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Social media has been the talk of the town for sometime now. Yet, most of the conversations and discussions concluded that social tools like Twitter, Facebook, and the like were generally time wasters. A few people argued that they were generating sales leads, but the real data was sketchy at best.

Twitter Search

Twitter search has real promise in making Twitter very significant to the lead generation community. Traditional search, specifically from Google, has been the centerpiece of many successful marketing campaigns. Now the opportunity to give customers real-time search? This will be a significant attraction for consumers.

Real-time Twitter search provides the appeal of someone that is online, currently discussing your question, and immediately ready to help. This has been the Achilles heel of Internet lead generation–nearly 60 percent of Web inquiries never get contacted. Twitter search fixes that problem by showing you who is publishing right now.

People Want Real-Time Search

Steve Rubel, of Micro Persuasion, in his blog post Visits to Twitter Search Soar, Indicating Social Search Has Arrived shows use the enormous ramping of Twitter search traffic. Rubel argues that Twitter has reached such a scale that it could soon give Google a run for its money.

There is no question that people want real-time search. And although it may not be the primary search destination in the short-term it will be significant in traffic and relevance to lead generation. Consumers will seek out expertise and trusted sources for mortgages, debt recovery, the best colleges, and the right software solution–all scenarios where searching real-time conversations will yield better search results.

Therefore, Twitter and the search component of those conversation will be, should be and important strategy of any lead generation strategy.

Twitter Has to Get it Right

Twitter search is certainly not perfect yet. To be fair, it took some time for Google to knock the old directory paradigm of Yahoo! and AltaVista off the pedestal too. I think the main challenge that needs to be overcome is the ease with which Twitter search can be manipulated.

Twitter search also lacks any sort of relevance or reputation algorithm. This means that any search is going to return a lot of spam or irrelevant content. This is still a constant battle of Google, but seems to be even more ominous when you are fighting real-time results.

However, for all its warts Twitter search is important and it will evolve into an important space for online marketing and lead generation.