Twittering, or using the twitter.com social networking site, isn’t just for fun (although it is terribly addictive). It’s also a great way to promote your blog. You can do that in a few simple and short steps:
- Find like-minded people and follow them. Look in particular for people with terms related to your blog in their bio or name. You’ll have to be pretty general here since people don’t get much space on Twitter. Once you follow enough people like you, you should start getting people interested in your topic following you.
- Encourage people who visit your blog to follow you on Twitter. This isn’t the only way to get return visitation (RSS feeds and use of sites like Feedburner are great!). But if you have a blog visitor who’s a Twitter junkie and likes your blog, they probably will click your Twitter badge and follow you.
- When you have a new blog post, Twitter it. You won’t have room for much, but you can simply post your post header and the link.
- Keep an eye on your referrals and see how effective Twittering is. If you find you’re getting even a few visits a day, it’s probably worth the effort. If you’ve actively sought out people who might be interested in your niche or topic, those are probably high-quality visitors who will visit your site again and might even comment.
And hey, if you’re interested go ahead and follow me. You can also follow my fellow Blogging Tips.com writer, Deborah Ng.
Barbara Ling | March 4th, 2008 at 5:26 pm #
Twitter is a great way to stay updated! I use Twitter Tools to automatically allow myself to tweet when I post to my blog. It’s very helpful.
Enjoy,
Barbara
Internet Marketing Joy | March 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm #
Twitter is really great especially in meeting new people. I’ve been using Twitter for quite some time now and I noticed most of the people there are helpful and nice. Anyway thanks for this great post! Happy Twittering Kelby!
by the way if you want to follow me…here is my link..^^ http://twitter.com/yojspew
Michael Martine, Blog Consultant | March 4th, 2008 at 10:59 pm #
If you want to have zero followers, then put every blog post you write on Twitter.
James Mann | March 5th, 2008 at 7:22 am #
Hey there Kelby, that’s a name I have not heard before. Cool name.
I use Twitter, probably not as much as I should but I tend to put other things before I twitter. I do have Twitter tools installed in my FireFox so my posts get Twittered.
I am now following you. Feed me something creative.
newmediaMike | March 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm #
Michael I disagree, I follow Silicon Valley VC Guy Kawasaki, his twitters are exclusively promos for his blog. Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan both alternate between answering tweets and promoting their blog and between the three of them they have almost 20,000 followers.
Jenny | March 10th, 2008 at 11:42 pm #
I just read about this and signed up for it myself. We’ll see how it goes.
Chetan | March 11th, 2008 at 4:43 am #
Following you now
Would be great if you too http://twitter.com/sizzler_chetan