Ask kelly and Ted - Keywords in Twitter?

Here's a good question that came in - "Is it important to use keywords in microblogs like Twitter? It seems like Google results don't contain any Twitter results, with keywords."

If you're not working with a knowledgeable, experienced firm, you might get answers like:

"Really, twittering only has value when building a list of followers and then driving that traffic to a page or offer. Twitter isn't really ranking for any terms in the search engines say like a squidoo lens or hubpage would."

(This is a real answer, from an obviously uninformed 2nd-tier SEO provider)

Our answer? EVERY SINGLE posting made in Twitter or other microblogs(if your intention is to attract attention or business on the Internet) should consider keywords...while "tweets" themselves don't necessarily show up well in Google results (but profiles do), tweets do get syndicated, burned, friendstered, repurposed, piped, dugg, mixxed, emailed, blasted, etc. to many other social media channels, plus end up in search results of "other" search engines than Google - i.e. niche engines, social engines (like SocialMention), etc.

For example, we search for "social media governance" in SocialMention.com (with "ALL" option) - practically the whole first page of results with these keywords are repurposed links to an original blog/tweet (from a KME contributor) on the subject....including actual links to the retweets. Same thing with a recent tweet we made regarding "detoxify your mind" - tons of retweets for the eyword "detoxify" showing up in the search results.

Heck, I'm making the kids use keywords in their homework now...