Designing a web site, said very honestly, is a pain to do because it’s never been easy. Granted, today it is a lot easier, but it’s still not simple.
If you like the idea of having a website but hate the idea of designing it, Twitter might be just the thing you were looking for.
With most small businesses, the primary purpose of having a web site is to list contact information, location information and periodically list specials and sales. Twitter does do all that in a ridiculously simple way.
When editing your profile, you can list your business contact info (email address, phone number, etc.) and a short description of what your business does, and for your status updates you can list off sales and specials whenever you want.
From a design perspective, everything is point-and-click. Change all the colors, change the background image and make it look however you wish. Everything is applied instantly when finished.
From a mobile perspective, Twitter is important because it works perfectly both on the desktop and mobile browser from the ground up.
From a "how easy it is to post stuff?" perspective, you can do it on the desktop or on mobile, making it very easy for you to post content.
Are Twitter profiles indexed in Google?
YES – but how well or not well you’re indexed all depends on your profile information. The general rule of thumb is to list your business name, location (both city and state) and a short one-line description of what your business does.
Activity also counts as far as Google is concerned with indexing Twitter profiles in their search. In layman’s terms, this means if you post an update to your Twitter profile at least once a day, Google "likes" that more than profiles that just sit there and collect virtual dust.
What about a dot-com website?
It is still true that having a dot-com matters (it does admittedly look better on a business card), but it’s also true that all the major registrars allow for simple domain forwarding. What this means is that you can have the dot-com, but on load it will simply forward over to your Twitter profile.
Dotster (a domain registrar) for example, calls their forwarding service "URL Forwarding":
It’s not free, but the combination of a yearly dot-com registration + URL forwarding fee is less than $20 a year, so it’s not like you’ll be spending a bundle on it.
Remember, the dot-com is optional, so you can try Twitter out for business purposes completely for free.
You want more customers, more business and more cash, right? Right. Get social with Twitter and it can potentially help you do just that. It’s easier than a Facebook page, easier than designing your own dot-com and costs nothing to try it.
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