Hopefully you’ve at least heard of Twitter by now and you may already have an account. But have you thought about how you can use Twitter to promote your blog?
First, let’s back up a little just in case you haven’t heard of Twitter. Twitter is one of the many (and I mean MANY) social networking or social media services. Think of it as instant messaging with hundreds of people at once. Better yet, since you can only send messages that are 140 characters or less, its more like texting with hundreds of people. The basic concept of Twitter can be seen in the little box where you enter your text. Twitter asks “What are you doing?”
There are two components of “social media” – the social part and the media part. Unlike standard media (print, radio, TV), Twitter and other social media services involve conversation and interaction with your audience. In this case, your audience consists of the people who are following you because those people will see your updates.
This is where blog promoting comes into play.
By interacting with your fellow Tweeters,you will have opportunities to share links to your blog posts, ask for feedback, and promote other bloggers’ posts. I haven’t met a Tweeter yet who hasn’t appreciated some link love from one of their followers. For example, if I’ve read a great post by one of the other writers here at Profitable Mommy Blogging, I’ll send a “tweet” (Twitter update) that says “Just read a great post about [subject]” followed by the URL to the post. Most folks on Twitter are more than happy to return the favor by tweeting a link to one of your blog posts in return.
When it comes to promoting your own posts, you have two options. You can either include a link to the post in one of your tweets, or you can use a service like Twitterfeed which will automatically post tweets containing your latest blog entry for you. Because you’re limited to 140 characters, you can use Twitter as a summary or even a teaser to attract readers to your blog. More readers = higher traffic = improved monetizing!
This is just scratching the surface of Twitter so in future posts, I’ll share with you some other ways to use Twitter to your advantage, including some Twitter tools to help make tweeting easier, some basic netiquette, and a list of “must-follow” Tweeters.
P.S. If we’re not already following each other, feel free to add me on Twitter and let me know you found me on Profitable Mommy Blogging!
October 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
[...] mentioned Profitable Mommy Blogging in my earlier post and right now I’m working on a series about using Twitter for blogging. One article in the series will be a list of people every blogger should follow. Now keep in mind, [...]