Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Sue England (from left), Patsy Stewart and Ira Kaufman laugh as they discuss social networking trends at a MeetUp 2.0 event in Roanoke.

Kirsten Shields and her 5-month-old daughter, Hailey, attend their first MeetUp 2.0 event.

Fingers quickly key on laptops, Blackberries and cellphones as 17 people speak a language that two years ago would have been impossible to understand.

Following users, sharing links, updating status, hash tagging topics are what marketing strategists and business professionals in Roanoke talk about every week at Roanoke MeetUp 2.0. They gather to discuss integration of social networking sites such as Twitter with their companies.

"We realized that by using social media as a tool, you would increase your search engine presence," said Ira Kaufman, president of Optimized Strategies. "You have more people coming to your Web site."

His company develops marketing strategies that mix traditional advertising with online and social media. For instance, Optimized Strategies designed and maintains the Web site of Kissito Post Acute, a national health care and rehabilitation center that has facilities in Texas and Virginia.

"They asked us to rebuild their Web site and incorporate social media," said Patsy Stewart, director of operations at Optimized Strategies. "They actually found us through social media."

It is the simple question Twitter, a free social networking service, asks in profile pages.

Twitter allows its users to post updates, known as Tweets, of up to 140 characters, which will be read by a circle of followers. In the same way, users can follow other people and read their updates. Twitter can be used through its Web site or its other applications, or via text message.

Twitter saw an increase of 1,382 percent, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008, to 7 million in February 2009, according to Nielsen, a research company.

The largest age group reported using Twitter was 35 to 49, about 42 percent of the site's audience. Nielsen reported that 62 percent of Twitter's unique audience visits the site while at work.

National companies such as shoe retailer Zappos and telecommunications service Comcast are using Twitter and succeeding in customer relations, Kaufman said. Carilion Clinic, Best Western Valley View and public relations and advertising firm The Becher Agency are some of the businesses already using Twitter in the Roanoke Valley.

Janeson Keeley, owner of Web design company JTKweb.com, started the Virginia's Twitter directory, TweetVA, at the end of March for people and businesses using the site in Roanoke.

She used the alert system for Twitter, TweetBeep, which allowed her to keep track of keywords and find people posting updates throughout the region. TweetVA quickly expanded to other cities in Southwest, central and Northern Virginia.

But Keeley said many businesses in the area are not interested in Twitter.

"Individual business people are probably in general more interested than larger businesses," she said. "We are at the very beginning."

New approach to growth

Judy Cunningham, executive director for the Vinton Area Chamber of Commerce, attended Roanoke MeetUp 2.0 for the first time to learn what the Tweets and other social media tools were all about.

"It is very important in these hard economic times to have a new approach to business growth," Cunningham said.

Interns at the Vinton chamber of commerce established a social media presence online by creating fan pages on Facebook, a social networking site, and blogs.

"As we get into it, we plan to create conversations and help our members get to know each other," she said.

Although studies that connect Twitter with the economic growth of a company do not exist yet, Kaufman said there are several reasons why businesses should Tweet and use other social networking sites.

One, having a social media presence online increases search engine optimization, Kaufman said. It also promotes the brand through the people by creating a conversation. "There has to be a dialogue with clients," Kaufman said.

Companies can become "thought leaders" and attract more traffic to the Web site by sharing links and useful information related to the services and products with clients.

Kaufman said social media also opens the doors for new businesses to introduce products, gain new partnerships, raise new sources of funds and increase attendance at their events.

Companies can also better track customer service if they follow what clients are posting.

Real estate agents such as Rob Clark with MKB Realtors, have started Twitter accounts to meet new people and share news about the housing market.

"I use it as a way to provide information or links to interesting articles," Clark said. "It's a way to get myself out there."

He has not seen an increase in the number of customers, but he said Twitter is just one piece of the puzzle.

Tweet and recruit

People who Tweet in the area call social media strategist Stewart the Twitter expert. She has about 5,500 followers and has posted more than 3,500 updates. Not surprisingly, one of Stewart's clients, Kissito Post Acute, was among the top 50 employers in the United States using Twitter for recruiting, according to job-hunt.org.

"Job seekers don't understand how powerful [Twitter] is," Stewart said.

Stewart and Kaufman from Optimized Strategies, also work with jobzcafe.com, an online site with resources for employees and job seekers.

They hosted a three-hour seminar to teach job seekers about social media strategies they can use to improve their online presence. About 20 people attended "Ditch Your Resume! Web 2.0 Strategies to Launch You Next Career," on Tuesday at Best Western Valley View.

Some employers are posting jobs on Twitter hoping to attract talented, but passive, job seekers. After they post the openings, they post links to different articles on the company to showcase the work environment.

Recruiters use "hash tags," which are words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol used as keywords for the jobs to pop up on the Twitter search engine.

Patricia Blevins, new sales director at Best Western Valley View, had no hotel or sales experience before getting hired a month ago. She managed the medical records department at Jefferson Surgical Clinic before she was laid off in March.

Blevins met Best Western Valley View General Manager Lori Womack at one of the Roanoke MeetUp 2.0 events. Womack announced she needed somebody in sales willing to work with social media.

"It will put us in the forefront of the hotel business," Blevins said. "We are Tweeting what's going on in the Roanoke Valley."

She said using Twitter in the hotel industry will help Best Western establish a better connection with its customers.

"It's one on one, it makes it more personal."