13 Twitter Tips for Bloggers
Ever since I got started with Girl Goes Tech I’ve always promoted my Twitter account along with my blog and put just as much effort in keeping it active. There are several reasons why I do that but the main reasons is that I see Twitter as the most powerful tool to build a strong community which can be directly attached to your site or your brand. It sort of breathes life into a stiff blog or site and offers a great resource for gathering information, getting feedback from your readers and it simply allows you to show some personality (which is extremely important if you ever want to differentiate yourself from the mass of other bloggers). You get to connect with interesting people from your niche and see which topics are being talked about there the most currently. It goes without saying that this puts you at a big advantage compared to similar blogs and that the network offers a great additional source of traffic. You’ll see that if you use Twitter the right way, it’ll become a secret weapon to help you reach your blog’s full potential. Here is a list of 13 tips to help you with that:
1. Get targeted followers
One of Twitter’s strengths is that due to its sheer amount of users you’ll always be able to connect to people that are interested in the same topic as you blog about. On Twitter you can identify those people clearly by the subjets/keywords they tweet about and by information inside their bios. Imagine building up a large follower base of people who show a genuine interest for the niche you write about; it’s much easier to get started on building a community, to get targeted traffic to your site every time you publish a new article and to gain some authority as you help those people by sharing interesting information.
Basically there are two ways to build such a “targeted” follower base. Either you do it manually by using some tools 0n this list. Or you use a program that does it automatically for you, based on e.g. keywords used in real time.
2. Engage in conversations to build a community
One of the most important things to remember is that if you’re going to make an account just to post a link to one of your articles once a week, you may just as well save yourself the time and effort. People generally won’t follow someone who uses their Twitter account in a self-centered manner. What people look for is:
- interesting/unique information
- people to exchange with on certain topics
- a channel for networking
Twitter really works like a large community and that’s exactly how you should use the service. Get to know your followers, evaluate their potential, react to their tweets and questions and engage in conversations to tie those people to your “brand” and to wake some genuine interest for your project (those followers will be MUCH more inclined to share your tweets with their own followers and maybe even promote your blog/site outside Twitter). Professional Twitter tools like Hootsuite really make it easy to track people that currently talk to you using @replies and to keep track of conversations as it always displays them along with the @reply inside a column:
3. Use Twitter to stay up to date
There are many ways you can use Twitter to stay informed about the topics people talk about in your niche currently. I’ll make a separate guide for this in the coming days but here are some great tools to help you stay up to date and gather valuable information / material for writing articles on just about any given topic:
- Twitter search
- Hashtags
- Columns (with certain kewords) inside professional Twitter clients like Hootsuite
4. Try to be useful
Think about the first time you deliberately decided to start following somone on Twitter. Chances are that this was because you saw an interesting article or tweet the person shared and wanted to see more of that in the future. Sharing information doesn’t only help to get retweets and to attract new followers, it also helps to make sure people keep on following you. You’ll be added to lists and visitors will return to your profile every now and then in hope to find more interesting stuff. Over time awareness for your Twitter account will grow, people will be converted into faithful readers and start seeing a true value in following you. Simply make it a habit to gather links to useful articles inside Evernote for example and schedule those items as tweets using Hootsuite to share them with your followers and keep your account active constantly:
5. Tweetmeme
I can’t stress how important it is to create a Tweetmeme account and to add Tweetmeme buttons to your blog. These adapted tools will help you to seamlessly integrate the little boxes inside every article you post. This is essential because people are used to the simple functionality of Tweetmeme (a click will automatically display a Tweet with shortened URL etc., detect the Twitter account someone is logged in to and will post the tweet to that account directly). Beside that the network is used to rank articles that are currently being spread through Twitter by the amount of retweets a certain link has received. This helps to identify “buzzes” and spread useful information more quickly. Over time Tweetmeme can hence become a valuable source of traffic.
6. Make it easy to follow you on Twitter
Be sure to add a visible button that helps people find the Twitter account belonging to your blog immediately. If you’re using WordPress this plugin will automatically display a flashy button for you. A beautiful example (for several social networks) can be found on Mashable’s site:
7. Promote your Twitter account along with your blog
When you talk about your blog make sure to provide a direct link to your Twitter account along with it. That way you make sure that people notice both elements immediately. How you prefer to do that is entirely up to you. Adding links to your forum/comment signatures, printing both links onto your business card or spreading the word to friends and colleagues in real life are all great possibilities.
8. Networking
As you keep on using Twitter you’ll identify people who contribute valuable information and who already established a certain authority in your specific niche. You’ll be able to connect to those people, exchange with them on certain topics and maybe even establish stronger professional relationships that can help you on your journey with your project. The important thing is not to stay passive in this regard. Identify such people, follow them and try to engage in conversations with them. You can even use Twitter’s favorite tool to mark them or you can add those tweeps to a customized list in order to see all their updates inside one separate stream.
Many people also expand Twitter to real life by participating in events like Twitter meetups.
9. Show your personality
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that it pays off to show some personality. You must not be afraid to voice your opinion, to use the language that is unique to you as a person and to let people know who the individual behind the Twitter profile is. This alone can set you apart from the crowd and show that you’re not a simple, boring news bot. Odds are that you will sometimes receive negative feedback but that is absolutely normal. People disagree with each other and everyone is entitled to their own view on things. As long as you don’t write disrespectful things you are on the safe side and you should never take criticism too personal or let it discourage you. Just consider it as normal and if the person really makes a point, you get to learn from your error and improve. Also always remember: negative feedback is sometimes good publicity.
10. Stay active and be consistent
Just like with your blog you’ll want to make sure to show constant activity. Why is this so important? If people liked what they saw on your blog or your Twitter account, they’ll return at a later point for more and if they don’t see an update in a long time, they’ll stop coming back. This is how you can make sure to fit in your Twitter activity with your daily routine:
- Set some time apart (e.g. an hour in the evening) where you read tweets, @replies and do your research on new & interesting topics.
- In that hour make sure to reply to @replies and DMs.
- Use Hootsuite to share interesting links with your followers and schedule them every time you stumble upon something. In one evening you can schedule 3 tweets for example which will be tweeted automatically during the day at a given time. That way you can make sure to only tweet at peak times too (which you should do anyway).
11. Reinforce your brand
I’m sure that by now you’ve heard of the famous “seven seconds to make a first impression”. Basically it’s the same thing with your Twitter account. You’ll want to make sure that your profile page, your avatar and your bio are unique, that they look interesting to a new visitor and that all elements reinforce your blog’s brand. You should use a similar style/color of font and make sure to integrate your logo into the background picture for example. Just make sure not to use colors that are hard to read or that make you want rub your eyes right after seeing them. A great example can be found on @sitepointdotcom ’s account:
12. Lists as indicators
This is something I found out not so long ago. If you look at the followers of a Twitter account, you’ll see the number of lists that person has been added to right next to it:
This is a great indicator for the “quality” of the content someone shares. Someone that has just as many followers as you can be part of many more lists simply because the tweets he/she shares are considered to be more “valuable” (or can be more “mainstream” in some cases). Being part of lists is important because people follow these just like they follow a simple account and use them to stay informed on a certain topic. It’s an important step to start gaining authority in a certain niche. Furthermore the types of lists you’re added to show how relevant your tweets really are to the keywords you want to receive followers/traffic from. If you do not find your main keywords in the names and descriptions of the lists you’re being added to, you’re doing something wrong:
13. Let your account grow naturally
Do not rush things. Building a strong and valuable Twitter community simply takes time (we’re talking months…). Your followers need time to get to know you. You won’t gain authority over night and you wont be valued by people over night. I know that there are many products and services promising that your Twitter account will explode in a week or so, but all the followers in the world won’t help you if those people don’t have a clue who they’re they’re actually following .
Do you have some good advice yourself? Then please make sure to share it in the comment section!
Related posts:
Girl Goes Tech (GGT) is about a 26-year-old, female tech-addict exploring her geeky side and writing about social media, mobile trends and applications.