How to Use Twitter To Gain Mashable Traffic
Can Twitter actually help me to gain traffic for my
blog or is it a fully waste of my time? First question asked by my friend.
Perhaps
you’ve pondered the same?
When people I respect started singing the praises of Twitter, I decided
to give it a go. At first I just didn’t get it. I was shocked at that when I
got the number of bussiness connectd with twitter. |
| Twitter To Gain Mashable Traffic |
First, Why
Twitter not other ?
I think
that’s a fair starting point. I’ve heard others call Twitter a micro-blogging
platform.
Here’s
what you need to know. According to the State of the Twittersphere report, each day 5 to 10 thousand new
people join Twitter. Current estimates of total users top out around 300 million.
That’s a lot of opportunity.
Twitter
allows you to post updates (called Tweets) as often as you want (and limited to
140 characters). When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets.
When they follow you, they see your tweets.
It’s a
constant stream of communication. The good news is you can turn it on or off as
often as you like. Twitter also keeps a public record of all updates, which can
be mined with Twitter Search.
Why Most of High-Profile
People Use Twitter
Second
think is Why high-profile people use Twitter, it’s worth closer examination.
Here’s what some of those gurus told me:
Tony Hsieh, CEO
of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to
connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to
help build our brand, not drive direct sales. It’d be like asking how does
providing a telephone number for customer service translate into new business when
they are mostly non-sales-related calls. In the long term, Twitter helps drive
repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of
driving immediate sales.”
Bestselling
author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with
hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR
and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.”
Be sure
to check out this BusinessWeek article that
surveyed 18 CEOs and how they’re using Twitter to help their businesses.
How Twitter
Can Help You to gain traffic?
This is
where it gets interesting. A lot of people are doing some very innovate things
with Twitter. Here’s some of their stories.
The
Twitter Plan
Cindy King, an
international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by
implementing a strategic Twitter plan.
“Following
the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at
building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community
builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response
copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.
“Light
bulbs went off, and I spent a weekend putting together a tweet marketing plan
and entered in 6 weeks worth of tweets, 5 a day, using TweetLater. I
used a mindmap, created categories, varied times on tweets and used BUDurls so I could track results and improve my
tweet plan the next time around. That was a month ago,” explained King.
When
King finds a spare minute between projects, she logs into Twitter and watches
what folks are talking about. When she Tweets, about 90 percent of the time she
presents useful information and resources to her followers. The remaining
tweets are surveys and questions. Following this strategy, King saw an 800
percent increase in inquiries about her business after she setup her Twitter
campaign.
Getting
In Front of High Profile People
I
looked at it but couldn’t figure out why people would continually send out
messages about the size of a text message, unless they were a teenager. Twitter
was for sending updates they said. I don’t have time for updates, and besides,
who would care?
Getting
Traffic and Leads
Twitter
has all but replaced our PR agency as a large percentage of our followers are
press and analysts. A writer for ZDNet wrote about us and linked to us based on
something we tweeted and that resulted in a huge spike in web traffic and at
least one deal with a major service provider.
Mike Damphousse of Green Leads said, “Twitter is new to us.
That said, in a few short weeks we’ve had definite increase in all sorts of
traffic. Out of the normal inbound leads, the number has increased 15% and two
of the inbounds are now active pipeline opportunities. We’ve found one
extremely valuable partner relationship. We are also building PR relationships,
although finding the contacts is a bit of a chore.”
Are you
beginning to see the potential here?
A Few Tools
to Help Your Twitter Experience
Twitter
has a whole world of available support applications you can employ to gain the
most of the service for your business. Here’s a few of my favorites:
TwitterFox: This
Firefox web browser plugin allows you to view Tweets within your web browser
(in a popup menu). This is very handy and eliminates the need to constantly go
to Twitter.com.
TweetLater: This
powerful service allows you to schedule tweets (much like you would schedule
emails). Another very powerful feature is the ability to receive email digests
of keyword activity in the Tweetosphere. This allows you to join a conversation
or track topics and trends.
Ping.fm: If you have accounts with many services,
such as LinkedIn and Facebook, this amazing site allows you to post updates
across ALL of your social media sites in one single step.
Twitterfor Facebook: If you are on Facebook, this application forwards your Twitter
updates directly to Facebook as status updates.
Thanks for posting this. Everyone knows they should use twitter but not everyone knows how. I especially like your pointing out the automation tools and to not directly focus on getting a sale but rather to build traffic and branding.
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