Welcome to my Twitter Guide for Websites! If you are new to Twitter, check out my How to Use Twitter post for the basics!
If you are comfortable on Twitter, interacting with your followers, sharing great content but you want more out of it, you have come to the right place! I love Twitter – it’s my favourite social network. It’s the best way to connect with fellow bloggers or like-minded people & share information. Twitter drives a lot of my website’s traffic. I have built a Twitter following of over 4,100 followers in less than three months time. Here’s what I do!
How to Increase your Reach on Twitter:
1. Continue to build your following. Every so often, follow a group of people that interest you. Wait a few weeks to give them a chance to follow back. Then check your follower stats with an app like CrowdFire that shows you who does not follow you back. And, who has unfollowed you. Go through and unfollow the non-followers & unfollowers.
* Don’t follow too many people at a time. It doesn’t look good to see an account following thousands with only a few followers. People won’t be inclined to follow back.
* Also, beware of the Twitter 2,000 following limit. When an account has followed 2,000 people, Twitter stops that account from following more until they have a sufficient amount of people following. When the account has around 1,900 followers, it can follow again, but not too many at a time. This is in place to prevent spam. So take your time and follow & unfollow to slowly grow your account.
* Follow people back. Go through your new followers every day and follow back accounts that interest you.
2. Share content that people will enjoy. Don’t just share your own link after link, that gets boring and isn’t an interesting feed. RT other people, share articles you read online, and try to keep things interesting.
3. Tweet Often. When someone checks in on twitter, they will see the most recent tweets. If you haven’t tweeted lately they won’t see anything from you unless they visit your profile page. At the same time, don’t over do it. If you have too many tweets going out at once it can overload your followers newsfeed. Space your tweets out during the day if you can. Also, try to check in so you can RT or reply to people who have tagged you.
4. Adding an image to your tweet increases engagement. I find that I look more closely at tweets with images as they stand out in the newsfeed.
5. Be sure to add a URL to your tweet. For example, if I am advertising a giveaway, I’d include the direct link to that giveaway so people can go straight to the post from Twitter. Same goes for blog posts or whatever product you are advertising. Give a direct link to make it easy for people to jump from Twitter to your website.
6. Work the hashtags. If you are tweeting about a certain topic, then throw in a # or two. It increases your tweets exposure. If you join a linky or Twitter party, be sure to use their # so others can read your tweets. I’ve found that if I add #giveaway to any of my giveaway posts, they get RTed more and give more exposure for my post.
7. Make your site Twitter Friendly.
* Have your Twitter follow button somewhere easy to see. When I visit a new blog, it’s the first thing I look to see if we follow each other on Twitter.
* Be sure your link is working.
* Be sure your Twitter share easy to find. Include your username in the tweet so you get tagged if someone shares your post. Then you can RT it & thank the person for sharing.
Twitter Tricks:
1. Don’t get lost in the conversation. When a group of people get tweeting, it can get confusing. Questions might come into your mind like – What are they talking about? Or, Who are they replying to?
a. Are you talking to me?? – When you hit reply to a tweet, the author of the tweet you are replying to, is listed first in your tweet. So, if you see a tweet with your name listed first, the tweeter is talking to you! For example, in this tweet, @Domesticmomster is speaking to @Laura_BabyKicks.
b. I am totally lost – what are they talking about? This easily happens when a big group gets talking and replying to each other. On the laptop simply touch view conversation on the bottom right of the tweet. It will open up the string of conversation so you can read and figure out what’s being talked about.
On a phone, touch the tweet so it opens on its own screen. Then push the tweet towards the bottom of your phone and the prior tweets from the conversation are revealed above. For example, if I wasn’t sure what Trista was saying thank you for, I would touch the above tweet then scroll down to reveal this:
So, Trista sent a link to the group, @Laura_BabyKicks joined her group via the link and Trista thanked her! Never be lost in a Twitter Convo again! 🙂
2. View a Tweets Activity. You can see a particular tweet’s reached and how many engagements it has received. I just learned this trick from Rod @moderndadpages. At the bottom of some tweets, there are 3 bars, as you can see below.
If you touch/click on the three bars, it reveals the tweets analytics. This is the activity for the above tweet. If I had a URL included, Twitter would tell me how many clicks went through to my website.
3. Twitter Analytics. You can get more Twitter analytics on a desktop. Click your profile picture then select Analytics – it’s so simple and there’s lots of information to be found there.
4. Limit which followers see your tweets. If you begin a tweet with a username (ie: @CuddleFairy) then only people who follow both you and me will see the tweet in their timeline. Sometimes this comes in handy. For example, if you were having a lengthy conversation with me & you don’t want to clog everyone else’s feed that don’t follow us both. However, if you are sending #FF tweets, or other tweets that you want all of your followers to see, then start the tweet with #FF or another word, not a username.
5. Create Lists. As your following grows, it gets more challenging to keep track of who’s who. Lists are a handy way of grouping people together. You have the option for your lists to be public or private.
Above all, enjoy the conversation on Twitter! Hop in & get involved: RT, reply, favourite and share. If you have any tips to add, please leave them in the comments! I’m always interested in a new Twitter trick.
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