Why use Twitter?
The power of Twitter?
A new phenomenon named Twitter is currently sweeping the web and has been a massive hit in every corner of the globe. Twitter is a social networking site where you can post 140-character-long messages to your ‘followers’, but how can that help you as a blogger?
Well, one of Twitter’s greatest uses is turning out to be advertising. You can post links to your followers and therefore get traffic every time someone clicks. Not only is it free, but it’s also an extremely simple and fun way of driving visitors to your website.
So, how can you get traffic from Twitter?
Followers
It goes without saying that the more followers you have, the more people will see your link, and therefore there’s more possibility of getting more traffic. That said, you shouldn’t focus on how many people are following you, but who is following you.
There’s what’s known as ‘quality followers’. These are the people that are actually interested in you, and will usually read your messages and ultimately click the links you post. You can gain this type of follower by networking via the reply system. The other type of follower is a ‘spammy follower’. These will usually only follow people to be followed back (thus increasing their following), and have absolutely no interest in what you’re posting.
You should try your hardest to make sure you connect with the quality followers as these are the people that will actually be of benefit to you.
Retweets
Retweeting is where someone basically reposts what you did, crediting you for the tweet. This is a great way of promoting your link to more people, as the followers of the person who retweeted the message will also see. Therefore, if you have the same number of followers, the amount of people seeing your message will double!
There are several ways to get retweets on Twitter. The first (and most simple) is to make friends, as they’re more likely to help you out and send the message on. The second is to ask for retweets on the message, and the third (and most important) is to have a quality message. If the tweet has great information, people will want to pass it on to their followers.
Authority
Having authority on Twitter is a lethal tool. If people already know you and respect you, they’re much more likely to read your tweets, and will click the links you post purely because they’re interested in what you have to say. Take Barack Obama for example: because people respect him and are interested in what he has to say.
OK, so you’re not going to have Obama’s authority any time soon, but by getting yourself known you can really milk the maximum amount of traffic from Twitter.
Conclusion
Twitter is a great tool that can send loads of traffic your way if you use it correctly. A few of the ways to use it correctly are:
John/jvanwyk.com
Great simple post about twitter it explains how easy it is to drive traffic to your site and make relationships. One thing I still wonder about is what does the “#” mean before a tweet?
John
Posted 7-28-2009
james
Hi John,
I am pleased this makes sense, I try and keep things as easy as poss.
“#” I am not sure I’ll ask David King.
Posted 7-29-2009
Nicolas Prudhon
@James and @ John,
The # tag is used to group related tweets together and make them easily identifiable.
It doesn’t need to be before the tweet specifically.
Posted 7-29-2009
kamal|wedding venues
Very great and simple post about Twitter. I wanna say thanks for this. Very informative and useful.
Posted 8-1-2009
Odzyskiwanie Danych
Twitter is a great tool to increase traffic on website by all those followers, twitters etc. But it is also a big lie because the site is supposed to be a social networking site and it is a web marketing site. I understand the idea – its brilliant, but there is a difference between naming something properly or not properly. This site is not like facebook or something else but I see it only as a tool. Great tool, but only a tool. What do you think?
Posted 8-14-2009
Tips and Tricks
nice job thanks for information
Posted 8-17-2009