Twitter and the Power of Persuasion

Twitter and the power of persuasion.
The Purchase Decision Process for consumers was first identified and analysed by psychologists 1940s. Over the next 60 years the process has been constantly refined and examined by psychologists and marketers alike.
One of the vital steps in this process is the “information search” iteration. In this step consumers use internal sources (recalling past experiences with the brand/product in mind) and external sources (personal sources, such as friends and family as well as public sources, including various product-rating organisations and the one that particularly concerns this diatribe, marketer-dominated sources, such as advertising and company websites). Now if you are asking yourself “what in the name of Zeus’s big toe does this have to do with Bruce Clay Australia and Search Engine Marketing”, please bear with me, I am getting to that.
Now with the explosion of the Internet in the past 10 years, comprehensive information has become easier to find. Of course, this information has not always been as focused to the needs of the individual searcher as it could be. However there is a phenomenon that is currently sweeping the globe that has made this information hyper focused and relevant… that innovation is Twitter.
Twitter is described by Wikipedia as follows; “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them.”
Twitter (for those who use it) has become a key conduit in the external source aspect of the Purchase Decision Process. Now not only can you observe what your peers think of a certain product or brand but you can follow the brand directly and be notified of specific offers or specials. The messages are short and succinct due to the limited size of tweets and this leads to a high degree of relevance.
Now you can obtain similar information through using a search engine or receiving RSS feeds regarding the product or brand but with Twitter the information is at your finger tips – complete with evaluations from people you consider peers and whose judgement you trust. That is, if you don’t follow 1000s of people indiscriminately.
A really good example of this is Carnival Cruises. They have utilised Twitter not only to bring specials to their followers but to interact and answer potential customer’s questions. Their Twitter page encompasses special deals, peer review, a wealth of information regarding the cruises and brand building activities – very few “normal” corporate sites can do that in 1 page.
As reported in the Bruce Clay Australia blog Twitter usage jumped 131% in March, this indicates that Twitter is rapidly gaining momentum. As recently as last week there was a high publicity “contest” between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to see who could accumulate one million followers. Ashton emerged victorious.
Now imagine Ashton tweeted about how he loved a certain kind of widget; their sales would go through the roof. Every enterprise that has some semblance of a social media strategy should use Twitter and its unique power of suggestion to connect with their clients and ramp up revenues. In addition, all tweets that mention a certain keyword in conjunction with a product, service or brand, have an impact of the ranking of that keyword or keyword phrase (particularly now after the Vince update). As a result of this Twitter has a direct impact on rankings and therefore the SEO industry.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.