Using Twitter to Promote your Blog

So you’ve planned out your blog, checked a few blogging lessons and you’ve got a hankering to get it out into the world.

Great! So how do you promote your blog?

Meet your new best friend, Twitter.

Look, Facebook is OK but if you want more than your mates reading your stuff, Twitter should be your main social media.

Twitter allows you to reach:

• Your followers,
• Interested people through specific topic headings via tags,
• The followers of your followers,
• People curious about trending topics,
• Participants in Twitter conversations.

And that’s just for starters.

Here’s how you can promote your blog via Twitter:

Hash Tags

Work out some tags that are relevant to your blog posts. For me I use things commonly like #collcons (the official collaborative consumption tag), #freelance, #copywriting and so on.

Make it a mix of the popular tags used in your industry together with things you commonly use in SEO. The easiest way to research what is popular is have a look at other Twitters that deal with like minded topics.

Check what is trending on Twitter itself as well as official tags at events so you can participate in current topics and pick up followers and drop relevant content you’ve written into the conversation.

Joining in with the official tag for an event is usually good for a few followers too.

Shortened Links

Use a link shortener link bit.ly to make sure your links are short and tidy, and so you can track what people click on.

Crack open excel or similar and collect your links next to the blog name so you don’t have to keep repeating the process. You can also create a ‘leader board’ so you can spot which blogs are the most popular with your readers.

Get all aboard!

Pre-load your tweets into a programme like Hootsuite or similar so you can easily manage the content.

I plan each month and it takes me half a day. My process is:

• Use the short links and promote the articles I have written 4 times (once each week) at different times each time
• I write a different line to go with the same article so I can test what call to action works best and also to keep it fresh
• Include appropriate tags

I mix it up with content I like from other people’s blogs and articles. I don’t want my Twitter to read like the “all about me” show.

I am very fond of my clients so I throw in their news, happenings and achievements too. And I do like sharing stuff that I think friends in real life and followers I regularly interact with might enjoy via their Twitter handle.

Is it worth the journey?

Me personally, I think yes. A couple of benchmarks tell me that it is:

• My website traffic has increased a lot since I started tweeting my posts
• I’ve made some great goodwill with people by sharing their stuff
• It’s improved my ability to network online and I can touch base with people I would not get a look in with otherwise
• My Facebook likes and RTs continually grow from that Twitter sharing, meaning my audience is
• I am yet to directly gain a client from Twitter, but I have definitely improved recognition of my brand and name
• It’s a great ice breaker when you get to the networking part of the event if you’ve been Tweeting before hand
• The research I have done has used Twitter as a mainstay recruitment tool- and last count that meant 1000 people had responded to research via Twitter requests and survey links
• I really enjoy it. Twitter is a teeny tiny conversation with lots of different people. Sure, there are some whack jobs out there but that really isn’t any different to being on the bus really!

Feel free to follow me on Twitter and see how I do it. My handle is @noshamecreative. What’s yours?