It seems all I hear about nowadays is Twitter. “We need to be using Twitter.” “How many followers do you have?” “What app are you using to read your tweets?”

I not a user, but I’m not a hater (not any more) either. Admittedly, at first I didn’t understand Twitter’s appeal and called it content of no value, or something like that, but as with anything, the value lies in the eyes of the audience.

Early adopters use Twitter for the right reasons – fast sound bites delivered to a group simultaneously.

For marketers, how does this technology makes sense? Can it build brand? Not by itself. Is it good for sales promotion? Probably. Can it be used for PR? Depends on how fast you can spin the conversation. Speed is the key here. How fast can I communicate to as many people as possible? Real time. Real simple. Real cheap.

The question is, how many people are your tweets reaching? It is the number of followers you have plus the number of people who search and find your message on Twitter. If your message does not have broad appeal and you don’t have an effective number of followers, reason dictates it’s probably not going to be an effective way to get your marketing message out.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it actually fall? In reality – yes. In advertising – no.

My advice to those companies who are considering a Twitter campaign, with short term results, is to concentrate your efforts on medias and technologies that have the largest target audiences. Study your audience’s behavior and base your decision on that. Don’t do it, just to do it, at the expense of more effective options. Use your resources wisely.

On the other hand, if you are in it for the long haul, start tweeting, accumulate followers and one day you may be heard by whom you seek.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important any company’s web site and I’m frequently asked how to improve it. There are a number of factors involved in SEO.  A big part of my efforts to improve a site’s SEO is by crafting new content and reorganizing it so it is readily accessible by users and spiders alike. Aside from content, I often recommend driving all web traffic to a single domain name. Many companies have numerous domain names that point to different section of their site. An example would be URLs like www.getajobatjoes.com, and www.joesrecipes.com, when the site is really www.joesdiner.com and the first two point to sub-sections.

This has several advantages:

1. Improves search engine rankings by:
   1. Increasing traffic numbers under a single domain name
   2. Adding breadth and depth to the content presented under a single domain name
   3. Allows other sites to link back to single domain name
2. Easier for people to remember or at least guess
3. Builds equity in the domain name
4. Makes management of fewer domain names easier and less expensive
5. Creates a standard practice across the organization
6. No need to create unique and specialized domain names in an already crowded .com landscape

I did not invent this strategy. Google has created it by advancements in their ranking technology. They even have penalties in their ranking algorithms for content that is accessible from more than one domain name. Companies are adopting this practice everywhere. Just watch television commercials.

Friendly URLs can be created to specific sections of the site by using URL rewriting, or a “sub-folder alias” convention like joesdiner.com/careers, or joesdiner.com/recipes. The only time I would use a vanity URL is for a website that has a specific purpose, like supporting an advertising campaign, and is going to be used for a short period of time when search engines aren’t a great concern.

I help companies and organizations create, acquire, collect, edit and organize content for their web sites. Many projects begin with a web site that has grown into a giant, organic mess over the course of several years – adding content here and there like weeds enveloping a garden. This happens for many reasons, but the primary one is, people think more information is better. However, this only true if the information has more details, depth, clarity and offers several perspectives.

What content is right for you

One must determine what information is suitable to publish online and create guidelines that benefit the company’s business objectives while satisfying visitor expectations. A good way to accomplish this is by defining some criteria all content must meet. These criteria are created by asking questions about the content:

• Is it relevant to the conversation we need to be having with our visitors?
• Is it unique to our business, services or products?
• Does it support a particular position, or philosophy we endorse?
• Do visitors expect it?
• Do we have the resources to produce and manage the content in an exceptional manner?

The first three questions are introspective and an organization’s marketing message is partly the result of them, but often web sites need to pick up where ad copy leaves off with more details. The fourth is knowing your audience. This is often overlooked and is very important. Lastly, being able to create the content without sacrificing from other business operations in a way as to not create a negative effect is important. Too often trying to do too much ends up being a weak attempt.

Things to keep in mind

• Quality over quantity. Quality over quantity. Quality over quantity.
• Always have a specific business goal for spending time to produce content.
• Be the authority, but make it relevant to your specific differentiators.
• Don’t be an encyclopedia. Most often, there are other sites that are far better than you could ever be at presenting general information.
• Don’t be redundant. Use cross-linking to refer to content located in other sections of your site. If you must repeat something, do it from a different angle using different wording.
• Leverage other online resources. Visitors are appreciative for the help in finding additional information and it costs you little.