The more I get into social media, the more I realize just how important it is to anyone with a website or blog. That's why I'm using Twitter a lot now. (That said, I haven't really looked into Facebook. I know some people swear by it for drawing traffic. But I just can't get into it.)

Twitter is really focused and targeted. And you can use its search function to find members according to various criteria. Say you want to find people to connect with in your city. You can go to the advanced search form and specify a location along with other criteria.

Or you can just use the basic search function and type in one location keyword and another one or more keywords and you'll get some good results. One search that works well is a city name along with "recommend". You'll get a whole bunch of people who are obviously presently in a particular location and hoping for some good advice on which are the best local bars, cafes and restaurants, etc.

This gives you an opportunity to tweet about your location. And those particular tweets can get found by others seeking local tweeps to follow. Needless to say, those people who are asking for the advice will appreciate it, too. Do this regularly and you'll get some local click-throughs.

You can also use Twitter search with website search engine optimization in mind. If you do a location search along with keywords like "blog", "blogger", "webmaster", and "website" you'll find people with a strong online presence. You can interact with them and build up a bit of a rapport. Eventually this is sure to generate the odd link back to your website or blog. These links are doubly powerful because not only are they one way, they are also very geo-targeted.
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I occasionally tweet about Perth, and these tweets get retweeted comparatively often. They also get included every now and then in Twitter "newspapers" like this one.

There are clearly a lot of people on Twitter interested in information related to their location. And not just at the city level; they tweet and retweet about their suburbs, too. Take this feed, which is devoted primarily to things happening in (or at least related to) Wanneroo.

This is a goldmine for any business person keen to service a particular geographical area. You can get your products and services well known through Twitter for free. As well as the direct geo-targeted traffic it can attract, remember that lots of tweeps are also bloggers and webmasters, so you're bound to get a few local backlinks as well.

The key is to just to keep cranking out geo-specific tweets, and be sure to use the hash tags with the locations you cite.
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