I’m a big fan of finding people. It comes from my rather transient, military childhood. I lived all over Canada, in Europe for four years, and then in Asia for a year. The Asian stay was of my own making, but the rest was part of my childhood. It gave me a global view, before “going global” was the catchphrase of the day. And it means that I like to make friends and meet new people. Essentially, tools like message boards, Facebook, and Twitter are a boon for people like me.
The downside to meeting new people and seeing new places all the time is that inevitably you lose some of them along the way. So I have been thinking about how I can now find people easily online (gone are the days of calling 411 and hoping you have the right city to get a phone number), access pictures and mapping of things I have seen and done, and search for businesses. You can bet that although I love to support a local business, I won’t decide to forgo the pleasure of purchasing the latest gadget if I can get it online or contact the business that carries it through online methods. Sometimes I will find a store online from sheer nostalgia of times gone by.
Lately, I have been investigating Twitter and Twitter related applications. The one to catch my eye is Twellow. Twellow is essentially the yellow pages of Twitter. As they put it:
Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you….[we] allow you to update your Twellow profile and categories, add links to your other social media profiles, create an extended bio with whatever information and links you would like to add, and easily follow other Twitter users right from Twellow!
Twellow is available in the USA, Canada, and Australia. I was poking around online this morning and discovered that Twellow has been released to the UK now too, which follows their trend of increased availability. As Chris Crum said in his article “Twitterers in the UK Can Now Easily Find Locals”: TwellowHood is an incredibly useful tool for Twitter users, because it brings Twitter closer to home. It makes it easier to find people you know or local businesses/organizations you wish to follow.
I’ve talked about mapping and having your business show up on local search factors for Google. The fact that Google and a Twitter offshoot are both promoting this aspect of online marketing is no coincidence, because sometimes location matters. No matter how you look at it, increasing the ways in which your customers can find you – be that by location, keyword, or business type – can only be good for business.