What the Google-Twitter Partnership Means for YOU

In early February, the news broke that Google and Twitter had reached an agreement that will provide Google full access to Twitter’s stream, the nearly 9,000 tweets per second referred to as “the firehose.”  While this may seem like a rather innocuous and even inevitable pairing, this unprecedented level of access will potentially have far-reaching consequences in the way people gather information on the internet, and more importantly in the way companies market to their internet advertising audience.  Understanding how to navigate this changing landscape will play a role in any effective social media marketing campaign for years to come.

Since their initial partnership dissolved back in 2011, Google has had to “crawl” the Twitter feed in order to pull out relevant tweets for search results.  Obviously, this level of scrutiny was never really feasible; the logistics of manually monitoring 8,766 tweets per second was a vast commitment of time and resources.  As a result, the ability of Google to incorporate web content from Twitter into their search feeds was extremely limited.  In recent years, Twitter has also started to lose their grip on their once fanatical user base.  In 2013, 46% of Twitter’s users visited the site daily, but in 2014, that number dropped to 36%.  Out of the top five social media sites, Twitter now has the smallest market share, having been surpassed by younger media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

However, that trend may now be coming to an end.  Where Twitter was once relegated to a kind of background running commentary on events, tweets will now potentially share screen space with web content from legitimate news outlets and scholarly sources, giving them exposure on a vast, global scale.  For Twitter, increased relevance means more visitors, which in turn equates to higher ad revenue, more signups, and more engagement.  In turn, access to Twitter’s real-time, hashtagged news feed, which has molded public opinion and even coordinated revolutions, gives Google the opportunity to make valuable time-sensitive content instantly available to their users.

So what does all this mean for social media marketing?  When all tweets become a part of the public searchable domain of Google, users will no longer need to be following a specific person on Twitter in order to see their tweets.  With a potentially immense audience, tweets will have to be driven by relevant content in order to make an appreciable impact. In many ways, the worlds of social media marketing and search engine optimization will become more intertwined than ever before, as the specific tactics of each will inevitably come to inform the long term strategies of the other.  Ultimately, we would suggest increasing activity on Twitter. Cultivating engaging, relevant content, learning the system, and maximizing your reach, will most likely have an extremely positive effect on your entire marketing campaign.

For more insights on social media or if you’re interested in learning how to effectively take hold of your marketing, contact McCauley Marketing Services today. Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.