bookmarking and social media optimization to test Search Engine Reputation Management strategies. this is incredible for organizations or individuals who need to enhance their online presence but cannot afford to pay for surveys and focus groups.

Using social communities can optimize your “linkability” or give you feed back and tips on ways to make your brand more comfortable,

Along with immediate feedback about your brand popularity it can also help your overall business.

Companies and individuals can now successfully use services like Tweetscan or Tweepbeep to monitor each and every time their company name or one of their products names are mentioned on Twitter and then choose to respond accordingly through the social media website or through their marketing, or engineering departments.

This has the potential for real time insight for a company CEO, whom often lose touch, with the people who are using the products or services their corporation provides.

Imagine, if back in the late eighties, the board of K-mart could have been following social media sites instead of listening to yes men in the company. Then perhaps they could have understood how a line in a movie like Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman says “K-mart sucks” could become the punch line to a joke they had already become.

Smart companies that want to avoid that kind of meltdown are learning to keep their finger on the pulse of consumers wants and needs and if you want to succeed you’ll want to do the same thing.

If you do list marketing via email, one of the most important statistics is the open rate, right?  You need to have a good idea of how many of your recipients are actually opening those emails.

Twitter marketing, in some ways, emulates list marketing.  People opt-in to your Tweets and you send them out, at least occasionally trying to drive traffic to one of your web properties.

The problem is that you have no idea how many people are actually ever seeing the Tweets.  You can check your traffic numbers to find out how many visitors you’re getting as a result of a Tweet, but there’s no good way to track the “open” or “delivery” rate of your Tweets.

That might mean that two different things make sense when marketing via Twitter.  First, you might want to repeat the same Tweet at a few different times, to increase exposure (while still staying on the right side of the “don’t spam the system”).  Second, it may pay to go after a larger volume of followers than you might believe necessary in order to increase the traffic-pulling effect of your Tweets.

When you don’t know about delivery rates, things get trickier, don’t they?