Earlier today eMarketer reported on the findings from a recent white paper from marketing agency 360i which looked at the content of twitter messages from marketers. Why is this research interesting? Well the findings of the research indicated most marketers where communicating with only 16% of their consumers (which would include any followers). And the rest of the tweeted messages were about sharing information including new products, features and/or services.

However if you think about this data a bit more you may come to the conclusion that a lot of consumers are following brands on Twitter specifically to get access to this type of news and information. Marketers may just be using the right channel to communicate to an attentive audience. You will need to watch your follower counts to see if they go up or down based on your usage and what kind of content you are putting in your tweets. And remember to always try to respond to anyone trying to reach out to you using your @twittername mentions.

To read more about this report visit Boosting the Power of Marketers’ Tweets

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Using Google Insights combined with iGoogle‘s Dashboard is a great way to easily keep track of search term frequency. In other words, what people online are searching for using Google. This is important because you can understand market trends as they happen, and with the default charting you can see if interest is going up or down over time.

Let’s review the following screenshot from my Dashboard I created using Google Insights. Once you have typed in a keyword search you will notice an iGoogle button that will look like this:

Once you click on that button you will then see your Google Insight chart or Keyword list on your home page for iGoogle. You can also click to set iGoogle as your home page in your web browser (shown in the screenshot below at the top).

Looking at the example you can see I am tracking small business marketing keywords, as well as Direct Marketing interest in Google searches over time. Of course this is just for illustration purposes, but you could also be tracking your competitors as keywords, their products, or even your own clients to see what they are publishing as content or news.

Now that you have saved all of these searches for quick review, you can also share this page with your co-workers using the Share Tab option. Or create multiple tabs within iGoogle to keep track of important keywords.

Google Insights is a very useful tool to judge if/when and how much people are googling keywords that relate to your business. Keeping tabs on competitors in order to stay on top of changes that may be taking place, and also as a tool to do your own research on a variety of topics. Including discovering common and related search terms. In some cases you may not even have thought of using keywords that your customers are using to find you. It may be in your company’s best interest to take the time to get to know Google Insights, see it’s potential in helping you make the most of your marketing dollars. Constantly providing fresh content and updating material may be the best way for your company to be noticed so that you have the upper hand against your competitors.

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