How to Promote Your Blog on Twitter

Here we are at lesson #11 in our profitable blogging course.

While Pinterest may be the king of social media blog promotion Twitter can still be a very powerful tool when you use it right.

The reality is that most people use Twitter entirely wrongly, and therefore get minimal results.

However it is possible when you follow the right system.

Here there are two distinct systems you need to set in place…

1) Networking

The real magic of Twitter comes in the form of “networking”.

It’s an awesome tool to connect with other bloggers and people interested in the subject of your blog. Networking in this manner helps to get your blog discovered by new readers, and to build relationships which you can leverage at a later date in the form of guest posting etc.

2) Repeated Tweeting

Each tweet you post has a very minimal lifetime. Unless your followers are online the moment you post your tweet they probably won’t see it.

This is important because success with Twitter is all about volume.

To garner as much attention as possible you want to be sharing new content throughout the day. This means curating other people’s content on a regular basis.

Just as importantly, however, it means that you’ll want to share each of your blog posts on multiple occasions to ensure the maximum number of people possible actually see it. By sharing the same article some hours or days apart you’ll find new people see your content, and so you get more traffic.

Now we’ve covered both of these elements, the next question is how do we apply this to promoting your blog?

Here’s the system that I use which results in significant results…

1) Gather A List of Blogs in Your Niche

First and foremost if you’re going to tweet multiple times every day you’re going to need a regular supply of things to tweet.

To start off with gather a list of other high quality blogs in your niche. This is easy enough to do with some simple Google searches. Alternatively use a blog directory like AllTop.com to find a load. Check to make sure you’re happy with their quality; the last thing you want to be doing is sharing junk.

Once you’re happy with them, follow each blogger on Twitter and then add their blog to your feed reader of choice. Personally I use Feedly and believe its the best out there.

In this way, as soon as your target list of bloggers publishes anything it will appear in your inbox.

This means you’ll have a constant supply of new content to share on Twitter.

2) Use a Tool to Tweet Consistently

For most of us, especially those with a full-time job, sharing content throughout the day on Twitter simply isn’t practical.

Fortunately there are a number of tools which will allow you to queue up tweets days or even weeks in advance. Once you’ve filled your queue the tweets will go out automatically no matter what you’re personally doing at the time.

While there is a growing list of options available I personally recommend Hootsuite. It makes it so easy to build up a list of tweets. Just a few minutes spent each week with Hootsuite and Feedly will allow you to build up dozens of tweets that will be shared over the following week.

Remember that every tweet is an opportunity to increase your brand awareness and to increase your follower numbers.

3) Tag Other Twitter Users as You Share

When it comes to networking with other bloggers one of the very best things that you can do is to “tag” other bloggers when you share their stuff.

Why?

The answer is that when you do they’ll receive a notification in Twitter. If you regularly share their stuff then your own name will become familiar. When you approach them about guest posting opportunities etc. in the future it’ll be a lot easier.

Additionally, many bloggers will tweet a “thank you” when you share their stuff. This immediately allows you to open up the channels of communication and get to know them better.

These connections you make on Twitter can be worth their weight in gold over the lifetime of your business.

4) Queue up Your Own Content Repeatedly

So you’re tweeting regularly, sharing content from other awesome bloggers and tagging them when appropriate.

In doing so you’re increasing your followers and building a network of fellow bloggers.

But we also want to drive as many visitors as possible back to your own site.

To do this we want to queue up your own content to publish on multiple occasions.

The best tool for this is Hootsuite.

5) Follow Others

One of the very best ways to grow your Twitter following rapidly is to follow like-minded individuals. When you follow other people they will be alerted to the fact, and a proportion of them will follow you back.

Over time you can experience significant growth. It is this strategy that has led to me building just over 15,000 followers across my two main Twitter accounts so there’s no denying it works!

Of course, as with the other parts of promoting your blog on Twitter, doing this manually can be a real pain. Therefore for the most rapid results I suggest you consider automating the process of following and unfollowing other people on Twitter. Personally I’ve tested out quite a large number of such tools, and have found that the very best is Narrow.

Simply sign up for an account, connect your Twitter profile, and then select a handful of relevant keywords.

Narrow then automates the whole process of finding and following relevant people, letting your account grow on autopilot over time. The more followers that you have, the more people will be exposed to your tweets, and the bigger an impact your Twitter strategy will have on your traffic.

Your mission today is therefore to sign up for Twitter and consider investing in Hootsuite or one of the other scheduling tools.

Find and subscribe to a load of blogs and start getting into the habit of regularly queueing up content from your own blog and others to continually drive new followers and additional traffic to your site.

See you next time where we start to talk about building links to your blog…