Last week, I started reading more on how you can drive traffic to your website using Twitter. Several bloggers that I read use Twitter daily to help find new readers and meet new people. I really didn’t grasp it at first, but I definitely got sucked in to Twitter quickly.
For those who don’t know the Twitter factor, I will drop a few stats on you.
Last week, I started actively using Twitter. Not really to drive traffic to my site, but to find new blogs that I could personally read and start following. Immediately, I noticed a huge traffic spike to the blog. So I decided to look into it a little further.
- Since I started actively using Twitter (last week), I have increased my RSS subscribers by 32. This isn’t an unheard of increase, but I know that most of those new readers should stay around awhile.
- My website views have increased by almost 300 hits a day. Once again, if you are a large blog, that might not seem like much. But for an upstart, that is quite a bit of traffic inflow.
Those are just the raw traffic numbers from the website. What I wasn’t expecting were the tons of compliments via Twitter, users going to my band websites from my About page and complimenting my music, and meeting several people who I have since had nice and meaningful conversations with. I have also found many, many new blogs which I have subscribed to and read daily.
So, how did I do it?
These are the steps I went through in order to build the traffic and increase my followers. There are a few people who look at these types of methods as spamming, but they key to it is to NOT spam, and use your newfound connections properly. I have yet to post a link in a tweet (which is a message) attempting to drive traffic to the website. I may from time to time, but this method works to build a grassroots following similar to how I used to promote my band on MySpace. When I promoted my music on MySpace, I would find a similar artist to my music. I would go through and then attempt to add their friends and message them. The mindset was ‘If they like this artist, there is a better chance they would like my music than if I picked a random person off the street.’ Instead of spamming them, I would message them personally and ask them to check out my music. It worked well, until people took advantage of it and start spamming relentlessly. So far, I have found that not to be the case on Twitter. Here are the steps.
- Make sure you profile has up to date links. I made sure that the blog I wanted people to go to was the first link on the profile. In the biography section of the Twitter profile, I added a link to the websites About page. This way if people wanted to find out about me, it would take them to my blog. (Keep in mind, I do not have advertisements on my site, I am more interested in sending them to the website so they can see what I write about, and if they like the content, will add my site to their RSS reader. However, if you are displaying ads, this is a good way to increase hits and traffic)
- Find someone with a similar business or blog and attempt to add their followers. It seems pretty simple and it works fast. In my example, I immediately cruised over to the profile of Maki from DoshDosh. He has a wonderful social media blog, his writing is top notch, and I like his overall style. I went one by one and added every single follower. You can do it faster than you ever could add a MySpace friend. After I had added all his followers, I went to a few more profiles and added similar followers. My thinking is if someone is following another blog, they quite possibly could be interested in following my blog.
- Download and install an application to help manage Twitter. I personally use Twhirl. It helps me manage replies and messages in a chat like setup. It is great for responding to messages.
- Respond to every single message and tweet. You will get a fair amount of backlash from adding people so fast. The reason is because many assume that you will just be spamming them. Take interest and respond the messages. You will ease their mind and if they like your content and tweets, they may become a reader.
- Don’t spam incessantly. One thing I have noticed, is the people who spam get removed very fast. So if you intend on building long lasting relationships and not just quick traffic spikes, make sure not to spam.
- Give back as well as take. You will have an opportunity to meet a wonderful community and find many new friends and blogs. Make sure you give traffic and subscriptions back. I assure you that you will find something you’ll love.
I hope this continues and I am able to grow more relationships with bloggers!
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