The world seems to revolve around the Internet these days, making it vital for Web sites and businesses to get out there and make themselves known. It’s dog-eat-dog when it comes to Web marketing, so you’ll have to do whatever it takes to get to the top. One of the best ways of getting the word out about your business and/or Web site is to use social media networks like Twitter. Here are some reasons why you should use Twitter and how it can benefit you.

1. Creating a Brand: As a company, your top goal is to create a brand that will sell the products and services you offer. Making consumers loyal to you is what keeps a business thriving. On Twitter, it doesn’t matter if you’re a startup or a small business that’s been in operation for ten years — anyone can build a brand. Your best bet is to create a personal account if your company isn’t well-known yet — people don’t like to talk to LOGOs; plus, a personal account will make you friendlier to Tweeters. Humanizing your business is always an effective route. By having your business up on Twitter puts you in the position to show the world that you are a part of the online community. You will become a social personality that will slowly but surely bring in more followers, who can eventually become loyal customers.
2. Touching Base with Customers: Every business wants to be able to connect with their customers on a regular basis and Twitter lets you do just that. After branding, this should be your top priority. The reason Twitter is great for businesses is because it allows them to communicate with consumers directly. It’s like attending a worldwide party and being able to stand up in front of everyone and speak (and everyone actually listens). Those that are following you on Twitter will receive updates on your comments each time you post something up. You can also turn things around by keeping track of what your customers are tweeting. Getting to know them personally will help you to create a better brand and products/services that are more customer oriented. Also, make sure to reply back to customers as quickly as possible — they love that.
3. Getting Feedback from Customers: After working with a few tweeters that you’re connected with, you will likely receive feedback about your companies services and/or products, and how they can be improved. Just make sure that you can take criticism because it can be used for your benefit. Listen to what your customers have to say and try your best to cater to their needs.
4. Marketing for Free: Sounds too good to be true actually, but Twitter allows you to market your company without having to spend a pretty penny. You’ll be able to connect with potentially millions of people who in your eyes are potential sales. Marketing on Twitter is simple, whatever you post on your account will be seen by whoever looks into your profile and by those who are following you. In order to gain more followers, you should take the time to search around for people to connect with. Don’t become a spammer, be genuine and you will steadily build a group of followers. In most cases, tweeters will spread the word about a company they have enjoyed working with, which helps to increase followers and business for the company.
5. Building Links and Traffic: Getting more traffic to your site can easily be done using Twitter as well. Once you’ve created a personal or strictly business persona on Twitter and have developed followers, you will find it very beneficial to post up links to your business Web site. It will help to bring in more visitors and if you create great content for the site, you will be well on your way to building quality links. Developing content that offers information that is valuable to readers will help to keep people coming back to your site. You will even find a great deal of conversions of visitors/readers to buyers. Consider posting up a link to have people follow you on Twitter. When people see that you have a Twitter account, it shows that you are more than just a LOGO. When they follow you they will receive updates about your offerings, which brings us to the next reason why you should use Twitter.
6. Posting up Deals, Coupons and News: Everyone likes a great deal and as we all know, it’s a great way to bring in more buyers. By posting up coupon codes and special deals for products and services that you’re offering, it will catch the eye of many tweeters who could use your business. You can even make it a special deal for tweeters who are following you — that could help to get you more followers you can advertise to. Any company news that you would like to inform customers about can also be done through tweets. Keep customers and employees in the loop.
7. Keeping an Eye on Competition: Unfortunately, you’re not the only business on Twitter who is looking to get some attention. Use it to your benefit — keep an eye on your competitors to see what they’re up to. Whenever they’re offering a deal, try to outdo them, but don’t get too competitive to the point where you’ll end up losing money. You can look at the tweets their customers are giving them — these could be good reviews or complaints. If you see someone having a problem with the competitor, tweet them and see if you can offer a “helping hand”.
8. Increase Sales: Another great reason to use Twitter is to help increase the sales of your business. Since you’ll be receiving more attention than you probably ever have, you will receive the chance to sell more to more people.
9. Networking: Tired of attending local networking events that seem to never work? Now, you can effectively network with companies and individuals that are more likely to help you bring in more customers. Connecting with like-minded people can help to increase peer recommendations and testimonials.
10. Finding Prospects:You can use Twitter to find potential clients; you just simply type in keywords that are related to the services or products that you offer. You can then follow the users that pop up on the search results. Then begin tweeting about topics that are parallel to what you have to offer. Keep in mind that you should use direct messages or offline communications to keep prospects closed away from public channels.

Conclusion: Overall, using Twitter to boost your company’s or Web site’s visibility can be done with a few clicks of the mouse. Most of the work has already been done for you — all you have to do is make an account on Twitter and begin following and being followed. Make sure to stay active with tweeting to ensure that you build a reputable brand for your site or business.

Back in December, when Google launched its real-time search, it was predicted that Twitter was going to receive a big increase in traffic, which had previously declined after a peak in the summer of 2009. So far, it looks as though those predictions were true after all. According to comScore data, there has been a 9 percent increase of unique visitors to Twitter — between December of 2009 and January 2010. The all time high was reached in January, with 21.79 million unique Twitter visitors; this number is slightly above the 21.25 million that was recorded in July of 2009, by comScore. By the end of 2009 (December), the count for unique visitors was up by 3.1 percent, over November.

Twitter seems to have seen a great impact in the month of December, thanks to the December 7 launch of Google’s real time search. Then according to Experian Hitwise, the data suggests that it was Google that was the main source for the increase in traffic to Twitter. The amount of traffic that was coming from Google was increased by 9 percent, compared to the week ending December 5 and the week ending February 13; the count jumped from 12.8 percent to 14 percent in this time period. Hitwise too saw a 5 percent increase in market share of U.S. visitors within the same time period.

It seemed only natural that Google decided to launch Buzz (a supposed competitor of Twitter and an add-on for Gmail) after spending about $15 million for Twitter’s feed. Of course, Google wants to keep majority of the incoming traffic for its own network, where they’re able to deliver more ads to users.

On the other end, for Twitter, it seems that things are looking quite promising for them. So far, they are maintaining the U.S. share of visitors, while expanding globally and on the usage of its third-party application service via APIs. Compared to Google Buzz, Twitter offers its users more freedom to control as much as they want and how much personal info they want to share — it is an already established social media network, so the odds are against Google Buzz for a while. It will also be difficult to measure the impact of Google Buzz because it is embedded in Gmail.

Last month, Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, made a comment about the usage of Twitter was decreasing, saying that the microblogging service was bigger than ever. At one point, Twitter’s traffic was on the verge of flatlining in the United Stated, with figures backing up what was being perceived. Then Williams created a tweet that said “across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest usage day ever. (And today will be bigger)”. A lot of people were thinking the same thing, especially since the rush of people was dying down after the media rush died. But Twitter still has the tweeters that are using the site more and more and on different platforms.

It is believed that people are still going to be signing up on Twitter and using it over the long term because Twitter is just awesome (well, they offer a lot of great stuff). Just let Clark Shirky tell it, who stated that Twitter has more raw capabilities for users than anything since (the creation of) email. It would be difficult to wait out Twitter because it is lightweight and endlessly useful, getting better as more people begin to use it. Everyone is using it, she stated that brands and institutions are using it and that Twitter is becoming a place where important conversations are taking place.

The day the co-founder predicted that Twitter had a good day and that the next day would be even bigger shows great significance. Now, media organizations continue to use Twitter more and more, increasing the site’s traffic higher. It might not be as much as before or as high as Facebook, but it will indeed be bigger and better.

Since the broadening of Twitter’s demographic (towards 24 year olds and younger), things have been going very well for the site. It has also been growing for more mature markets within the U.K. and U.S. and other places around the world. Internationally, comScore showed that Twitter jumped up 8% in unique visitors (73.5 million in January from 65.2 million in December).

Facebook Zero and Google Buzz are also trying to get a nice share of the real-time market. Not sure what will happen with Buzz, but there are predictions that Facebook Zero may have great success, since a lot of big Facebook users and mobile owners are teens that also use Twitter (this could have an impact on Twitter’s site).

Let’s look at a quick comparison of Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz:

Facebook: The users on this site have Twitter beat; they update their profiles over 60 million times daily, which would translate to a rate of 700 profiles per second. The stats for Facebook only show profile updates. The hundreds of other activities that are on Facebook aren’t counted at all. Comments to updates and “likes” to status updates are counted, but adding links, pictures, pages or joining groups counts as nothing.

Google: After launching Buzz, there was an average of 55 posts per second. These stats were released two days after the site’s launch, so by now it could have grown a whole lot more.

Twitter: The amount of tweets per day have grown to nearly 50 million, averaging 600 tweets per second. Although, it’s kind of difficult to see the true number of tweets since a tweet is considered to be an original message, comment, retweet or links that are being shared, so each time a comment is posted to a tweet, it is counted as a tweet.

Overall, it seems that Facebook is the winner when it comes to the amount of activity that takes place on their site. Runner up would be Twitter. It seems as though we’ll have to wait a couple of years to see how Google Buzz really compares to other social media sites.