If you are involved in blogging or internet marketing on any level, then you are probably (and should be) active in social media. My favorite social media tool is Twitter. It’s an easy way to meet people, strike up conversations, extend and build your brand, and promote yourself and your blog. While knowing the basics of using Twitter will work for most, there some things you can start doing today which will take your Twittering to the next level.
Send Out Helpful and Informative Tweets
If you blog for business reasons, a great way to help establish yourself and your brand is to send out tips or information which pertain to your business area. For example, if your online business deals with gardening, then you could send out tweets about gardening tips. The key is to do it on a regular basis to help build trust which will lead to more and more people following you.
Promote Old Blog Posts With Tweets
It’s customary for you to send out a tweet whenever you update your blog. So why not do it to help promote older blog posts? This is a great way to introduce new followers to some of your older material. Just make sure you don’t over do it. Once or twice a week should be suffice. Plus, you might want to keep track of which past blog posts you tweet about just so you don’t make the mistake of sending out a tweet about the same blog post twice in the same number of weeks.
Send A Personal Message To New Followers
Some people using Twitter have it setup so a “Thanks for following me”-type message is automatically sent to new followers. While this is fine for some, I rather take the time to send new followers a personal message. It’s nothing extravagant just a simple “thank you” and to let them know they are more than welcome to drop me a tweet if they ever wish to talk. The key is to address the tweet to them by using their first name if it’s known. This makes it personal and shows I took the time to find out who they are in addition to typing them a personal message. Since I’ve been doing this, I’ve had quite a large number of people tweet me back with their own thanks and inquires about talking and such.
Use Your Own Twitter Profile Background
While there are a plethora of Twitter profile backgrounds available, having your own personal Twitter profile background tells people you are taking yourself and your online business seriously. You can either hire someone to create one for you (you can search for someone on either oDesk or Freelancer.com), or you can do it yourself. Regardless of how it’s done, ensure you include these three things: your picture or logo so people can easily identify you, a blurb about yourself or about your business because someone viewing your Twitter profile for the first time may not know who you are, and your blog’s url and online contact information such as email, Twitter URL, and Facebook URL.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags (the # sign) are used in tweets to mark certain words which will appear in twitter searches for that particular word. For example, if you send out a tweet about gardening and you place “#gardening” (minus the quotation marks) at the end of the tweet, that tweet will appear in search results for the term “gardening”. Just don’t crazy with the hashtags. Use them when you see fit. The point of using them is make certain tweets appear in searches. So if someone reads one of your tweets because it appeared in a search they did, chances are they will either visit your blog, follow you on Twitter- or both!
I have used these five tips to great success and you will as well. They are easy to implement and will have a great impact on establishing yourself, your business, and your brand as well as adding to the number of followers you have.
I would love to hear any tips you may have or how effective my tips are for you. Just use the Comments section below to let me and everyone else know. Thanks!
