Twitter is an exceptional social media platform. While Facebook is a lot more flexible and has a much bigger reach, Twitter's nothing to sneeze at. It's a way to express your business in 140 characters or less. It's a way to spread the word about what you have to offer, to develop a following, to network with other marketers, and more.
Twitter is also becoming savvier when it comes to different types of content. For instance, now you can have video or an image in your update, which can gain more notice and be even more effective.
Twitter was really the first place where the #hashtag phenomenon took off. It started as a way to express yourself in a shorter space, but now it's a way to connect topics and people with the same interests.
You'll do very well to join Twitter and get a feel for how it works. Follow people of authority in your niche. Follow anyone you find who's interested in your niche-- Twitter has a great search engine that can help you with this.
Remember-- Twitter moves very quickly. Right now you're a Twitter observer, but soon you'll be an active user. You'll be tweeting, re-tweeting, and having people do the same for you. You'll be getting tons of followers, who will then be interested in you, your brand, and what you have to offer.
Using Twitter for Traffic
There are so many different ways to use Twitter to grow your following and get more traffic. You'll mainly focus on growing your brand and getting authority recognition at first. You won't get anywhere with Twitter if all you do is share links to your offers all the time. Twitter is all about engagement-- in a very short space.
Twitter moves fast-- even faster than other social media sites. Unless people search by hashtag, topic, or specifically look at your Twitter page, your message soon gets lost. That's why it can be a good idea to post throughout the day or schedule posts throughout the day.
It also moves fast in that people on Twitter expect to find out the latest information. It used to be that you'd have to wait to find out breaking news until a big news outlet like CNN picked it up. These days, people find things out the moment they happen because people share it on Twitter. You can learn things hours or days before media outlets pick them up.
While you're not necessarily reporting breaking news or live-tweeting events as they happen, it is important to pay attention to trends and what's happening NOW when you tweet. Tweet the latest on your industry, niche, or topic. Talk about what you're working on and what's going on in your life.
You want to capture people's attention on Twitter. You also want to network with others-- especially those with authority in your niche. This means not just tweeting everyone to death-- it means reading your Twitter feed, re-tweeting, and messaging people when appropriate. It means interacting. This will make even more sense when we talk about leveraging the traffic of others in a later section.
As you tweet interesting, helpful, and fun things, you'll grow relationships. You'll tweet about what's important to you and what's important to others. You'll talk about what you're working on and get people interested in what you have to share OFF of Twitter as well.
Your Plan for Dominating Twitter
One of your major goals with Twitter is probably to get other people to link to your blog and offers and to re-tweet you when you do the same. That's why you need to focus on relationships. You share the information and links of those you really like and share a lot of value. If you share a lot of value and really care about your followers, they'll do the same for you.
Your everyday interactions are a big part of this. Do you regularly share others' posts and re-tweet links you think are interesting? Do you go out of your way to help others and are generally friendly in your online interactions? If so, then you're naturally going to have some of your followers be willing to re-tweet you and share your links.
This is also a reason why you should focus on building your relationship with your affiliates. If they are promoting your product, they have a vested interest in sharing your links as well. Having an army of affiliates is a great thing that can help grow your influence on social media. They will tweet about you and interact with you.
If you focus on quality, being helpful, and building relationships, the traffic will follow. Ideally, you'll focus on quality traffic over a quantity of traffic. This strategy will help you get there.
If you want to dominate Twitter, then it makes sense to follow the best practices of the most successful social media users in your niche. Study what they do and emulate what they do-- with your own twist.
Pay attention to things like hashtags (especially ones that grow to be really popular) and join and run tweet chats—which are organized tweets about similar topics. Re-tweet and share others' content that you find interesting. Follow people you naturally find interesting and who might be interested in what you have to say as well.
There has to be a give and take there. Don’t just tweet your promotions out over and over again. Instead, really interact and engage—I can’t say that often enough.
Remember that content moves quickly on Twitter. Don't get wrapped up in spending all day here, but do make it a habit to read your feed, respond to re-tweets and messages, and tweet a few times a day (you can schedule this ahead of time using something like Hootsuite). Follow these suggestions and you can have a lot of success getting traffic on Twitter.
I will say that some don’t find Twitter to be as effective as Facebook for their purposes, but it really depends on what your niche is and who your audience is. When used the right way, Twitter can definitely pay off.
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