Web Traffic Tips: Twitter

Please stop groaning. Twitter really can be your friend, and it can be a great way to drive traffic! I love twitter. I love that it drives very qualified visitors to my website. I love that it gives me a break through the day and let’s me get into conversation with adults. I love that it is so easy, and it’s really fun.

So how can you make Twitter work for you?

Before we get started, Twitter is not going to be the best traffic strategy for micro niche sites ~ it also probably won’t be perfect if you’re doing a ton of different product lenses (although there are ways you could do this too).

Twitter works best when you have a niche, or topic that you will be working on long term.

How does twitter work?

Twitter is not about just blasting your message out there. Twitter is about building relationships. It’s about helping people, answering questions, creating mutual benefit.

If you don’t have an  account yet here’s a great post that will show you how to set up a twitter account. Once you get your twitter account set up here’s a few tips that will help you get traffic to your site using it.

1. Create your profile ~ pitch free. Your purpose is to create a relationship, not be a smarmy salesperson.

2. Add your link to your site in your profile. One link is more than enough. When people want to get to know you better they’ll click through.

3. Upload a real picture ~ people will trust that you are  a human being and not a smarmy salesperson or robot if you have a real picture of yourself. It’s also much easier to form relationships with people when you can see their face.

4. Send non promotional messages to start. Before you send out even one message promoting your website send out 10 to 15 tweets about your topic, answering questions, getting involved in the conversation.

5. Add people to your account who are interested in the same things as you! You can use the search function, put in your keywords and then follow people that come back for that search. You can also find someone in your niche who has a lot of followers and then follow those people. When I do this I look for a couple things before I follow someone ~ a real image, not just the default, a recent tweet ~ no sense adding people if they aren’t using twitter, you can see their last tweet ~ if it’s a marketing message of any sort I don’t follow them. I know terrible but true.

Another easy way to find people interested in the same topics as yourself is Twellow. Sign up for an account ~ easy as filling in your twitter account details and confirming an email. Then you can browse through the categories of people by interest. You can add people directly from the list. Gives you a bio and a follower number. Quick and Easy way to add people for your 10 minutes a day. (Don’t forget to add yourself to 10 categories that are related to you/your site so people can find you as well!

Here are some great tips you can read if you want to learn more about getting started at Twitter.

6. Look for people you find interesting and then reply to their tweets. This is a great way to get someone’s attention and begin a conversation and a relationship. To reply to someone you simply use @theirusername . When you reply by using the @ it will send the tweet to the reply area of that person’s account. I know for one I closely monitor my replies so I can get back to people quickly.

7. Make sure you’re sending out tweets that others will find interesting and helpful. @JeffHerring teaches tweeting about LIFE. Life of course being an acronym ~ Links Information Fun and Events. You can read more about his philosophy of tweeting life here.

8. Be consistent. I didn’t say spend your whole day tweeting, but the more consistently people see you on twitter, the more consistently you engage with your twitter friends the more you will get out of  it ~ and yes, that means traffic. Once you create solid relationships people will be more likely to retweet your tweets as well as tell other people about you, or recommend you as a source for good information on your topic.

Twitter can be a time suck!

But it doesn’t have to be. Here’s a few tips and tricks to make the most out of twitter without blowing your whole day on it.

1. Get a desktop application. I used seesmic for a long time, but recently switched to tweetdeck. I did this because tweetdeck allows you to pull your twitter lists in, and Seesmic didn’t. That’s the only reason. If you don’t have or know anything about lists then either one will work. Using a desktop application you can put all your accounts in one place and follow everything from one central location. It saves a lot of time and energy.

2. Set up a little schedule or routine for yourself. Now what works for me, may not work for you ~ so here are a couple options to try on.

• 3 times a day for 10 to 15 minutes. You could tweet in the morning, noon and evening for a few minutes.

• Twitter breaks (10 minutes ~ set a timer if you have to). This is what I do. Since my mean boss won’t give me coffee breaks I use twitter for a quick break between tasks. It’s important to watch the time because you can get sucked in and end up spending hours on twitter. That’s no good.

• Any variation of these that works for you ~ just do it daily.

3. Use a little bit of automation. I use socialoomph.com to set up some tweets each morning. This site allows you to schedule tweets so they will come out whenever you want them to. I usually put out tweets about the topic of my blog post that day ~ ask questions, give tips that are related to the topic, and then link back to the post. I also go through my RSS reader and look for interesting posts my followers might like, and post those (making sure to use the @ feature in the tweet to grab the attention of the person who wrote it ~ and they may retweet it getting my name out there too).

Just be careful with this:

This can not be your only form of communication.  This fills in the gaps while you’re working, but you need actual interaction through the day.

Don’t send out promotional tweets, the same tweet, all your own stuff all the time.

4. Set aside 10 minutes a day to follow new and interesting people.

I have yet to find a software program that I’ve felt was worth the money to add followers to my account, and I’ve tried a few. It is about the relationship and I like to glance at people before I follow them. It’s not the fastest way to get more followers, but if you do it consistently your account will grow.

The key to getting more people to follow you is to provide useful information and helpful, fun, friendly tweets. To get your account started though, following people who you would like to follow you is a great way to get started. Usually when you follow someone they will take a look at you, your account **and your website** and if they like what you show them they will follow you back. That’s what you’re looking to do.

There are some people who have programs going that just autofollow people when they follow them, so you will get people following you if you just follow people. Stick with people you would really like to get to know, and follow them.

How do I really get traffic from twitter?

It’s really quite simple.

1. Participate.

2. Provide useful, helpful information (yes that can come from your site, with a link to your information)

3. Find interesting people and follow them.

4. Interact with them. (Oh yeah that’s kind of like #1.)

5. Get to know people, and as people get to know you they will click through to your site. If your content is good they will stick around.

I recently started a new site ~ and before it was even indexed in I was already getting between 25 and 50  pageviews a day from (a brand new) twitter account and blog commenting. It works if you do it consistently and think about your “followers” a little more than you think of yourself and what’s in it for you.