Does Twitter play a major role in your social media marketing plan for your blog? Many bloggers are reluctant to tackle Twitter because of the limitation of having only 140 characters to get a message out. Others just don’t know how to use Twitter to maximize their marketing efforts.
How To Use TwitterTwitter has several advantages over Facebook when it comes to social media marketing for your blog. Twitter does not choose which updates your followers get to see in their Twitter feed. All of your tweets show up! This is not the case with a Facebook page where a reach of 2% or less per post is common.
With Twitter, you can also directly contact people and businesses whether they follow you or not. With a Facebook page, you cannot directly contact your target market without doing paid advertising.
These are big reasons why you should be using Twitter as a part of your social media marketing strategy. Once you have gotten past some basics of how to use Twitter, you are ready to maximize your exposure on Twitter.
"6 Ways to use Twitter to get More Exposure for Your Blog"
Share your most recent posts
- Obviously, you would want to share your own content every time you post something new on your blog. You can do this manually or you can use a WordPress plugin to automatically share your blog posts for you.
- Jet Pack by WordPress.com is a plugin that has many useful features built-in. One of those features is Publicize which allows you to automatically share a new blog post on Twitter (and other social media platforms you choose to connect) instantly when your WordPress blog post is published. You can even add your own text to include with your tweet, in addition to the post title and link.
Continue to share your older content
- You cannot expect people to just stumble across your older posts. You need to also put your older content in front of your followers since they may not have seen a particular post when you originally published it. This is also a great way to expose new followers to your content. Again, you could share your old content manually or you could use a plugin to automatically share your content for you.
- Tweet Old Post is a plugin that allows you to tweet out your older content automatically. You can choose how often your content is shared and the date range for selecting content. For example, I have mine set up to share any post that is more than 14 days old every 8 hours. Even if I don’t have time to get on Twitter in a given day, I know my content is still being seen.
Connect with your current followers
- How To Use TwitterWhen someone new starts following you on Twitter, that is the perfect opportunity to send that person a direct message thanking them for following you. At the same time, you could also invite them to check out your blog or connect with you on another social media platform.
- To encourage interaction be sure to tweet about things your followers would want to engage with. When you post personal updates and questions, your followers may feel more compelled to interact with your posts. This list from iBloom provides over 50 ideas of things to post to get more engagement. The list was designed for Facebook, but most of the ideas can also be used on Twitter to increase engagement.
- At the same time, you should be engaging with the people and businesses you follow on Twitter. This will encourage them to return the favor and engage with you. Plus their followers may see that you have replied to a particular post and want to learn more about you and follow you themselves.
Share content that your readers would find valuable
- To really contribute to the Twitter community you also need to share content that is not your own, but that your followers would appreciate. This could also result in those people returning the favor by sharing your content with their readers as well. This can be a great way to network with other bloggers.
- The 80/20 rule for social media marketing is a general guideline for how much you should promote your own content compared to other types of posts you may publish. The 80/20 rule suggests only 20% of your posts be directly related to promoting your own blog or business while 80% of your posts are used to share others’ content or create fun, engaging posts.
Find and engage with people in your target market
- The search feature within Twitter allows you to easily find what people are talking about. From the home page, you can see what topics are currently trending. You can also search for your own blog’s own keywords to see what people are saying about those topics. Then use that information to follow and interact with people who could benefit from what you have to offer.
Use lists to organize the people you follow
- When you find yourself following hundreds of people and businesses on Twitter, it can be overwhelming to scroll through your feed and see the never-ending list of tweets.
- You can’t possibly interact with everybody. In order to be more productive with your time on Twitter, you can use lists to choose whose tweets you want to see. Then you can read, comment, and share posts from a specific list rather than from everyone you follow.
- To add a Twitter profile to a list. On the profile, you want to add, click the gear icon that shows up next to the follow/following button.
Select “Add or remove from lists” from the drop-down menu that pops up.
If you don’t already have a list where you want to add this profile, select “create a list” in the pop-up window.
Create a name and description for your list and decide if you want the list to be public or private. (I would recommend making it private if you are creating the list simply to make it easier to engage with a select group.)
Select the list you just created so the profile can be added to that list and close the pop-up window.
To access your list go to your own profile page. From the menu bar under your header image, click “more” and then select “lists.” From here you can select the list you want to view. Now you are only seeing the feed for profiles you want to see.
Is Twitter a major component of your own social media marketing? Do you have any additional tips for marketing on Twitter? Please share your thoughts below.
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