How To Build Your Blog Assets: Twitter – Part I
I don’t have to tell you that Twitter is one of the best communities to be a part of and contribute to. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to drive traffic to a blog as long as you know what you are doing. I have seen plenty of bloggers that link their Twitter account to their blogs and automate the whole process without even trying to formulate a strategy to take advantage of their presence on Twitter. It’s nice to keep your followers in mind when you post a new blog post, but there is more to Twittering than just posting your own content and automating things.
It’s one thing to have a lot of followers on Twitter. It’s another to have a relationship going with your followers. You can’t do that by posting a few tweets here and there without adding too much value. You need to have a real strategy on how you intend to provide value to your Twitter followers and solidify your relationship with them. With that in mind, here are a few things to keep in mind when formulating a Twitter strategy for a blog:
- Content Strategy: the content you provide on Twitter needs to be useful and provide some value to your followers. The content doesn’t need to be yours. You can retweet content that you deem useful. Just make sure you don’t retweet something that is not representative of your brand or doesn’t provide any value to your followers. Remember, your followers are not there to waste time (most of them anyway). But the content you share on Twitter shouldn’t be only yours. You are not the center of the universe, so give credit to others who work hard on their content.
- Networking: don’t hesitate connect to people who matter in your niche. The good thing about Twitter is the fact that you can get connected to the most famous people in the world (or in your niche). Learn from others and when possible work on meeting people offline.
- Relationships: being connected to someone is much different than having a relationship with them. If you find people who you can join hands with to work on new projects, don’t hesitate to pull the trigger. And try to communicate with people who take time to write to you. So many people just ignore their direct messages and mentions. Don’t be one of them.
- Social Media: Twitter is not the only social networking site that matters. So don’t forget to share your other presences on your Twitter account. Whether it’s Facebook or your Friendfeed page, you can always share them on your profile or even tweet about it.
- Competitive Intelligence: competitive intelligence is my favorite topic. People tend to open up a lot of Twitter and other social networking sites, which means you can learn a lot about your competitors and their overall strategy. You can learn their best practices as well. Don’t spend too much time tweeting things that don’t matter in the end. Spend some time listening to see what your competitors are saying and how they interact with their followers.
Twitter is more than just chatting online. It’s about learning, helping others learn, building relationships, and promoting your business. So don’t just sign up for Twitter for the sake of being there. There is nothing “cool” about being just another noise on Twitter. Make sure you are an authority Twitterer that people refer to learn and get something out of. There is nothing better than gaining the trust of your Twitter followers.
- arlenehauben
