by Claudia Bruemmer

According to the latest Pew Research Center Report on Social Networking, 13 percent of online adults use Twitter, representing a significant increase from the 8 percent of adult Twitter users in November 2010. The number of people using Twitter in the 25-34 and 55-64 age groups more than doubled since then. Many wholesalers and general merchandise vendors are using Twitter for marketing and branding as shown in the Tweet below by USA Wholesalers.

While the Pew statistics are impressive, the report doesn’t talk about the fact that Twitter is poised to become the next big thing in real time search. Therefore, as a wholesaler, it would be wise to optimize your tweets.

How did Twitter get to the point where it could challenge search engines like Google and Bing? It’s likely due to the fact it provides instant real-time search results. In fact, search engines added real time search to their algorithm ad Twitter became so popular. However, Twitter recently pulled its Firehose from Google, which is bad because users can’t get real-time Twitter results on Google any more.

What happened is that Twitter has been making acquisitions and improving its service since the beginning of this year. First, it acquired TweetDeck, a service that helps users organize the constant streaming of Twitter updates. Then, it acquired AdGrok, an advertising platform to help monetize the site. Other changes include the embeddable button that allows users to follow their favorite Twitter accounts effortlessly, and the ability to share photos directly on Twitter. No doubt, video sharing will follow.

The amount of information flowing through Twitter is enough to challenge any information source on the web. Twitter is now a bona fide real-time, social search engine and should be treated as such by all marketers, including wholesalers and retailers. Below, are ten ways to optimize your Tweets to ensure your wholesale business gets in on the web’s next search bonanza.

1. Listen. Lots of people use Twitter to contact businesses, make complaints or seek support. Your job is to listen and reply − promptly and in an objective manner. This also shows respect to your followers and can foster opportunities for cross-promotion and branding. If you see a complaint, you can fix it before it goes viral.

2. Solicit Feedback. People like to give their opinion when asked, it provides a sense of being needed. The beauty about advice is you can heed or ignore it.

3. Hashtags. Hashtags (e.g., #vegan) are used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet as a way to organize messages. They can get your tweets indexed, searchable and noticed. Creative hashtags can start new content streams or grab attention for retweets.

4. Keywords. Research your keywords and use them in your updates.

5. Clever Tweets. People want to be informed and entertained on Twitter. Witty tweets beg to be re-tweeted. You can also use teasers to encourage the click on links.

6. Descriptive Brief URLs. Edit short URLs to include content keywords. They will stand out from the crowd and users will use that URL rather than shortening it themselves.

7. Vary Your Content. Users like variety. Provide content from sources other than your site/blog and in different media such as video, audio and photos. Multimedia are increasingly more important to users in search tools.

8. Tweet Regularly and Promptly. Post quality updates on a regular basis and respond as you see relevant tweets. That keeps your brand top-of-mind and provides more content that will be indexed, searched and found. Tweet all the content you produce as Twitter is used by many for finding breaking news.

9. Post Contests and Promotions. As a wholesaler, you know people love a good deal. Your promotions will attract followers. The number of followers is part of the Twitter’s search algorithm and that of major search engines displaying tweets.

10. Re-tweet and Follow. By re-tweeting others and following other accounts, you will earn more followers and encourage interaction – another factor taken into account when Twitter assigns status to information providers.
11. TweetDeck. This application breaks your Twitter feed into manageable chunks of information. You can use the column-based interface to organize your Twitter feed into topics or group specific columns. You can view separate columns for your @replies and direct messages. There are many useful tools built into TweetDeck that help you shorten URLs, shorten your Tweets and post images.