Blogging Tips

If I ask you the question how can you get traffic to your website? What will be your answer? I’m sure if you’re a new blogger or if you don’t yet know how the system works your first answer will be by creating a twitter and facebook account and having a lot of twitter followers and facebook fans. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that approach no longer works. Getting real traffic to your blog isn’t about having a lot of twitter followers or having a lot of facebook fans. In fact, sometimes, having a lot of retweets on a particular blog post of yours might not make a difference and you have to understand the secret behind having success with Facebook, twitter and other social media sites. This post will be giving you some insights into getting the best from Facebook and Twitter.

You Need to Realize this First…

Where I live, people spend a lot of time on Facebook everyday wasting precious hours of their days chatting with friends without getting anything valuable in return. I’ve seen people spending as much as 8 hours a day on facebook alone, doing nothing, and like many of you I made the decision of not utilizing Facebook for my blog and that decision was something I will later come to regret. You might not like to hear this, but it really doesn’t matter whether you love facebook or twitter or not and it doesn’t matter whether you agree with their concept. the truth is a lot of people use these sites everyday. Facebook is the number two most visited website in the world and the most interactive website in the world while twitter is the number 9 most visited website in the world. What I mean is, take a look at people around you or everywhere you go, who doesn’t know facebook? who doesn’t know twitter? Neglecting these great traffic generation mediums will cost you a lot, irrespective of what you think. You first have to realize that these sites work, that they truly send traffic and that not making use of them will be you making a great mistake in your blogging career.

I later corrected my mistake of not making use of these sites and the reality is, they both send over 1,000 visitors to my site in some months (I know that isn’t much, but ask yourself, how would you feel if you lose that much traffic in just one month?).

Cater For Your Audience

Even though you might have read several articles telling you that the best way to get traffic from facebook and twitter is by creating an account and then using some software to help you get more followers you still have to realize that there are some missing ingredient to the equation. Your twitter and facebook followers can also be viewed as newsletter subscribers whom you have an opportunity of reaching anytime you want. A great question you need to ask yourself now is, do you only want them to read your content once or anytime you share your posts? Considering the fact that research has shown that the more people see your message the more they are likely to take action I bet you will opt in for people clicking links in your tweets whenever you share one, and the only way to ensure this is by giving the best of your content. It all comes to you having a reputation and building an authority, you have to ensure people know what they get when you’re talked about, you have to ensure your name is associated with quality and the only way to do this is by giving the best you can every time, the best way to do this is by letting your followers and fans know that anytime you tweet you are tweeting what is best for them.

Your Title Matters

I currently have around 500 twitter followers and over 500 facebook fans, both built carefully and organically. One thing I have noticed is  that some of my posts have gotten as much as 200 visitors from facebook while some hardly get 20. A great question to ask in this case will be, does it mean I’m not providing value to my readers? Hell no, it has nothing to do with value because the fact is whether you provide value or not and whether you have something your fans and followers really want there is only one way to communicate this to them, and that is through your title.  The only thing that made a difference in most of my articles getting more clicks from Facebook and twitter is the title because people don’t have the choice of knowing what an article is about before they read it but you can easily communicate how important your blog post is to them by giving it the best title. Try to make sure your post titles have all these four important ingredients of a great headline. You have to make sure your title is.

• Useful
• Urgent
• Ultra Specific
• Unique

Once your post title meets with these four important criteria and your content over delivers, you will not only easily grow your twitter and facebook base quickly but you will also get more people to take action when you share.