I’ll take that a step further here: Twitter can be immensely powerful in terms of buttressing your personal and/or professional brand.

We all know Google loves frequently updated content. It also loves back links from credible sources. Twitter provides both of those qualities (when its not out of commission, but I’ll defer the Twitter reliability beat-downs to TechCrunch). Regular participation on Twitter can not only help you reach current and potential customers in a medium they are most comfortable, but it also can help you with your brand visibility in Google.

Nate Westheimer recently wrote on Silicon Alley Insider about Twitter’s other potential as a mobile commerce platform. Whether or not that prediction is realistic is a debate for another time. What it does show is that Twitter is a multi-purpose tool that should be part of the mix of any business or person who wishes to continually care and feed their digital presence.

Twitter is also a great place to monitor your brand, and even solicit direct participation and conversation around the brand. Witness @JetBlue, @comcastcares, @WickedLocal, and more. Beth Harte also recently wrote about HubSpot’s use of Twitter.

There’s still plenty of poor execution on Twitter. For example, Boston.com’s automated traffic feed was the right idea, but poorly done. Most of the “tweets” lack locations, and for those who receive their Twitter notifications on a mobile device that can be less than useful. But give Boston.com credit for trying, and their “bostonsearch” activity is a much more interesting way to create awareness of relatively new functionality for their product set.

Should you use Twitter? I hate to answer a question with a question, but what are your goals? Chances are Twitter is not the first thing you will use achieve those goals, but I am certain it can be part of the mix once the foundation is set. It certainly doesn’t hurt to dabble and get more familiar with it in the meantime.

Some high-profile tech companies and their PR firms had their Google Alerts set for their own company name and their specific products/services they offer. When I mentioned the specific products/services and the company’s name and even the term “geek girl” on a Twitter post, their Google Alerts alerted them to my Twitter posts about their company and after a quick search, they later inquired about Geek Girl Camp at future events. It was pretty cool how it all happened!

What I personally like to do is set my Google Alerts with my Twitter name “Genevangelist”, as well as my company name, my name, and any products/services/clients of Genevate just to see when they get indexed and see where else I/we end up!

Thanks-
Les

Leslie - I’m curious about your use of Google Alerts. Any chance you can provide more information about that?

Dave

BTW - I’m @dfravel on twitter