You’ll succeed with Twitter by following this information for your social media strategy
Twitter is comprised of people who love to share information. If you can properly inform and engage this audience you’ll be mastering word-of-mouth promotion and increasing traffic to your website.
For us, Twitter is our third largest source of website traffic, behind organic Google searches and direct website traffic.
Tips from an expert
Mequoda’s own Amanda MacArthur will be hosting the upcoming Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar on March 16th. For all you Twitter users, plus those still considering it and wondering why it’s important, she has some very useful information on how to make Twitter one of your top 10 traffic sources.
According to Amanda, if you want Twitter to be one of your top ten traffic sources, all you have to do is use Twitter, and use it effectively.
“Build your audience and followers on Twitter with relevant news and helpful anecdotes and it’ll easily be your single largest source of traffic next to search engines. Create content, push content, and the traffic will come.”
Start using the platform often and it’s ability to generate traffic will happen.
Another Twitter tip
Amanda outlined ways of generating followers and thus, generating traffic. “In order to get people to follow you, you need to follow other people. Try going to Search.Twitter.com and looking up keywords relating to your business. Find people that are asking questions that you can answer, or saying something you can comment on.”
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Follow these people and respond to them because about 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. Later on if you feel like un-following people that aren’t following you back, you can use a tool like Refollow.com to do so.
Amanda stressed the need to be proactive. She stated, “The point behind Twitter is that you can’t wait for people to come to you. You need to find people to follow and talk to them so that they’ll follow you back.”
Promote for your Twitter account and other social networks
Use your articles, email newsletters, and website space to build a base of followers that already like you.
The more people that follow you, the more people will click your links, and the more traffic will come from these sources.
For people who don’t read email or RSS feeds, Twitter is the best way to reach them without being interruptive.
What you should do as a Twitter user in order to increase traffic
To fully take advantage of the communication lines Twitter has created, one must pay attention to the balance in tweets. Marketing through social media has to be carefully done since many users aren’t looking for advertisements. As Amanda mentioned, begin following others and commenting on their tweets. As your list of followers grows, you can then focus more on the content you are tweeting.
How are you using Twitter?
As an admirer of the medium, I’d love to hear your strategies behind using Twitter. Post your response on our blog. The most creative response will get highlighted in a tweet to our followers.
Finally, while we’re on the topic, if you’re interested in learning valuable secrets that smart publishers are using to attract, engage and retain followers on Twitter, join us on March 16th for our Twitter for Publishers 2010 webinar.
