This is the third part in the series of Twitter related articles. First I looked at why you have to start promoting your blog on Twitter, then I explained the strategy behind getting a large number of followers, and in this article I will look at how to brand yourself as an expert in your field and how to maximize the impact of your tweets.
Branding yourself on Twitter
Keep following what is happening within your blog field and ensure you become known for twittering on a subject related to your blog. By linking to different quality resources, people will look at you as an expert who knows where to find the best information and who shares knowledge with their followers.
Your Twitter profile and reputation is just as important as some clicks. If you have trustworthy profile you will gain more followers as your profile will look very valuable and knowledgeable.
The overall effect of you only posting quality and relevant tweets will be cumulative in the long run as branding is a subtle process that occurs over time. You will become branded as an expert who provides regular insight into your blog topic and this will expose you to other people who are interested in your subject.
Code of conduct for your tweets
- Be helpful, useful and friendly. The more you give, the more you will receive in return.
- Do not promote your blog and your blog articles all the time. You might have got somebody to follow you, but if you do not provide value to them, they can just as easily unfollow you.
- Try to grab the attention of whoever is reading by thinking of your tweets as your blog article headlines.
- Make sure to make each tweet interesting and worth reading to your target audience. Post the best you can come up with and hopefully your followers will decide to click on and check out your profile and your blog.
- Restrain yourself from tweeting too much as many tweets might make your followers unfollow you. Some three tweets a day on average works fine for me. Use TweetStats to learn more and analyze your tweets. If you cannot stay away and must tweet all the time, use Qwitter to get updates when someone stops following you. You might see trends and learn what to stop writing about.
How to optimize the exposure of your tweets
- Use TweetBurner to shorten the URL’s you want to include in your tweets. As tweets are based on 140 characters, this will save you some space for your message.
- TweetBurner will also track how many clicks your tweets get. You can analyze which tweet structures attract your followers the most, what headlines work best, and at what time of the day your tweets get most clicks.
- Use analysis from TweetBurner with service of TweetLater to schedule your tweets to be posted at the best possible times to optimize the exposure and number of clicks.
- Experiment with repeating the same tweet twice a day with some 10-12 hours in between and analyze your results. From my experience people do not notice that you repeat tweets and your repeat will attract attention as many new people have logged on since your original tweet some 10 hours before.
- You can automate your tweets even more by using TwitterFeed to have your new blog RSS news feed entries automatically posted to your Twitter followers.
Twitter Marketing E-Book
For much more information on Twitter, check out my “Twitter Marketing E-book: How to go viral on Twitter“. The e-book includes all the tips on how I use Twitter to build my authority, drive traffic to my blog and get customers. Enjoy twittering!
Image by: Mike Baird
Join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE! Subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog via RSS or via e-mail.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
This is some really good information that I didn’t know much about before, especially utilizing TweetLater, and I plan to use all of what you said. Thanks for the ideas!
Thanks for the hint about Qwitter, I will give it a try!
Nice tips. I’m not that sold on twitter yet. I use it, but not as much as a promotional tool as I should… Perhaps these last two Twitter articles will give me a nice little boost.
And yes, the url shortener is key. I used one for the first time today.
I’m still trying to figure how how twitter can be helpful and why someone would want to know what I’m doing all day. I guess if I just won the lotto that would be fun to twit about, but everyday stuff is boring.
@The Passive Dad – For me the point is to extend your blog by being on Twitter. Write tweets about your blog content and what is happening around your topic. Help your target audience and establish your name. I do not write much about everyday stuff, I write mostly about my blog topic stuff.
These are great tips that I am going to put into use in order to improve my brand on Twitter.
Nice post. Tweetlater is very good for helping you build yourself on Twitter i started using ti when i only had a couple of hundred followers and now i have over 2200
Thanks for the information on Twurl this, I will be interested to see what it says. I seem to have contradictory information in Google Analytics and what my real time experience is when I post a link on Twitter. For example, I’ll post a link to a thread on my board and right away I’ll see a dozen new guests browsing it – but then the next day Google says only 6 hits from Twitter. What could be accounting for this?
Thanks for all the comments, I appreciate it!
@Tracy – I have the same problem, that is why I started using Twurl. I suspect Twitter visitors might be in “direct traffic” because of the client we use or something. Maybe someone has a better answer?
@Tim Burrowes – Me too. I post it manually. But many big users do it, so I wanted to include the option if someone wants to automate the whole process.
@Gerald Weber – Quitter seems to have forgotten me too. Haven’t received any mails in a while.
@Lainie Petersen – Very nice story, thanks for sharing!
@Scott Mahler – Definitely, Twitter is much more than marketing. I for example got my blog header image done via Twitter contact. It i a great tool for everyone!
I also twit, and I love twitter! But I can’t believe that there’s so much services now that is dedicated for twitter. Thanks for this! nice post! I’ll use this as reference to improve my twits.
God Bless!
For the small amount of effort it takes, I’ve chosen to stay away from automating the RSS feed from my site to Twitter. It feels a little too spammy. Surely better to put it in Twitter-friendly terminology?
Cheers,
Tim
By the way, I thumbs-up this post. Perhaps I’ll also digg it and mixx it. Cheers!
All great points indeed. The basic idea is to contribute to the community and add value. Pretty much what you want to do on most social platforms. The only thing I might disagree with is tweeting only 3 times a day. I am very active on twitter and this seems to work fine for me. For example I’ll be Stumbling websites and when I see related article (like this one) that I find worthy I’ll tweet it (as I just did) =) and share it with my followers. I do get feedback from followers indicating that they appreciate the info. I used to use quitter also but I think it quit. It hasn’t sent me any notices in quite some time. I normally use twirl to send my tweets and it has a built in url shortener I think maybe it’s tiny url. The stats thing on tweetburner does sound somewhat interesting.
I started using Ping.Fm to update Twitter and my other social media networks. As I was drinking a lot of tea (on my diet) I started mentioning the teas that I was drinking. This apparently intrigued people, and some folks encouraged me to start a blog. So I did and ended up with even more followers because of it + a lot of people on Twitter ask my advice about tea now. By drinking so much of it, and recording this on Twitter, I became an “authority” and, yes, built a brand.
Great post!
Twitter has been a great resource for me, and not just for marketing. I have actually come to love twitter for the help, advice and opinions of the people I am following. I am a website developer, and find twitter very useful in giving me information on what people are truly looking for their website to do as well. My advice is to listen as much, or maybe even more, to the tweets of your followers as your own. You won’t believe how much you can learn on how to improve your business by just listening.
Good basic overview for folks starting out on Twitter. I always like to reference the real world when trying to figure out how to behave online. With Twitter, you are chatting mostly with people you know just a little or almost not at all. And everybody in the room can hear you because you are standing next to a microphone. When you get the urge to tweet about how your stomach is reacting to your dinner, just keep that in mind.
Great post. Very useful info on using the TweetBurner/TweetLater combo. I’ll give that a try.
Well done Marko. I think your code of conduct section cannot be overstated. As folks try to figure out how to use twitter to brand themselves, you do need to deliver value, and be a little hesitant when it comes to prominence of ‘casual’ posts.
With all the excitement surrounding twitter and micro-blogging, many are diving in to get experience, and figure it out. While this is normal with any new trendy technology, at some point folks need to settle in and determine if it is worth their time… this is especially true for businesses.
Your code of conduct is an excellent guide business folks can refer to when posting.
Keep up the great work.
I have a blog and some followers. But I’m planning a new blog on a topic that will interest only some of those people (but hopefully much larger numbers of other followers). How do you manage to brand yourself if you have a “dual identity” so to speak?
@Hannah – If I wanted to promote two sites, I would create two different Twitter profiles and have a profile for each of my sites targeted to people that are interested in the topic I write about.
Thanks for your reply and your excellent blog.
Qwitter, alas, no longer works. It was a fantastic add-on, though.
I’m quite fond of Power Twitter, which adds a tab that lets you see everyone’s Facebook updates too, and has a search box on every page. When you go to someone’s profile, the search offers the option to JUST search that person’s posts, or search all of Twitter. It also finds @you comments that may have the @ buried within the tweet, and displays Twitpics and videos in your Twitter stream. As well, it shows a summary of any link (eg Link To Giant Squid Uprising on Raincoaster.com) and if you mouse over someone’s avatar, it shows their latest tweets. Sweet little Firefox add-on (and no, they’re not paying me, although they should).
@raincoaster – Thanks for the info. Didn’t know that the Qwitter quit. Will check out PowerTwitter.
I love Twitter – a recent convert a few months ago. Can’t tweet enough. Great article!
Great post… I think the key is to also know your audience and what their expectations of your brand and your tweets is!
So glad @TXWriter tweeted this post. It has great information!
I’ve only been tweeting for a short time and am already reaping benefits.
*smiles*
Michele
Very interessting, with lots of helpful details. I managed to connect Twitter and Facebook, but now I have the problem that the type of status messages I would need for the two are completely different. Maybe I should unlink them again?
Good tips Marko… There are people who can’t see the potential of this great service!
Very nice post
Is just looking into marketing my blog on Twitter, and I think the advise in this post is very useful.
Very important to find the right balance in the Tweets, and not oversell the blog.
Very helpful series of articles for Twitter newbies like me who want to promote and brand their blog using it! Thanks, Marko
.
I feel like a Twitter virgin no more. Thanks for the great post.
follow me on twitter
ima twitter virgin helpppppp lol