Yesterday we talked about the basics of adding value, providing content, getting followers and being a valuable part of the Twitter community. Today I am going to talk about some of the things that I am doing to grow my reach using Twitter. These are the things that grew my business the most when I was starting out and that I still use to grow my reach today.
Over the past few months I have come across some tools that have really helped me use Twitter as a major traffic machine. You can buy a lot of fancy books and programs about driving traffic on Twitter I may even recommend one or two at the end of this series but right now, nothing really jumps out at me as the end all be all of Twitter marketing. Once you have the basics down pat the rest will develop. And if you keep current with your favorites in the industry you’ll catch little tips here and there along the way and will eventually have a Twitter traffic machine too!
So where were we??? That’s right, the tools that I use to automate Twitter. I first began with Tweetlater. Tweetlater offers a great free service. It is where I learned all about scheduling Tweets, using link shorteners, using RSS feeds to automatically post to my account and using a few other Twitter automation tools.
The one feature that I have not used is multiple accounts on Twitter. I am leaning towards the concept though in order to capitalize on some of my more prominent niche sites. But for now, understanding how to maximize social media has been my goal, but I am really close to expanding my reach by creating new, niche specific Twitter accounts to help compliment my niche websites.
So let’s step back to the topic of RSS feeds. I was reading through my Google Alerts on a daily basis and I would often re-post links to great articles or blog posts through my Twitter account. Using my personal selections, I began to narrow down what tweets got the best responses from people and I got more specific with my Google Alert keyword/phrase settings. If you are not using Google Alerts, check it out and read a bit about their RSS feed capabilities. We’ll cover how I setup and use my RSS feeds in one of the next few posts here.
Believe it or not, my top Tweets are a mix of my own content and some of the direct RSS feed content that I have been posting. At first I thought that using RSS feeds were a pretty lame way to use Twitter. Then I realized that I could narrow my feeds down to what had proven to be more popular content from the hand chosen stories that I was tweeting about. So I tried it. Next thing I knew people were re-tweeting more of my tweets, some of the content was getting excellent click thru’s and people began DM’ing me about the content. I decided that there has to be some value here and some RSS feeds were worth using as a way to contribute to the Twitter community.
I am just like everyone else, getting six or seven tweets in six or seven consecutive minutes annoys me too. It was when I realized that Tweetlater was sending some of my feeds by the dozen in a dozen minutes that I decided my RSS feeds had to be put on hold until finding a more acceptable and less “spammy” way of using a tool that I felt provided valuable content to my followers. That’s when I stumbled across my favorite Twitter tool (and no it’s not Tweetdeck) and began using it and still use it today. But I don’t want this post to go on too long so we will pickup here tomorrow and I will reveal my favorite twitter tool!
Part 4: Twitter for Business: Finding the Right Tool to Automate Your Twitter Effort
Filed under: Twitter
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