Every blogger should be on Twitter. The social network is a great place to connect with other bloggers as well as people who would be interested in your content. Wait. You’re not on Twitter yet? Here’s a quick guide to Twitter and how to get started. If you’re already on Twitter, make sure that you put the link to your blog in your profile!
Today’s assignment
Post the link to one of your recent blog posts on Twitter. But don’t just post the whole entire long link – be sure to shorten it first with a service like bit.ly. And preface it with a “teaser” to persuade people to read it. A teaser can simply be the title of the post (and hopefully it’s a good, catchy title), a quote from the post or a question related to the post.
Here’s a few examples:
Use hashtags
You can also use Twitter hashtags to promote your blog posts to your niche. Here’s a recent tweet of mine promoting my blog post to the #nonprofit and #philanthropy communities on Twitter. There’s some more useful info on hashtags here.
How often should you post links to your blog posts on Twitter?
It’s up to you! Of course, you don’t want your Twitter stream to be all “read my blog”, but keep in mind that everyone is not on Twitter at the same time, so you can probably get away with posting your blog links up to three times a day. I post links to new blog posts in the morning, midday and evening the first day I post, then about once a day for a few days after that. You can also do this with older posts as well. Twitter can make it fresh content again!
Bonus tip
If you use a service like Hootsuite (my fave!) or Tweetdeck, you can schedule your blog post updates to go out at certain times throughout the day. It’s truly a Twitter timesaver and can put your blog promotion on auto-pilot.
Are you using Twitter to promote your blog? Have you received more blog traffic as a result? Please share your experience in the comments!
I jsut created a Hootesuite account to help me manage better. I still need to learn how to use the functionality though. I made sure to create a separate twitter account for my blog so I will only focus on music content on Chasing Soul and not other personal statements that are unrelated.
http://www.chasingsoul.com
Been doing this, but will now finesse it! I've started re-tweeting my posts, and what Elizabeth said makes sense… 3pm-6pm probably has highest traffic because folks are getting out of work and school and want to catch up with Twitter, Facebook, etc. Also, I need to start using hashtags… when I was tweeting at Lollapalooza using the appropriate hashtags, I gained about 10 new followers over just a few days.
Thank you. I'll look into that.
I have my WordPress blog set up so that every time I publish a new post, it automatically sends an update to get posted on my Twitter profile. I also have the same system set up for my personal Facebook page and my Facebook fan page. Adrienne– I like what you wrote about reposting your Twitter update. I was like that too– I was afraid that reposting an update would be seen as annoying. Twitter posts my blog posts with just the title of the post and the url. I'm going to start reposting like you do. That way, I can put a little teaser / one-sentence excerpt in the beginning so people can get an idea of what the post is about. Elizabeth– thank you for the 3-6pm trick! I never knew when the best time to post stuff is. Sometimes,
You just saved my life with the Hootsuite hattip. Just signed up and life is already feeling less rushed. Love that I can schedule when my “posts” there go out and love that it can slurp my blog feed and broadcast for me. RT when you mentioned that you updated on twitter a few times a day with your status, I was like “who has the time”? Now, I do.
Thanks!
I always updated on twitter when I posted a new blog post. But because I don't like “come check out my new post _tiny url with no reference to content_” tweets, I almost always post my full blog url in my tweets. Mostly, I want folks to know what my blog is even if they are too rushed to click on that link at that moment. They'll remember or at least have something to google off of my blog name. With tiny urls, they remember the tiny's branding, not mine, since “tiny” is usually the only legible word I've really seen in those urls.
Overthink things a lot. Shorter urls free up space to post what the content is. but if folks don't take that extra step, I almost never click through the tiny url if I don't know the person well enough to know what they're about. I don't have that kind of name recognition.
Bernadette
http://www.b3homedesigns.blogspot.com
I haven't gotten on the Twitter bandwagon yet. I'm reluctant to have another thing to manage. I'd be interested to know if people feel it is needed in addition to Facebook status updates. Are you getting different crowds from FB vs Twitter?
I've been really reluctant to promote my posts on Twitter. I'm just starting to figure out how to use Twitter (@dawnmarissa), so I don't have a huge following just yet and I don't want to bombard my friends and family with “read my blog!!!” posts. This challenge was a good kick in the pants to just shut up and do it anyway!
My most recent post had been viewed 5 times yesterday morning. After I promoted it again on twitter, it went up to 17 views. I usually only promote it once when it's written. Big mistake! Plus, that tweet was RT'd by a person in my industry that I really admire!
Oh, whoops, you can find me on Twitter at lolagetslife!
Ive been on Twitter for a few months now, and I dont know if its led to more traffic on my blog. I would try to check my traffic on Google Analytics, but it seems I out the code in the wrong place, and I cant figure out how to correct that.
If anyone can tell me how -and be extremely descriptive about it cuz Im really not tech savvy – Id really appreciate it!
L
Every time I blog I promote it on Twitter. I've definitely seen how this leads to more traffic from my stats.
But I've heard that the best time to tweet is in the afternoon-evening, so I keep it between 3 and 6 p.m.
Try futuretweets.com I use it to help me remember to promote my pieces. What I normally do is when I schedule my post (using wordpress) I also set up the publicize fuction for twitter/facebook (that includes the name of the post, the shortened url and anything else I want to include within the 140 character limitation). I copy this and put it into futuretweets (usually change it up a bit so I'm not tweeting the exact same thing over and over) and I schedule 2-3 tweets to go out throughout the day.
Yes! I am using Twitter and Hootsuite to promote my blog, and I love both of these tools. Hootsuite is such a resource. I usually post provocative sentences from my post 3-4x per post. And I've got tons of traffic from it. It's usually 80% about my blog and 20% about other people's posts and my responses to them.
Mazarine
Promoting my blog on twitter was one thing I was so lazy with doing. I am Hootsuite user and love that i can schedule posts to tweet out when I want. I just need to learn how to promote three times a day instead of just once.
One of the things I like about wordpress is that it gives you the option to publicize your posts on twitter/facebook/yahoo. So when I publish a new piece I have the option of sending a teaser to twitter along with a link. It also feeds facebook a short synopsis and link. In addittion I have my twitter set up to feed directly to my facebook fan page so as I promote the piece throughout the day (sometimes using futuretweets espec if I'm busy) facebook gets updated too.
I started on twitter a couple of months before I started blogging and it has been great for driving traffic to my site. But as you said, your tweets can't always just be about you. I've learned that you need to strike a balance between driving traffic to your site and sharing other sources of information to show that you are keeping current.
For me, I use twitter the following ways:
60% career networking
30% goal setting/visioning/purpose fulfillment
10% personal use
I'm looking forward to making the shift to promoting the new site on twitter, but want to build out more content first!
I started on twitter a couple of months before I started blogging and it has been great for driving traffic to my site. But as you said, your tweets can't always just be about you. I've learned that you need to strike a balance between driving traffic to your site and sharing other sources of information to show that you are keeping current.
For me, I use twitter the following ways:
60% career networking
30% goal setting/visioning/purpose fulfillment
10% personal use
I'm looking forward to making the shift to promoting the new site on twitter, but want to build out more content first!
I definitely use twitter to promote my blog, and (I double checked) about 20% of my traffic comes out of twitter, far more than any other referring site. I've also found that twitter and my blog work together really well for giving me ideas for content (i.e. my blog gives me things to tweet about and I get a lot of blog ideas out of twitter).
I'd also definitely plug the idea of using Twitter, itself, for branding. My twitter account has benefited from the work of Marian Schembari (who gives individualized twitter critiques here: http://marianlibrarian.com/twitter-strategy/) and it's allowed me to keep up / participate in a lot of interesting conversations and network with some really fascinating people in my niche!