With the real push from search engines to integrate social network activity into your personalized search results Twitter for local selling businesses has become meaningful. The best feature with Twitter is its totally viral nature. Follow people of interest, write interesting tips and news, get retweeted widely and you have just tapped into a huge social network that spans both locally and nationally.
With search engines now showing reviews, the location, and status updates from those in your network in your search results, getting retweeted or even mentioned is now more important than ever for local businesses. You can’t harness the power of this social networking tool if you are not in the game!
So how would you use Twitter for a local focus? I would recommend first looking to follow people particularly in your geographic area that are on Twitter. If they retweet your information or tip, you may be tapping into a whole local network driven by this one local user; neighbors, friends, colleagues, family members.
Use hashtags to focus attention on your location and service category. You just never know if someone will search on Twitter for a resource or review. Additionally, as search engines figure out how they will use Twitter in their search index, early embracers of Twitter may find themselves way ahead of their competition because they have established a better “SocialRank” based on the number of followers and the authority of who these followers are.
We are not exactly sure what the search engines will be doing with Twitter, but we do know for sure they are carefully considering how to implement Twitter results in their indexes. With the link sharing benefits of Twitter and ability to build a viral base, Twitter may end up being the best new link building, web authority register that search engines will choose to utilize as part of their organic placement ranking. One thing we know for sure is that full social integration with search engines is coming and Twitter is a very important part of the social mix.