Business.com
Earlier in February, Google and Twitter established a deal to bring more tweets into Google search results through direct access to Twitter’s social feed. This partnership benefits both companies with increased exposure, and gives potential for more advertisement revenue.
But what does it mean for your business? It is important to understand how these changes will affect your brand and its digital landscape so you can adapt and increase exposure.
How Google Indexes Tweets Today
Google currently indexes tweets, trending hashtags and Twitter pages; however, content is produced so fast within the Twittersphere it is improbable for Google to manually crawl and index content like it would from other websites. This new update allows Google direct access to Twitter’s steam, which greatly reduces the resources needed to quickly identify and index content.
Today’s process of manually crawling Twitter for important tweets, influential pages, and trending topics results in about seven percent of all tweets appearing in search results. More followers seem to be an influence indicator for indexing tweets. Profiles with more than one million followers showed more than five times the amount of indexed tweets in comparison to those with less than 10,000 followers. Additionally, older tweets and tweets offering more than text alone seem to generate higher rates of exposure in search.
Changes In Search And Social
While the update has yet to take effect at this time, it is important to understand the changes on the horizon. Companies that fail to plan ahead will fall behind once the changes go live.
For Twitter
- Increased Relevancy In New Channels – By including more content in search, Twitter can expand its relevancy, exposure, and value in Google through real-time content embedded within search results.
- More New Users – Since going public in 2013 Twitter has struggled with increasing new user signups, and the company hopes this new partnership will increase visibility to new audiences. When tweets appear in search results, users who are not signed into Twitter will be directed to a log in/sign up page in hopes of increasing new user acquisition.
- Increased Ad Revenue – The log in/sign up pages will feature targeted ads that aim to generate more revenue. Many marketers fear that this new user experience will limit the time spent in Twitter’s news feed where the company currently makes most of its revenue.
For Google
- Real-Time Value – With direct access to Twitter’s rapid moving content, Google can now include more timely content and can offer users added value in search.
- Credibility Issues – Twitter is notorious for having issues with fake news stories coming from bots and hackers. Google will need to establish a process to determine the validity of news stories to keep its content credible.
- Increased Ad Revenue – Google hopes to boost ad revenue with its new partnership by leveraging timely content to produce more relevant ads.
How to Increase Brand Visibility
To make the most of these upcoming changes your brand needs to analyze and revamp its current strategy for content production and paid media. Start by investing more time into Twitter to develop your presence through increased content production, community engagement and brand development. Generate more exposure for your tweets through valuable content, high impact images, relevant hashtags, links, mentions and optimized tweet lengths. Lastly, develop Twitter Ad campaigns that leverage the increased relevancy and visibility options from Twitter’s new update.
Conclusion
Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo estimates it will be several months until results can be accessed in search, but be prepared to see some big changes soon. Stay ahead of the curve by understanding what these changes mean to your brand and updating your marketing strategies accordingly.
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