Use Twitter to Grow Your Blog
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Most Twitter users I know fall into one of two camps: completely overwhelmed or hopelessly addicted. I've been in both spots myself. But I think I've finally found a happy medium. I enjoy tweeting, and I've had some blog visits, solely from my links posted to Twitter.
Once you're up and running on Twitter:
- Use Tweetdeck or HootSuite or a similar application to keep all your contacts organized. Sorting your contacts into groups will allow you to closely follow those conversations of most interest to you. The Lists function on Twitter performs a similar function and is also useful when using Twitter through the web.
- Search for keywords and/or hashtag (#) terms to find conversations about topics of interest to you. This is particularly helpful to "introduce" you to potential readers for your blog.
- Monitor hot topics, issues, and questions for possible blog post ideas.
- Ask a question to get people interested in your topic so they'll click to your blog to read more. Resist the temptation to just tweet the ordinary, "New Blog Post" tweet. (Read more ideas like these in this article* by Chris Brogan.)
- As I said above, I think Twitter can be quite addictive. My best tactic for this is limiting myself to short bursts of tweeting. If possible, set aside twenty minutes morning, noon, and night to tweet. Engage in conversation, re-tweet interesting posts, and follow people who follow you. I don't get to do this consistently, but when I do, I usually always add at least ten followers.
What are your favorite aspects of Twitter? How has Twitter helped your blog?
And don't forget to follow @faithfulbloggrs ;-)
