Eavesdrop – It’s allowed (even encouraged)

One of the most useful things about Twitter is that conversations are public. The problem is that with so many conversations going on it is impossible to follow everyone who might be your ideal guest.

However, it is possible to eavesdrop on conversations that include your keywords. It’s an accepted part of the Twitter Universe to see a Twitter Post that includes a keyword phrase you are following and to respond with a solution – even if you don’t follow the person who tweeted.

Identify your Keywords

Think of keywords as the questions your potential traveler might be asking that you have the answer for. If you have difficulty, just go through the list of keywords that come up when you ask yourself these questions about the guests of business or region:

Who are they? What are they doing? Where are they traveling to? How do they travel? When? Why?

• Learn more about keywords in this instructional keywords video

Follow your Keywords

I use Seesmic Desktop Twitter Application to monitor conversations from those I follow on Twitter and Facebook. I also get search phrases related to our tourism business directly in my stream – even from folks I don’t follow.

• There is a nifty little setting in the app that makes it possible to include search results in your stream(see below) . This is just like following your keyword phrase(s).

• Use the search box in the top right hand corner of Seesmic Desktop to subscribe to any search phrase related to your business.
• You can add as many keyword search columns as you like. Either keep these open and monitor your keyword phrases or watch for tweets that show up automatically in your timeline.

Be Helpful

The beauty is that it takes very little time to provide a helpful solution to a traveler in need. When you see tweets that include your search phrase, they all won’t be relevant, but some will provide great leads.

For instance, in a conversation about “Algonquin Park”, one of our keyword phrases I saw this tweet:

To which our staff replied

Earlier today, we saw this tweet about another keyword phrase “yoga retreats” related to our experiences:

It was an open invitation to share more information about our upcoming yoga retreats.

Use your keyword phrases in your Tweets

Travelers use search.twitter.com or apps like Seesmic to research information and plan travel or seek advice. If you use your keywords in your tweets from time to time, you’ll show up in the search results of travelers who are using Twitter for travel research.

Ever learn of a great party that you weren’t invited to?

That’s how Google must feel about the conversations happening inside Twitter every minute of every day. It’s a closed party and Google Search bots can’t see the conversation.

How we talk about Search

When people talk about looking something up on the Internet they often ask, “Did you Google it?”

In the near future (aka near now), people will be asking, “Did you Twitter it?”

The difference is significant.

Search.Twitter is a human powered search engine. It now appears right there on the home page of Twitter, along with trends which indicates the words and phrases people are talking about.

Twitter search tells users what people are talking about Now. When hot new Web content reaches Twitter, that content spreads through links that are posted by users and shared with their audience. As more and more people link to the content and talk about it, it rises in Twitter Trends.

The words and phrases available to Search.Twitter.com are relevant to NOW.

Mashable reports now that Twitter is beginning to index these links, which will provide real time search value of the links – not just the words in the 140 character tweets. Twitter search will be driven by user-generated linking.

The problem for Google

Google search is algorithm driven (a mathematical formula looking primarily at links) – a process which takes time and ignores real time human ranking of content. Blog posts, news pages, and other Web sites need to see the content, then link to it to add credibility/value scoring of the content to produce a high ranking. This takes time.

Twitter posts are largely invisible to Google’s search engine.

The Search.Now Advertising Bonanza

Once the Search.Twitter.com results page starts showing the links, instead of just the tweets, the advertising bonanza for Twitter will be realized.  Twitter, much like Google, will shortly be able to roll out a paid placement search model for Real Time Search.  This will surely move advertising revenue away from Google.

Where do you want your search results coming from?

• a computer algorithm or a community?
• a few weeks ago, or a few minutes ago?

Relative Search:

The difference between Google and Twitter might be summed up in this relationship:

Google : “Search”

as

Search.Twitter.com : “Search NOW”

Links:

• How much market share will Twitter take from Google (blog post from Feb ’09)
  

The power of the address bar in the evolution of the web browser makes page titles in meta tags ever more important. The new browsers like Firefox, and that old standby Internet Explorer (Microsoft) both support address bar searching.

When a user types search terms into the address bar, these web browsers offer suggestions of Web sites as you type.

Each browser offers suggestions a bit differently.

Some, like Firefox (shown above) offers suggestions based on your search history, using Web page titles to determine which pages to suggest.

Others, like Google Chrome will likely make suggestions from their database of matching properties in the future based on – you guessed it, the words in the web page title tags.

Homework: Take a few minutes right now, while you are at your computer and check the title tags of your Web pages. Each page should have a unique title, based on the content on the page and your ideal keyword phrases. No need to look at your html code, just load your pages into your favourite browser and look at the page title as it appears in the ribbon at the top of the browser.

If your pages don’t have keywords in the title tags, Congratulations, you’ve just identified the fastest way to get your Web page a better ranking, enhance your title tags!

It is really simple to cut and paste a Google search tool into your blog or web site. The tool can be dressed up to match your Web site too.  Google crawls your site and returns results for searches from within the pages you want searched. In addition, the Google blog indicates that the use of such a tool will enhance the visibility of your web pages within the Google Search results.

Those who have a bit of fear around their ideal guests going elsewhere after searching your site, may refrain from using the tool as Google’s Adwords do show up in the sidebar of these site search results.