I am now 28 days into my personal branding experiment and I have stumbled across what is undeniably the best new piece of knowledge to date. The number of followers you have on Twitter will directly affect your overall ranking in Google. Fact!

Up to this point it was clear that just by having a Twitter account, you were going to be ranked due to the fact that it is a constantly updating social media site.  But now I can prove that more followers on Twitter will result in your page being indexed higher in Google.

How do I know this?

-      10 days into this experiment I had a modest 45 followers on my personal Twitter account

-      Over the next 10 days I diligently built up to a respectable 490 followers

Result...

-      My Twitter account moved from 14^th to 3^rd in Google for the search term “David Albertini”

This is great knowledge for anybody out there who may still be struggling to see the value in Twitter. Not only is Twitter a great platform to network, learn, and share ideas – we’ve proven it’s a fantastic entry point for anyone searching for you or your services online.

Assuming your name is John Smith and you are struggling to find ways to promote John Smith Plumbing Services, why not ...

-      Create a profile on Twitter

-      Share knowledge about backed up drainage and grow your following

-      Follow others and learn about new and exciting plumbing practices

-      And reTweet valuable information from other plumbers.

And, if you are in fact a plumber, perhaps Twitter can help you network online with welders and contractors in an effort to create a mutually beneficial cross promotion program!

Where do your leads come from? The Yellow Pages? Probably not. Most people stopped using Yellow Pages once they stopped needing something to prop up the corner of their broken sofa.

Are you still skeptical about how a micro-blogging platform such as Twitter to help grow your business? Still not sold? Maybe you just assume that I’m blowing smoke in hopes of creating more leads for myself.  Possible, but know this, the term ‘plumber’ has been mentioned 54 times on Twitter since I started writing this article! (~ 30 mins) Fact.  People are talking, shouldn’t you get in on the conversation?

At the end of the day ...

-      Would I call myself the world’s most knowledgeable marketing guru? No, that’s silly.

-      Do I already know everything there is to know about the industry YOU are in? No, also silly.

-      One thing that is for sure is this, if you search my name in Google, links 2, 3, and 4 come directly to me and one of those is my Twitter account. The other 2, LinkedIn.

Join Twitter, share ideas, network with like-minded individuals, build your network of followers and the rest will come. Don’t dismiss the value in sharing your ideas with the world.