Site owners, marketing firms and search engine optimisation agencies alike have been going mad trying to find ways to maximise on the social media sensation that is Twitter. It’s been around a year now since the micro-blogging site hit the big time, and the hype hasn’t really died down. Another thing that hasn’t changed is that websites are still somewhat at a loss when it comes to Twitter campaigns.

Twitter is a tricky site for even the casual user to understand. New Tweeters take a little while to settle in, and this settling in time is particularly frustrating to business users. The obvious way to go is to carefully map out your Twitter campaign before approaching the site, but how exactly do you do that? Knowing the ins and outs of the site is vital to your approach.

To that end, a lot of time has been spent in studying the highways and byways of Twitter, by SEO firms in particular. As the way Twitter works is so different in comparison to other social media sites, SEO companies have had to spend a lot of time learning which approaches will actually achieve results for their clients. Recent research has revealed one particularly interesting fact about Twitter: where users go after being on the site.

A recent study showed that of all the traffic that comes from Twitter in the UK, 55.9% heads to other content-rich sites. These are sites like other social networks, online magazines, blogs and similar sites.

This is significant for any business planning to include a Twitter campaign in their SEO. Unless you have something to offer Twitter users, it’s likely your campaign won’t have much affect. This information can be a good guide

It’s interesting to note that in comparison with the traffic to content-based sites, only 9.5% of the traffic from Twitter heads for sites based in transactions. This information is likely to make a number of businesses very nervous about their Twitter campaigns, as Twitter has been viewed as an excellent opportunity for things like retail.

If your site is transactional, and you’re interested in a campaign on Twitter, never fear. Despite the traffic news, there are some retail success stories from Twitter. Dell claims to have drawn millions of dollars of sales from the social media site. The clue that the statistics on Twitter outbound traffic gives us is that users have certain expectations when leaving Twitter, and a smart company will meet those expectations. The traffic stats from Twitter are actually a good hint on how to form your campaign. Any good SEO company will recommend that you boost the amount of content on your site, and Twitter’s traffic indicates the same. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about content for your site.

Success on Twitter was never going to be easy for business. Success on any social media site is a case of watching, planning, and implementing. A smart business pays attention to the clues, and tailors a campaign to suit.

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