The Traffic Generation Kick-off: Twitter Traffic
Welcome to the fourth installment of the Traffic Generation Kick-off.
Obviously by reading the title, you can probably figure out this post is going to concern Twitter.
The first time I heard of Twitter, my response was: “What in the world is a Twitter?”
I’m sure many of you had the same response. To this day, I wonder how micro-blogging (I guess that’s the fancy term they give to status updates) became so damn popular. Twitter is absolutely huge, and I’m sure most have heard of it (and if you haven’t, crawl out of that cave!)
So… How Can Twitter Bring Some Free Traffic?
There is so much to learn about Twitter, but this post is going to be a quick crash course.
Let’s take a step back here and try to figure out why Twitter is so powerful. Like all social media, the community makes up the strongest aspect. Anytime people gather looking for information, it can be a marketing playground. You just have to find the crowd.
Twitter is the same way. Your goal should be to network and communicate with people interested in your niche. Assuming you already have an account, the best way to do this is to follow them first.
I see so many people out there who only follow the people they are interested in and then wonder why no one follows them back. Obviously Twitter was meant for this reason, but then again, we aren’t using Twitter just to communicate with people we are interested in.
By following other Tweeters first and communicating with these people via retweets and mentions (@replys), your follower count should increase rather quickly. A lot of people (around 20-30%) will follow you back just for following them.
The best way to find people within in your niche is to use the Twitter search with specific niche keywords. As you go through the search results, you can easily enter into other people’s conversations who are talking about your niche.
Your number one goal should be to get more followers as quickly as possible, but without going against Twitter’s terms. Please do not follow 2,000 people in a single day, then come back here complaining that your account got banned! From personal experience, I’ve found that following around 100 a day when you’re just getting started is perfectly fine. When your account grows larger past the 2,000 mark, you can follow up to 250 a day.
By just jumping on Twitter every day for a half hour or so, you could easily have a Twitter of 2,000 within a month.
Also, if your account is relatively new, I wouldn’t go tweeting all your links just yet because people will just see you a spammer.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Later on I will write about more specific functions of Twitter, but for right now, this is enough for you to get started using Twitter!
Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think! Also, leave your twitter profile for some exposure!
Make sure that you already have checked out the three previous posts.
Tomorrow I’m going to write a post on my favorite traffic generation strategy. Stay tuned!
Hey There
What do you think is best, following small or big accounts in tweeter ?
Thanks for sharing,
J.
Have a mixture of both. I would stick to accounts that seem like they are following quite a few people. Remember, your goal here is to get them to follow you back. Many big accounts do not follow back a lot of people.
Hmm, I tend to follow people on Twitter that I find most interesting, but didn’t pay attention to the other half of the equation – people in my niche who may find me interesting! Thanks for the post.
@kellylenihan
First, above on this page in the “three previous posts” links you have two of them the same.
Now about Twitter. I do believe that if you are expert in your area if interest/knowledge then a number of followers should be higher then you are following. Also, from marketing perspective the more followers the better.
I can say that twitting is working technics to get initial traffic surge but you can have it for a one-time only. Keeping posting the same link/s to generate more traffic will looks like spamming to your followers and also will drastically reduce your expert status as well.
The only question is – How to get them without compromising your expert status and without using “mass production” spamming technics to avoid a ban from Twitter? It could be interesting to hear your opinion ion that matter.
Thanks for letting me know about the links… I’ve fixed them.
To address your question:
Most people who are using twitter are not experts or celebrities. If you are using twitter for traffic generation tactics, then you’re going to want as many followers as possible.
Remember, you’re just trying to get your content out in front of your niche.
If you are worried about your authority or expert status, then I highly recommend you create two separate accounts. One for traffic generation, one for personal use.
When it comes time to post your links, what I have found has worked the best is to tweet in blocks of 3-5 a couple of times a day. Your messages will stick out more.
Additionally, I am not telling anyone to spam twitter. Be sure to follow all their terms of use. I only make 15-20 tweets per day.
Twitter is good and bad for IM in so many ways. Today I see too many bots out there that don’t follow you back and give you the twitter benefit when they post from a feed and never actually visit the site. The good can be though that you find these peoples sites and end up contacting them via email, phone, etc…
Adam,
I agree with you about the quantity of followers and two or more accounts. Focusing on niches is fine but you should have an account where you are looking for as many followers as you can get a day within the limits of Twitter. You cannot count on Twitter users filling out a bio with all their interests so you go wide and get as many followers as possible. Just because someone is an Internet Marketer and has 25,000 followers, it doesn’t mean that everyone of those followers are Internet Marketers. I just means he has a lot of followers. Marketing to 25,000 followers will probably achieve as good if not better results than marketing to a narrow niche with only 500 followers.
Like this site !
Started my IM career 3 months ago. Made lots of mistakes but have 20 odd niche blogs setup todate. I added a nice big request to tweet my blog (added it to all my blogs) today in the hope that if someone likes the blog they will tweet it to their followers. Has to
be worth a go !
Si
Hey Simon,
Thanks for the comment…
You will be extremely surprised how many results you will from just asking others for a favor!
Be sure to come back and post some of your results!
I totally agree with your post Adam, and I think we should have as many followers as possible. As we don’t really expect a lot of them to constantly read the tweets, as well as we don’t read all the tweets we receive. I don’t have numbers but I am pretty sure the percentage of reading is very low. So I think it’s necessary to repeat the tweets along the day. ” within twitter’s rules” of course.