There is a lot of buzz about Twitter in these days. If you haven’t already, this is the right time to join Twitter, as it is set to be the next big social network thing in 2009. Earlier you join and start building your profile and credibility, easier it will be to use the growth of Twitter to increase your blog exposure in 2009.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social network and a new generation of instant messaging. Twitter is all about sending short status updates called “tweets” of 140 characters or less. Twitterers can “follow” each other so people who follow you will see your tweets and you will see tweets of people you follow.
Why is Twitter important for bloggers?
Hubspot has just published interesting State of the Twittersphere report. The report has reveled some very interesting facts about Twitter that most bloggers will be interested to hear:
- Twitter traffic has grown over 600% in the past 12 months
- Twitter became one of the top 1,000 websites by traffic in May 2008
- Twitter is dominated by newer users, 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
- An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened each day
All these facts mean that Twitter is a growing platform where bloggers can increase their blog traffic and exposure by finding, getting in touch and providing value to people interested in their blog content.
How to use Twitter?
Twitter is referred to as a micro-blogging platform. Twitter can be used as a networking tool, it can be used to get in touch with different people, find information and trends, and it can be used for marketing.
You have to sign up, customize your profile and find some people to follow. Hopefully, if you are interesting and you provide value in your tweets, people will follow you back. More people that follow you, more exposure your tweets will get. That way your blog gets more exposure and hopefully visitors and subscribers.
What should I tweet about?
I sometimes send tweets of personal nature, but majority of my tweets are blogging related. The image above in this article shows the words that I have used the most in my tweets until now. You can make your own image at Wordle.
It is important to provide value to your followers in your tweets, so I try to do that by pointing to interesting articles I’ve found online, and build credibility and influence that way. If you already spend time on StumbleUpon, finding and recommending quality information and articles, it will be easy for you to continue this on Twitter. You will just have to take some time to update both your Stumble and your Twitter account for each of the links you want to recommend.
I also make sure to promote my latest blog articles on Twitter as well, but it is important not to be all about promotion as that is seen as spammy, and will make it hard for you to get new followers. Remember that everyone can see your tweet history at any point of time by visiting your Twitter profile.
Hopefully this was an introduction which will get you interested in Twitter.
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!
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I started using Twitter a couple of weeks ago, and it for sure has resulted in extra visits to my blog that helps quite a bit.
I’m not sure how, but 30 people started following me for some reason. In some cases, I follow them back if they look like they have something interesting to offer on their blogs or websites.
The only down side for me right now are some folks who rarely tweet anything of interest, and describe things like how lousy they feel because they have a cold. But it is easy to stop following someone, so all is good.
90% of anything I Tweet about is something that may interest someone out there, and I think that is the best way to go.
Nice. However, I expressed a slightly different take on Twitter here: http://bloglabs.net/blog/15-reasons-twitter-must-die
You hit some very good key points here about Twitter. One thing I would like to mention is 6% of my website traffic comes from twitter and I don’t tweet my posts very much I just contribute and try to add value to the community as you are describing here. So I assume that means alot of people check out my blog either because they are curious or they like my tweets. Also as you mention StumbleUpon and twitter do work well together. I use a plugin called sharaholice that make it very easy to share web content among multiple platforms. This make it very simple for me to tweet a cool website or article when I am stumbling.
Let’s get in touch soon about the guest posting.
Well said. In fact, I learned about YOUR blog post by following you on Twitter.
I’ve been posting quite a bit about Twitter as well in my Blog. I absolutely agree, it’s poised to really take off, and now is the time of the tipping point. It’s no longer a “bleeding edge” technology for the early adopters or Technorati… it’s building up steam very quickly. Those who get in now will have it a lot easier than those who try to catch up a few years (heck, even a few months) later.
@Terry – I agree. I keep my tweets on topic of blogging as much as possible. I find the more people that are following you, the more people find you and start following you without you having to do anything, another reason to join now and create a profile before Twitter becomes really big in couple of months.
@Gerald – Yeah, my Twitter profile is number 3 source of my total traffic at the moment. I plan on doing some analysis when I have some more data.
@jwalker – Interesting take, but hopefully Twitter will stay alive and grow.
@Daiv – I tweeted this post earlier today, I guess that helped you find it. Hopefully Twitter will become mainstream next year so it is good to know that you are growing your profile there before it hits everyone.
Yeh, its definitely an underused source of traffic. Funny, I posted my own little promotional twitter article. http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/everybody-is-on-twitter/
I think that one of the reasons many people don’t use twitter is that it is a bit daunting at first, and quite unlike anything else…
Twitter will not be a big deal in the future.
I’ve been using Twitter for a while now, but mostly just for personal/friends and family type of stuff. I haven’t really gone crazy with searching for and following people, but I may take a more active approach in the near future.
btw, I also found your blog via Twitter
Thanks for the StumbleUpon tip. I just added Twitter to my blog & I definitely wanted to add tweets of value for my readers. Problem is that it’s been a bit hard in my niche, there simply isn’t all that much up yet, so I’ll definitely give Stumble a try, totally new to it.
@Scott – I agree. I am in process of writing an in-depth article on how to analyze your tweets, your followers and how to optimize your tweets to get most exposure and most clicks. Should hopefully be published some point next week.
@Shirley – Yeah, I know what you mean. It does feel like a big and messy chat room, but you get used to it after some time and by including some useful tools. I will have couple of more Twitter articles in the coming days.
@Franklin – I do not know, but I do hope and believe it will hit mainstream at some point next year.
@Chris – Thanks for comment, I will be having some “how to” posts in the next days so stay tuned for that.
@Silver – Thing is if you can’t find anything to tweet about, how would you find something to blog about? look at your tweets as mini blog posts, try to Include some quotes or something to try to teach your Twitter followers on your subject. Good luck on Stumble!
I usually pull my blog material right out of my own head, life experiences & such. I’ve tried Stumble & it’s great, I can find out related posts, read it then tweet about it to share. I’ll try the quotes idea too, thanks!
Great info! Honestly, I started with Twitter and didn’t do anyhing with it (I think I just could not understand the method). I’ll give it another try because I did like the follow-me feature.
Nice tag cloud.
I’m looking forward to your series. 
Krissy
visit my main blog: Sometimes I Think
visit me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/iamkrissy
I am still in the early stages of using Twitter and I have not yet managed to display my Twitter updates on my blog (wordpress.com).
I would be interested to know why you recommend Stumble Upon, as compared to Delicious or Diigo. Or am I comparing apples and oranges?
Hello and pleased to join this site .