Optimize Your Twitter Bio to Get More Followers
What’s the first thing you look at when you check someones profile? Most of us read the bio first and that is one of the decisive factors when deciding whether to follow or not follow that person. If your bio is not filled out or is not very descriptive, you are missing out on potential followers. Unlike the 140-character limit for tweets, Twitter gives you 160 characters for your bio. Use them all! In this post I will focus only on the bio section of your Twitter profile.
Will having a bio and website link in your Twitter profile really make a difference in the number of followers you have? The answer is yes. I’ve found an interesting research post on whether having a Twitter bio will get you more followers. Statistics in this report show that Twitter profiles that contain a bio will attract eight times as many followers as one without a bio.While writing a good bio in 160 characters can be quite a challenge, keep in mind that you don’t have to tell us everything about you. Focus on a few critical keywords that really describe you. These keywords will also be used when people run a search on Twitter. Think about it as SEO (search engine optimization) for Twitter. Just as you would when optimizing a website for search engines, when you write your Twitter bio think about what kind of followers you want to attract.
My recommendations when writing a Twitter bio:
Be you and be real, and tell us what you do and what you like. Do not rush, take time to create the best bio you can. Describe yourself, mention your hobbies or interests. And finally, think about your niche and what kind of followers you want to attract – so select your keywords wisely.If you haven’t taken the time to write a proper Twitter bio, now is a good time to do so. And for the love of god, please do not tell us that you are an expert or guru. Really, just don’t.
Here are 15 Twitter tips to help you to get more from your account.
1. Run a Twitter search
Browse to http://search.twitter.com and enter your keywords in the search bar. You can include Twitter usernames beginning with '@', or hash tags. Click 'Search'.
The results are sorted by time of posting, with the most recent first. You can filter by language and translate tweets into English.
2. Advanced search
A simple search may be enough for most occasions, but sometimes you need to dig a bit deeper to get high quality results that are relevant to you.
Follow the link marked 'Advanced search' and you can specify the location of the tweets returned and a date range. You can also set the attitude of the tweets you're looking for (whether they seem generally positive or negative), and specify the author by Twitter username and any recipient.
3. Back up tweets
If you've been using Twitter for some time, you may be surprised by the number of tweets you've accumulated. You may well find that you've posted enough messages to fill a novel or two.
Backing up your tweets is a sensible precaution to take so you have a local copy in case anything goes wrong. Twitter Backup is a Java program that downloads all your existing tweets to an XML file. Just enter your username and password, then provide a filename for the results.
You'll need to log into Twitter in your browser and authorise the application, which includes obtaining an authorisation code to paste into Twitter Backup. The backup is stored on your PC.
4. Online backup
If you'd rather entrust your tweets to a cloud based service, try Tweet Backup. It's an online service that you can use to back up your tweets on a daily basis.
You need to register using your Twitter credentials via OAuth. You also need to supply an email address for contact purposes.
Once logged in, go to the 'View posts' tab to see your 50 most recent tweets. Choose 'Export' and select a file format to download your most recent backup file. You can download your tweets in plain text, HTML or RSS format.
5. Send a gift
Do you have an online friend who you'd like to send a gift? Perhaps you have a demo or portfolio that you'd like a potential client to see. It's quite common to need to send or receive items at a time when either party might be a little concerned about revealing their full contact details.
Send Social acts as a trusted go-between, arranging to courier your items without sharing addresses. You can request a shipment despite only knowing your contact's email address or Twitter handle. Send Social contacts them and arranges delivery via its courier partner.
6. Share from Chrome
Twitter is great for sharing things that you've found online, but copying a URL, shortening and pasting it into a tweet can be a clumsy affair. Even if you have a URL shortener built into your Twitter client, you still have to copy and paste the full URL of anything you want to share.
TweetRight is a Chrome extension that makes it easy to send links to Twitter. Right-click the item, choose 'Tweetright' and then click 'Post link to Twitter'.
7. Try Echofon for Firefox
Echofon is a Twitter client that works directly inside Firefox. Once you've installed it, you'll see an Echofon icon in the status bar of Firefox. Double-click it to open your Twitter program.
It will appear on top of the web page that you're viewing. As tweets appear, you'll be updated with a popup message showing their number and a brief preview. Echofon is also available as an iPhone client, and standalone client for OS X.
8. Find a lost pet
It's distressing when a pet goes missing, but the people at DogLost will do all they can to help you find an errant animal. Register with the site and provide a description of the missing animal, including pictures, and Dog Lost will publicise it on this site and via Twitter.
Follow @DoglostUK for updates or check the site for a list of found pets to try and match them with a missing animal. It's a simple idea, but very effective.
9. Examine hash tags
Find out the meaning of popular hash tags by visiting www.whatthetrend.com. You can choose trending topics, or search for a term. To learn more about a tag, try the Archivist.
Enter your search term and click 'Start analysis' to see key statistics on the tag's use, including popularity over time and top users tweeting the term. You can check recent tweets too. Summarizr searches the Eduserv archive to provide statistics on a tag or user. You can see top conversations including it and the term's geographical distribution.
10. Simplify the interface
Dabr is an alternative web frontend to Twitter.com that's been optimised for mobile use. It's not as pretty as the main Twitter site, but it's quick and efficient.
It offers many of the functions that some third party clients provide and many users on laptops and desktop PCs opt to use Dabr because of its speed and ease of use.
Browse to the site and log in with your Twitter credentials. Icons next to each tweet enable you to quickly reply, retweet, mark as a favourite or direct message the user. TwitPics appear as thumbnails in the timeline.
11. Predict followers
Want to find out how many followers you're likely to pick up by next month? Twitter Counter analyses your account and provides the number of followers over time plotted on a graph.
It uses this information to extrapolate your likely follower growth in future. You can also find statistics like your current ranking on twitter according to follower numbers and compare this to the most popular users on the service.
You can also enter a friend's username and compare your progress, checking follower numbers and number of updates.
12. Tweet your blog posts
If you have a blog, it's a good idea to let people on Twitter know you've posted an update. You can tweet a simple link, but doing so manually can be a hassle.
Twitter Feed lets you automate the process by linking your blog's RSS feed to your Twitter account. You can sign in using OpenID and link Twitter to your blog. You can check for updates at hourly or daily intervals, and include your blog post title in the tweet.
13. Find more stats
Continuing the theme of Twitter analysis, Twitalyzer provides a different set of statistics to those offered by Twitter Counter. Browse to the site and enter a username to analyse it. This can take a few minutes.
Results are presented in five areas: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. Signal is the proportion of tweets that contain information, Generosity is how willing the user is to retweet. Velocity is how regularly tweets are made, and Clout is how often the user is referenced by others. Influence is a combination of these scores.
14. Find out who's unfollowed you
Who followed you initially and sneaked off when you followed back? Friend or Follow helps you find the answer.
Go to the site and enter your username. Friend or Follow analyses your account and presents three lists: people you're following but aren't following you back; people who follow you who you aren't following back and people you're following who are following you.
15. Schedule tweets
It can be handy to set up tweets in advance. The easiest service to use for this is SocialOomph, because you don't need to leave your PC running for the scheduled updates to show.
Sign up for an account and then enter your Twitter account details, authorising via OAuth. You can now select the account you want to use and set up a message.
1. Run a Twitter search
Browse to http://search.twitter.com and enter your keywords in the search bar. You can include Twitter usernames beginning with '@', or hash tags. Click 'Search'.
The results are sorted by time of posting, with the most recent first. You can filter by language and translate tweets into English.
2. Advanced search
A simple search may be enough for most occasions, but sometimes you need to dig a bit deeper to get high quality results that are relevant to you.
Follow the link marked 'Advanced search' and you can specify the location of the tweets returned and a date range. You can also set the attitude of the tweets you're looking for (whether they seem generally positive or negative), and specify the author by Twitter username and any recipient.
3. Back up tweets
If you've been using Twitter for some time, you may be surprised by the number of tweets you've accumulated. You may well find that you've posted enough messages to fill a novel or two.
Backing up your tweets is a sensible precaution to take so you have a local copy in case anything goes wrong. Twitter Backup is a Java program that downloads all your existing tweets to an XML file. Just enter your username and password, then provide a filename for the results.
You'll need to log into Twitter in your browser and authorise the application, which includes obtaining an authorisation code to paste into Twitter Backup. The backup is stored on your PC.
4. Online backup
If you'd rather entrust your tweets to a cloud based service, try Tweet Backup. It's an online service that you can use to back up your tweets on a daily basis.
You need to register using your Twitter credentials via OAuth. You also need to supply an email address for contact purposes.
Once logged in, go to the 'View posts' tab to see your 50 most recent tweets. Choose 'Export' and select a file format to download your most recent backup file. You can download your tweets in plain text, HTML or RSS format.
5. Send a gift
Do you have an online friend who you'd like to send a gift? Perhaps you have a demo or portfolio that you'd like a potential client to see. It's quite common to need to send or receive items at a time when either party might be a little concerned about revealing their full contact details.
Send Social acts as a trusted go-between, arranging to courier your items without sharing addresses. You can request a shipment despite only knowing your contact's email address or Twitter handle. Send Social contacts them and arranges delivery via its courier partner.
6. Share from Chrome
Twitter is great for sharing things that you've found online, but copying a URL, shortening and pasting it into a tweet can be a clumsy affair. Even if you have a URL shortener built into your Twitter client, you still have to copy and paste the full URL of anything you want to share.
TweetRight is a Chrome extension that makes it easy to send links to Twitter. Right-click the item, choose 'Tweetright' and then click 'Post link to Twitter'.
7. Try Echofon for Firefox
Echofon is a Twitter client that works directly inside Firefox. Once you've installed it, you'll see an Echofon icon in the status bar of Firefox. Double-click it to open your Twitter program.
It will appear on top of the web page that you're viewing. As tweets appear, you'll be updated with a popup message showing their number and a brief preview. Echofon is also available as an iPhone client, and standalone client for OS X.
8. Find a lost pet
It's distressing when a pet goes missing, but the people at DogLost will do all they can to help you find an errant animal. Register with the site and provide a description of the missing animal, including pictures, and Dog Lost will publicise it on this site and via Twitter.
Follow @DoglostUK for updates or check the site for a list of found pets to try and match them with a missing animal. It's a simple idea, but very effective.
9. Examine hash tags
Find out the meaning of popular hash tags by visiting www.whatthetrend.com. You can choose trending topics, or search for a term. To learn more about a tag, try the Archivist.
Enter your search term and click 'Start analysis' to see key statistics on the tag's use, including popularity over time and top users tweeting the term. You can check recent tweets too. Summarizr searches the Eduserv archive to provide statistics on a tag or user. You can see top conversations including it and the term's geographical distribution.
10. Simplify the interface
Dabr is an alternative web frontend to Twitter.com that's been optimised for mobile use. It's not as pretty as the main Twitter site, but it's quick and efficient.
It offers many of the functions that some third party clients provide and many users on laptops and desktop PCs opt to use Dabr because of its speed and ease of use.
Browse to the site and log in with your Twitter credentials. Icons next to each tweet enable you to quickly reply, retweet, mark as a favourite or direct message the user. TwitPics appear as thumbnails in the timeline.
11. Predict followers
Want to find out how many followers you're likely to pick up by next month? Twitter Counter analyses your account and provides the number of followers over time plotted on a graph.
It uses this information to extrapolate your likely follower growth in future. You can also find statistics like your current ranking on twitter according to follower numbers and compare this to the most popular users on the service.
You can also enter a friend's username and compare your progress, checking follower numbers and number of updates.
12. Tweet your blog posts
If you have a blog, it's a good idea to let people on Twitter know you've posted an update. You can tweet a simple link, but doing so manually can be a hassle.
Twitter Feed lets you automate the process by linking your blog's RSS feed to your Twitter account. You can sign in using OpenID and link Twitter to your blog. You can check for updates at hourly or daily intervals, and include your blog post title in the tweet.
13. Find more stats
Continuing the theme of Twitter analysis, Twitalyzer provides a different set of statistics to those offered by Twitter Counter. Browse to the site and enter a username to analyse it. This can take a few minutes.
Results are presented in five areas: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. Signal is the proportion of tweets that contain information, Generosity is how willing the user is to retweet. Velocity is how regularly tweets are made, and Clout is how often the user is referenced by others. Influence is a combination of these scores.
14. Find out who's unfollowed you
Who followed you initially and sneaked off when you followed back? Friend or Follow helps you find the answer.
Go to the site and enter your username. Friend or Follow analyses your account and presents three lists: people you're following but aren't following you back; people who follow you who you aren't following back and people you're following who are following you.
15. Schedule tweets
It can be handy to set up tweets in advance. The easiest service to use for this is SocialOomph, because you don't need to leave your PC running for the scheduled updates to show.
Sign up for an account and then enter your Twitter account details, authorising via OAuth. You can now select the account you want to use and set up a message.
Tips and Tricks for Twitter Beginners
Twitter is one of the top social networking sites on the web. It seems like almost everyone is on this microblogging platform: major and minor celebrities, big brands, small businesses, journalists and lots and lots of everyday folks.
New people join this social website every day, and it is likely that you are one of these people. The following are just a few helpful tips and tricks that can help you get started on Twitter.
Twitter For Beginners
Remember, it isn’t Facebook. Unless your Tweets are protected (which kinda defeats the whole point of it), anyone and everyone who can hop on the web can read your Tweets, not just your friends and family. If you don’t want to get angry messages from a bunch of folks, don’t say something that could get folks a bit steamed. Of course, you also should be sure to not share something too personal.
You only get 140 characters, but grammar and spelling should not be tossed out the window. People get awfully tempted to ditch punctuation marks, shorten every other word and abbreviate like no tomorrow to get under the character count, but this often results in nearly unreadable tweets. If your Tweet is too long, think about splitting it into two or more tweets. You can still get your message out, and your followers will actually be able to read it.
Follow folks. If you want people to follow you, you have to follow them. Not everyone will follow back, but some will, and they may like what you have to say. Even if you don’t care about followers, following people gets you involved in the conversation that is social media. If you aren’t sure who to follow, take Twitter up on their recommendations or check out who your friends follow.
Don’t over follow. If you follow a lot of people, particularly if you choose to follow them all at once, you will look like a spammer or a fake account. You may end up getting flagged by Twitter. Even if you don’t raise the site’s suspicions, people will just be less likely to follow you, as they may also think that you aren’t real.
Use a profile image. It doesn’t need to be you (even though that would be ideal), but it needs to be something other than a default image. This will help to show that you are a real, genuine account. It will also help your friends who seek you out on this site to know they found the right person.
Tweet. Some people use Twitter just to follow. These folks love to read the jewels of wisdom and ridiculousness spewed by their favorite celebrities and more. You don’t have to tweet all the time, but take some time to say something about things that are important to you or retweet something you like. This little bit of involvement will help you get the most out of the site.
Talk to people. If your favorite celebrity said something super smart, you can let them know that you approve through Twitter. To talk to any Twitter user directly and publicly, use the @ symbol directly before their username.
Use hashtags. Hashtags are labels that tag tweets and essentially start to make up a conversation of users tweeting about that hashtag. These are great to use to help other users find your tweet and to make it relevant, but don’t over use them. One hashtag is enough, two is pushing it, and three or more is way over the line. Too many hashtags might make people not even bother to look at your tweet as it screams for attention in the wrong way.
Keep it short. Remember that while you have 140 characters per tweet, you don’t actually need to use them all. Keep about 20 or more character spaces open on every tweet. That way when other users retweet what you have said, there is plenty of room for your user name to appear so that you get credit for your wise words.
10 Twitter Tips For Bloggers – Please Retweet
With mainstream UK media coverage from the likes of Chris Moyles, Lord Schofield, Stephen Fry, and Jonathon Ross people are joining by the thousand. All these people and the ability to re-tweet has lead to something called the “TwitterEffect” so there’s never been a better time to start using twitter to network and find new targeted visitors to your blog.
#1 Update Your Twitter Profile
Under settings you can add a url, make sure this link is your blog address. This means that when you get new followers and they view your profile they’ll have a direct link to your blog.
#2 Twitter is the new RSS
When you visit any established blog you will see the orange RSS feed in the top right hand corner. Now most people won’t check their RSS feed everyday, but most twitter users will, hence I think twitter will be the new RSS. At the moment a standard button for twitter hasn’t been established, but you should be adding an image next to the RSS link that points to your twitter page.
#3 Follow The Leaders In Your Industry
When you first start out you’ll probably know a few people you want to follow, but it’s quite daunting to figure out who the movers & shakers are in the Twitersvere. If you Follow MrTweet you will be given a list of people who you should be following. If you’ve posted a few updates and a good bio then some of these people will follow you back, so let the networking begin.
#4 Install TweetDeck
Once you install this software onto your computer it opens up a whole new twitter experience.
When someone your following updates it will ping and let you know someone has tweeted. It allows you instantly reply to updates, and it will monitor for anyone who replies to one of your tweets. No more frantically refreshing the homepage to get that twitterfix!
#5 The TweetMyBlog Plugin
This nifty plugin allows me to have my twitterfeed in the sidebar of my blog.
It will also automatically update my twitter account everytime I make a new post, and if you have established good relationships then you should see instant traffic.
#6 The Sociable Plugin
Once installed this plugin makes it easy for readers to share your content. Be sure to tick the “TweetThis” function so that people can tweet about your blog post in seconds. Providing you produce good Pillar Content the amount of extra traffic could be huge.
#7 Use Search To Get Found
Have you seen people post updates with a #nerdpickuplines or similar? If you use the search function then you will this is a way of trending and picking out what is popular. By tweeting about popular topics not only will you have topics to chat about at the watercooler but you’re being part of the community, which will bring more traffic back to your blog.
#8 Use ViralTweets instead of E-mail Capture
The thinking about offering a free report in exchange for your readers email is that you can follow-up and email them about new blog posts. Whilst email lists are fantastic the chances of ytour reader telling all their friends about the free report are pretty slim. If you study the offer on my sidebar you’ll see that anyone who tweets the message automatically follows me, and posts a link to my main website – long term much more valuable than an individual address.
#9 Be Yourself
Twitter is a big social network that works on the basis of “What Are You Doing?”
If all you’re doing is blasting adverts over the twitter network then you’re not going to make any friends, and you’re wasting your time. Conversly if you use it a “Micro Blogging” site and post things that aren’t worth whole blog posts it will work fantastically well for you, and help establish a relationship with the readers of your blog.
#10 The Power Of The Retweet
This final point is probably the most important for traffic generation.
When someone you’re following posts a link to a blog post and you like the content you go to tweetdeck and hit the little arrow button. This automatically retweets the link to the content, and shows your followers you’ve found an article you think they would like to read. By retweeting great content you will gain the respect of your followers, and get on the radar of the person who wrote the content.
Finally if do write a hot topic article then be sure to make sure to tell people that you want it retweeted.
With that in mind if you found this post helpfull then copy this into tweetdeck and hit enter
5 Tips to Increase Your Twitter Presence
1. Leverage Other Profiles
Do you have an existing online profile somewhere outside of Twitter (big or small)? Use it to springboard into Twitter. If it’s a blog, mention that you’re using Twitter in a post and link to it from your profile and contact pages. If you’re on Facebook use one of the numerous tools available to drag in your Tweets to facebook. Add it to your email signature, business card, mention it in interviews or guest posts that you might do…. etc. The same applies with any online (or even offline) presence that you have - link to your Twitter page and link to it often
2. Tweet and Tweet Often - But Create Space for Reactions
The more active you are on Twitter the more likely you are to have someone find you from within Twitter and add you as someone that they are following. Every Tweet you do comes up on the Twitter Public Timeline - so upping your Tweet numbers can help have you appear more often there.
Warning - Tweet too regularly and about nothing worthwhile and you run the risk of loosing followers. What I’ve found is that on days that I’m more talkative than others that there can come points where I’m talking so much that my followers don’t have room to respond. Twitter can actually become quite confusing once you have too many trains of thought going all at once so I try to stick to one topic at a time and create pauses between them to let others interact.
3. Be Conversational
Apart from a good influx of new followers when I announced I was using Twitter at first the days that I get most new followers are those days that I interact with other Twitter users. Everytime you reply to someone and have them reply to you your Twitter ID appears in the feeds of others which exposes you to potentially thousands upon thousands of other Twitter users. Asking questions is perhaps the best way to get conversational on Twitter. Get 10 people to answer a question you’ve Tweeted and if even just one person signs up from each of those 10 people’s replies to you you have 10 new followers. Just as important is to participate in other people’s Tweets also - reply to their questions and ideas as much as possible.
The key with this approach is to be conversational about topics that will interest others. For example if you ask a very general question like ‘what cereal do you use’ and get a lot of answers - but i suspect you’ll get more answers AND new followers if the question was more relevant to people’s lives in some way (read on for more on this).
Another thought on the ‘art of conversation’ on Twitter is that I find I do better when I’m not talking about me. No one likes to hang around with people who just talk about themselves - so get the balance right between talking about yourself and talking about others and other topics of interest.
4. Provide Value
Tweeting on a personal level is fun and for many that’s as far as it goes - but if you’re interested in growing your Twitter influence you need to provide your followers (and potential followers) with value. It’s the same principle as growing a blog - if you help enhance people’s lives in some way they are more likely to want to track with you and read more of what you have to say. As a result your conversations should ‘matter’ on some level. Sure you can throw in personal tweets and have some fun with it - but unless you’re providing something useful to people (information, entertainment, news, education etc) they probably won’t follow you for long.
5. Tweet in Peak Times
Last week I tracked when I had new twitter followers add me and found (as I expected) that the frequency of ‘adds’ where made during business hours in the USA. My being situated in Australia can have some positives and negatives but one of the things I don’t enjoy about it is that I miss out on a lot of interaction with my followers who are on the other side of the world from me. I try to be online when the US wakes up (evenings for me) so as to make the most of the opportunities of being awake in this overlap time (similarly first thing in the morning for me can be good as my US friends are sometimes still at work or online at home in their early evenings). Tweeting during these times only increases the chances of someone finding you and adding you as someone to follow.
Bonus Tip
These are some of the things that I’ve noticed about my own Twitter follower numbers. I probably should add that for me it’s never really been a concerted effort. I do have the advantage of being able to do #1 quite well quite naturally but my last tip would be to just be yourself and Tweet form the heart. Don’t stress too much about the numbers but connect genuinely with the Twitter followers you already have and let the rest take care of itself!
9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
I was a little slow getting onto Twitter last year (when so many other bloggers embraced it). To be honest I didn’t think it had much to offer me – I’m beginning to see how wrong I was.
In this post I want to explore how I’m using Twitter to:
- improve the quality of my blogs
- network with other bloggers
- widen my readership
- grow my profile
- drive traffic to my blogs
Also note that tomorrow I’ll share some of the more practical tips of how I’m finding Twitter to be most useful. Today is more the ‘benefits’ and tomorrow I’ll make some suggestions about how to use the tool more effectively. Subscribe to my feed to ensure you don’t miss that post.
The Benefits of Twitter (to me)
One of the main things that I’ve discovered about Twitter is that no two Twitter users are using it in the same way. Almost every Twitter user that I come across tells me that they have a different objective when it comes to using it and are benefiting from it differently.As a result I won’t attempt to write a definitive list of the benefits of Twitter – but will share how I’ve found it to benefit me (feel free to add your own comments).
1. Research Tool
One of the things that I’ve come to enjoy about Twitter the most is the way that it can be used when you’re researching a post.- Stuck for inspiration? Twitter and idea and see what others add to it.
- Need an example for a point you’re making? Twitter it and you might get some good ones.
- Got a question that you’re stuck on? Ask it to your followers to see what they think.
- Need to test a hypothesis? Do a straw poll on your followers.
Example – Let me illustrate this with a ‘live’ example. Lets just say that I’m writing a post on RSS feed subscriptions and wanted to find out how many feeds people were following. I’d post a Tweet like this:
Now I actually posted that Tweet a few minutes ago and in the time that it took me to grab a screen shot of the tweet and made myself a coffee I’ve had the following responses:
What other medium can you gather that kind of data in 5 minutes? (actually by now – 10 minutes later there have been 30 responses and it’s the middle of the night for most of my followers).
2. Reinforce (and expand) Your Personal Brand
I’ve written previously about how I’ve found interacting on multiple mediums can be important in building your personal brand. Whether it be social networking, blogging, bookmarking, real life interactions etc – all of these ‘straws’ when added together can go a long way to building your own brand. Twitter is another ‘straw’ in my personal brand (and that of my blogs). What I’ve found is that I’m getting emails and messages from people saying things like:
- ‘I used to read you at ProBlogger but had lost track until I found you on Twitter’
- ‘I subscribe to your RSS feed on the blog but seeing your posts on Twitter reminds me to read them more’
- ‘I was scanning through someone else’s Twitters yesterday and saw your face. I recognized it from your Facebook account so thought I’d check out you.’
- ‘I saw your name mentioned the other day on Scott Karp’s Twitter feed. I hadn’t seen your blog for a while and it reminded me to resubscribe.’
The other thing that I’ll say about branding and Twitter is that it can be used to expand your brand or to show a different side of you. Some of the people that I enjoy following the most on Twitter inject humor into their Twittering that I don’t see on their blogs. There’s also something a little more personal about many of the people I follow on Twitter (even if they Tweet on a ‘professional’ topic – their voice is often more personal than on their blogs).
Example – the wonderful thing about Twitter is that it’s actually others who brand you and not just you who does all the work. Look at the example above and you see that 30 people (it’s now up to 40) answered my question and each time they did they publicly used my blog’s name and linked to my Twitter account. Those 30 or 40 people are collectively being followed by thousands of others and by responding to my question they ‘sneezed’ the ProBlogger virus out to them (incidentally I’ve had 15 new followers join up since posting that question just minutes ago).
3. Promote Content
The first thing that people usually ask me when I say that I’m on Twitter is ‘how much traffic does it drive back to your blogs?’ I’ve purposely held off on writing about Twitter as a means to drive traffic until this point in this post because I don’t see it as the main benefit of the tool. Having said that – it can potentially promote content and drive traffic.I’ve been using a tool called TwitterFeed for the last four weeks (31 days to be exact) to take the headlines and URLs from my blog’s feeds and to publish them in my Twitter account. In that time I’ve seen just over 1350 visitors come from Twitter to Problogger after something like this appears in my Twitter feed each time I post:
That is not a massive amount considering I have over 1000 followers at the moment and considering that it’s .38% of the total traffic that the site has had in that time – however it’s not insignificant because I suspect that Twitter users are a fairly influential bunch of people and could potentially be spreading my URLs wider than just on Twitter (on their blogs etc).
Here’s how my traffic has grown since starting to use Twitter more seriously a month ago.
One surprising thing that I found when I started publishing my stories on Twitter was that some Twitter readers told me that they now read ProBlogger exclusively through Twitter – to the point that they didn’t check the feed any more. At first I was a little concerned by this – but then i realized that it was a good thing because those readers had found a way that fitted more with their own rhythm to read my content.
Twitter had become an alternative subscription method for them. Plus it actually caused these readers to read the blog on the blog rather just in their feed reader – creating increase page views/unique visitor counts.
4. Extend Audience – Find NEW Readers
One challenge that bloggers who’ve been around for a while in their niche can face is that they reach a saturation point. They sometimes feel like everyone who will hear about them has already heard about them and they can see a plateau in their stats. This often happens 6-12 months into a blog.My encouragement to this type of blogger is to think about where potential readers might be gathering that they’re yet to tap into. I’ve found that this has happened for me with Twitter.
I’ve already touched on how this happens above in the ‘branding’ section – however a number of Twitter users have told me that they’ve just discovered my blogs through my Tweets (and the Tweets of others). There hasn’t been a flood of new readers from this – but my Google analytics says that 27% of of the visitors who have come to ProBlogger from Twitter are ‘new’ to my blogs. For me that’s about 15-20 new readers per day through Twitter – over a year that could definitely add up and those 5000 – 7000 new readers could have a significant impact upon a community.
5. Networking
Another obvious benefit of Twitter is the ability that it gives you to network on a different level with other bloggers, readers and ‘others’. I’ve lost count of the direct messages and group conversations that I’ve had with people that I’d never have ‘met’ any other way. Already this has opened up some fascinating opportunities to work together on promoting each other’s content, sharing advice etc. It’s also opened up 3-4 opportunities for me to find new guest bloggers for my blogs.
One more thing on a networking front – I find it difficult to put this one into words, but there’s a certain camaraderie that develops when you read what someone’s written every hour or so throughout a day (and know that they’re doing the same with you). For me it’s something like that feeling that you get after spending a couple of days with someone at a conference – you know each other on a whole other level. Difficult to explain and I’m not sure I’ve quite put my finger on what this is (anyone able to say it better?).
6. Previews
Last week on a couple of occasions I released exclusive little previews to Twitter followers of information that I hadn’t yet posted on my blogs. I did this in two ways.1. Once I posted news that I was yet to break on ProBlogger (I think it was about AdSense retiring their AdSense referral program). I did this because it was important news and I hadn’t yet had time to write up a post. I included in the Tweet that I’d post about it shortly – this created a little anticipation among followers (to the point where a few started direct messaging me asking when my post would go up).
2. The other time I shared a link to a post on ProBlogger that was yet to go live (ie I’d published it as an advance post at a time that was yet to happen – this created a page but no one would have known it was there). I did this as an experiment to see what would happen. The result was that when the post did go live on the blog on the front page it already had comments and a good discussion. I also found that three people had already linked to it. It also helped some readers to feel a little special to get a Twitter exclusive (in fact I’m publishing the link to this post on Twitter 3 hours before it actually goes live on the the blog).
There’s one more thing that I’d like to try in terms of combining this idea of ‘preview’ and the ‘research’ point mentioned above – and that’s to create a private post on my blog that I reveal only to Twitter followers and to then post a draft there of a post I’m working on to get feedback on before publishing it publicly. This would be an interesting exercise and explore the idea of a more communal writing of a post.
7.Speedlinking
One of the things that I’ve been doing lately instead of posting so many ‘Speedlinks’ here on ProBlogger is to share these links on Twitter. I’m doing this largely from Google Reader using a Firefox add-on created by Bob Lee. While Speedlinking is something that has worked reasonably well here on ProBlogger (in posts like this for example) I’m actually finding the medium of Twitter to be well suited to it also.
Note: – if you’re not into Twitter but still want to follow my speedlinks I’m posting alot of them in my Shared Items feed via Google Reader.
8. Story Gathering
A number of times this past week I’ve heard of breaking news in my niches via the Tweets of others. I would have heard of these stories via my news aggregator and the RSS feeds of others eventually – but due to the immediacy of Twitter I heard them just minutes after they broke.This can be the difference between breaking a story to readers and being second or third at it.
9. Find Out What People REALLY Think
Another observation that I’ve made in the last couple of weeks while on Twitter is that people have a certain level of honesty and rawness on Twitter that they sometimes mask or hide on their blogs. I’m not sure why this is – but perhaps when confronted with saying something in 140 characters they have to strip away some of the disclaimers and politically correct language and just say what they mean.The good thing about this is that it gives you a sense of what people are really thinking on a topic. This helps you to get to know them on a new level but also helps you keep your finger on the needs and feelings of your potential readers.
So they are some of the benefits that I’ve found of using Twitter. I’d be fascinated to hear how others have found it to be useful. Don’t forget to look out for tomorrow’s post with suggestions on how to improve your blogging with Twitter.
