How To Effectively Use Twitter To Promote Your Blog

Twitter is one of the most popular social media network today.  Created in July 2006, it has since gathered over 200 million users with as many tweets & 1.6 billion search queries per day.

Is Twitter Marketing On Your Playlist?

Of course, if you are not using Twitter to market your blog, then you are missing out on huge exposure. But many bloggers debate the validity of Twitter as a marketing tool. Where you stand on the subject is irrelevant, especially considering the potential traffic.

What Is The Best Way To Get Started With Twitter?

First of all, if you don’t have an account, you need to get one. Second, you should use the basic features first, and start following other people and

interacting with them. A good way to do this is look after someone’s account that you already know.

For instance, if you were into the marketing arena, you could follow the account of Seth Godin. This would give you an opportunity to interact with Seth (he is known for replying to blog posts and Twitter posts like a mad man) as well as some of his followers.

Identifying the followers of another person in your niche and getting them to follow you can help bolster your rank as an expert in your niche. Make sure that you keep people interested by interacting directly with them. You can mention them with the many tags such as @follower, and mention trends using the # sign.

Tools To Simplify Twitter Use

If you are looking for a way to simplify your use of Twitter, then you definitely want to start working through a system like su.pr. This service allows you to post information to Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon all at the same time.

Signing up for an account is easy and using the service couldn’t be much easier. It is best used for sharing the content that you have created on your blog. This tool also gives you an interesting way to keep track of your traffic, making sure that you can see how effective a post is.

Creative Ways To Use Twitter

One of the most inventive ways to use Twitter is to present two different headlines as teasers for an article you have written. The trick is to release the headlines at two different times of the day, based on when your readers are the most active on the Internet. You have to have two different groups of users that are primarily active at different times for this to be effective.

One good way is to use the difference between the east coast and west coast time zones. Find a tool that will allow you to schedule your Twitter posts and put one teaser at 6am eastern standard time and another at 6am western time. This will give most of your followers enough time to get to work before the second wave hits.

How Many People Can I Really Target?

Realistically you will want to have a list of followers that doesn’t exceed 1,000. The reason for this is because interacting with them all on a regular basis becomes too unwieldy if you have many more than that. But if you are able to afford a virtual assistant then you might be able to get many more.

If your account exceeds this number don’t panic. It will show the rest of the world that you are popular. It then becomes imperative that you filter down to the individuals you want to interact with the most and keep track of them in a separate file.

Doing this will ensure that your account stays lively and that you build some true fans, which is the way you will really get your blog to grow. But once you have established yourself as a force on Twitter, it may be impossible to slow your growth.

There is a lot of debate about how many users actually exist on Twitter. The company publishes ridiculous figures, stating that there are 200 million or more active users. The reality is that most of these accounts haven’t seen any activity in over a month.

Each account that is created contributes towards that abnormally high count. But in reality, a huge percentage of those accounts are robots, alternate accounts, or abandoned accounts. It is estimated that the actual number of Twitter accounts is somewhere around 15 to 20 million.

Still, this number is nothing to laugh at. Having access to 15 million or more potentially interested fans is a great way to spread the word about your blog. Making sure that you are using the tool effectively is the only thing standing in your way.

Researching the many tools that help you take the most advantage of Twitter will help empower you. When it comes time to grow your blog it will be very easy for you to figure out what the next step is. But first you have to commit to using the platform in the way it was intended, and that means committing to updating on a regular basis.

Twitter Advertising

Its advertising system was launched in 2010.  Basically it can really help improve the way you promote your blog if you use it correctly.  There are 3 methods: “Promoted Tweets,” “Promoted Trends,” and “Promoted Accounts.”

Promoted Tweets allow you to “reach the right person, at the right time, in the right place.”  Although you can use it to target your follower, the better bang for the buck would be to reach your non-followers, or users who are like your followers.  You can also target by search result and geography.  Promoted Tweets are offered on a Cost-per-Engagement (CPE), so it means that the advertiser only pays when someone retweets, replies to, clicks or favorites the Promoted Tweet.  This is similar to to the PPC model favored by Google.

Promoted Trend are great to generate interest on a particular topic and “is ideally placed to kickstart or amplify a conversation on Twitter and beyond.”  Its a great tool when you want to build a viral marketing campaign.

Promoted Accounts are like Facebook Fan pages where you can dedicate a specific account to a product or brand.  You can and should build one around your blog so that your followers can received updates of your posts in form of tweets.