Google and Twitter have recently announced a partnership that is going to significantly alter the way businesses approach online marketing. From now on, relevant tweets will be integrated into Google’s search results in real-time. Tweets already appear in the search engine’s results occasionally, but the process isn’t automated; someone at Google has to manually seek out tweets that the company might want to put in its results for certain searches and add them. This is obviously grossly inefficient – and extremely surprising, given Google’s position as one of the world’s tech giants. Luckily, the new partnership with Twitter will enable Google to do away with this inefficiency by making the process of adding tweets automatic. From now on, it’ll be done with algorithms.
The importance of this to businesses is significant. With relevant tweets regularly appearing in search results, any business that maintains a significant presence on Twitter is going to gain a major advantage over those that don’t. What’s more, because the process will occur in real-time, the only way for businesses to ensure that Google’s search algorithms notice their tweets is to keep their Twitter account up-to-date and relevant.
There can be little doubt that the partnership between Google and Twitter offers businesses incredible new marketing opportunities. Witty or insightful comments made on the social media platform will be seen by anyone running a relevant search on Google, allowing businesses to cultivate the goodwill of consumers through humour and useful information. Even when a user isn’t specifically visiting a business’s website or blog, the business will still have a chance to connect with them via search results.
However, smaller businesses without the resources to maintain and regularly update a Twitter account may lose out. While Twitter accounts are free and therefore don’t drain businesses’ financial resources, they can be time-consuming. Simply put, not everyone has the time to take advantage of the Google-Twitter partnership.
Nonetheless, the positive aspects of the partnership are highly likely to outweigh the negative ones. Any businessperson who can spare a few minutes a day to do a little tweeting could reap significant rewards.
