I admit it, most people use Twitter Grader as a vanity tool…a numerical score lets you know how great (or not so great) you are. And though I find that function a bit fun, but relatively useless, the site has some redeeming features that might not be apparent at first glance.

It is estimated that Twitter now has more than 2 million members. Clearly, it appeals to some more than others, but that is still a whole lot of people. The critical issues are finding your target market, identifying influencers and seeing where you are most visible.

Let’s start with your visibility. Without it, you won’t be pulling the right followers. I’ve mentioned before that a good Twitter profile should use keywords and be easily searchable. Here’s a great example of why this is important:

I have highlighted my Twitter bio, in which I have used keywords and links. I choose not to be too keyword heavy because I want readability, too.

So, let’s take the first keyword “foodie”. Click on the “search” tab at the top of the page. This will take you to a page that allows you to search for people based on keywords, name or email address.

Here’s the results of the foodie search…as you can see, I am third on this list. But, there are 100 names listed. If I wanted to find other people to follow, I could easily add quite a few by clicking on the links and going to their profiles.

I could do a similar search to find my standing in several categories, including geography. Dependent upon my business needs, I would be more concerned about some results than others…For example, I am not even in the top 100 in “social media”. But I am not overly concerned because anyone using Twitter is interested in social media and will most likely be interested in my social media posts.

Twitter Grader helps me understand how others are finding me. It is a good tool to for checking out your searchability. I realized that by listing my location as “Portland, OR, US” I wasn’t showing up in searches for “Portland, OR” or “Portland”. Clearly more people will be looking for “Portland, OR” than “Portland, OR, US”, so I changed my listing.

Using Twitter Grader to find others and to identify your target market is an extremely simple process. Take just a little time and check it out. You may be surprised at what you learn and who you find.

Tags: Blog Marketing, niche-markets, social-media, Twitter Grader

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 5:48 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.