Twitter’s relevance to small businesses just skyrocketed, thanks to new integration of the real-time messages into search engine results. Twitter recently signed deals with all of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) to place “tweets,” messages written on Twitter, directly into the answers to customers’ searches.
If you enable real-time search on Google, for instance, now a search for “restaurants” will deliver the latest Twitter updates in your area that featured that word, in addition to the usual static web pages.
This is a boon for small business owners who have had to compete with entrenched businesses that dominate top search rank or have been able to buy their way to the top of ranking with paid listings. Instead of having to pay a high cost and spend a lot of time building an organic web presence to match large rivals, a small business that focuses on placing its terms into real time results can place its messaging front and center in front of potential customers with little expense.
If you’re interested in leveraging real-time search results, begin doing periodic searches for terms your customers would use to find you, and see what terms users are employing to get registered in the search results. Real-time search listings will become an increasingly important small business marketing resource as they improve in relevance and quantity. Also, attracting customers via real-time search has the double benefit of raising your overall web ranking because inbound links raise your search engine ranking.
Small business owners should also learn to use the new real-time search capabilities to monitor their market and customers more closely as well. As more and more status updates to Twitter come from services that contain geolocation data, such as Foursquare, small business owners will be able to see even more relevant information about what local residents are saying about their industry and specific business.
