Up in the Branches Aug. 18

[Val Filipski]

Twitter, tweets, tweeting, follow, follower, following - Why should you care? What does this have to do with your business? EVERYTHING!

I can hear the voices in your head (I sounded like that last year) - "I don't have time; I don't understand; It is just for techies; I am busy enough without ONE MORE THING added to my daily to do list." So, I AM a techie and I didn't want to be bothered. I already "did" Facebook & LinkedIn, Digg etc. So, what turned me around? A friend said "SEO - Search Engine Optimization." It is what I do. Stay with me and I will get there.

Presuming you have a business, small or big and that business has some type of web presence - you want people your current or potential customers to find you. How do people find businesses these days? They "Google" them - that ubiquitous company that turned into a verb (as some of my "contemporaries" will also remember the "Hoovering" and Xeroxing). Like it or not, old or young, techie or newbie, the businesses with a web presence have a better (up to 35%) bottom line than those who don't. The internet is not going away. We must use it to our advantage. People need to be able to find us on Google, Yahoo, Bing and the way you get found is to make sure your site AND your brand is optimized with as many tools as you can afford. The social networks, including Twitter provide the inbound links that the search engines love to see. And, for now there is no charge to use them.

Google LOVES inbound links from relevant sites, blogs, posts etc. You bet they take notice of the social media sites.In addition to all of the free SEO stuff Google offers, look at Google Friend Connect.

If you do not already have a Twitter account, you need to get one - yesterday - because your competition already does. How, what, where to do comes next!