With the new Google and Twitter search deal, it means it’s more important than ever for your business or organization to be on Twitter.
This quote from the Google blog announcement hits it home on how this affects the Google search we come to love and rely on:
“That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
As I read that quote I thought that a flood of businesses with customers who want that type of real-time, breaking information better RUN to Twitter accounts if they haven’t already.
It’s obvious for ski resorts, of course, and makes a lot of sen. Each and every ski resort better be reporting snow conditions actively on Twitter.
But you can reverse engineer other real-time data people could be wanting … here’s a couple that come to mind:
- Weather – (covered in the snow conditions mention) but people want severe weather alerts, temperatures and forecasts
- Sports – scores, game schedules, injuries
- Stocks – your company’s daily stock price and news that affects it
- Travel – city news in particular, especially while traveling or researching
- Conferences, Special Event – this is obvious maybe, but we’ve live blogged and tweet conferences like the recent Catalyst Conference; can also apply to major events like the Inauguration of the President
- Political – major legislative bills, political candidate announcements
- Health – flu outbreaks like H1N1
- Seasonal – special holiday dates come to mind, particular Halloween
- Entertainment – I’ve personally looked at Twitter search for who got booted off American Idol before; celebrity news is hot on search (see Google Trends for proof)
- Any Breaking News – anything that can be considered a breaking new headline (i.e. death of Michael Jackson, who won American Idol, etc)
What else did I miss? And have you signed yourself and your business up for Twitter yet?
