Get More Blog Traffic Blueprint [Week 9]

We’ve come to Week 9 of the Get More Blog Traffic Blueprint.  In this series we cover specific strategies to market and promote your blog.

In the last few weeks, we’ve gone over what I call the Blog Lead Generation Diagram.  Specifically I discussed the importance of directing traffic to two specific locations – Your blog and a lead magnet page.  For now, we’re going to put aside our discussion of a lead magnet and spend the next few weeks discussing traffic that you send directly to your blog.

Today we’ll discuss Twitter.

Okay…deep breath.

I know there has been a LOT written about Twitter.  Talking about it is like beating the proverbial dead horse.  With that said, Twitter is still an excellent source of traffic – Especially if you do it correctly.

I have a pretty simple system with Twitter.  If you read my post about how I get 300 visitors a day from this site, then you might be familiar with some of this material.  Yes, I’m recycling one of my posts. However, I’ve also added a bunch of extra material that wasn’t discussed in the original post.

First off, let’s start with the right way to promote your blog using Twitter:

How to Market Your Blog with Twitter

My Twitter Philosophy

I’m not particularly aggressive with my Twitter marketing.  I don’t believe in promoting affiliate links or sending traffic to a landing page.  Instead I use this social site to show my personality and provide links to interesting, re-tweetable content.

As with a blog, Twitter is about being helpful and interesting to the people who follow you.  The more value you provide upfront, the better you’ll do.

Always keep the following in mind before Tweeting anything: “What value am I providing to my followers.”

Follow this philosophy and you’ll generate a lot of traffic from Twitter.

Using Twitter for “Content Marketing”

In my opinion, a great use for Twitter is content marketing.  Right now, you probably have articles/videos on a number of different sites.  A great way to promote your pillar content is to Tweet about it.

As an example if you look at the Blog Lead Generation Diagram, you’d see I have plans to use Twitter to direct traffic to three places: My blog, Facebook and YouTube.

What you want to do is create UNIQUE content on all three of these destinations.  Then whenever you have something new, you’ll Tweet about it.  My advice with Twitter is to let people know about all the great stuff that you’re creating on a regular basis.

Okay, this might seem a little confusing.  In future posts, I’ll discuss specific techniques for Facebook and YouTube.  After that, you’ll see how all this fits together.

For now, I’ll give a quick break-down of my daily Tweet activities.  (Some of these I’m currently fine-tuning, so this is still a work in progress)…

What to Actually Tweet

#1- Content from other blogs:  It’s important to NOT be perceived as a shameless self-promoter.  So the first activity you should do is Tweet articles that provide value to your audience.  The number of posts really varies, but usually I’ll Tweet at least five articles a day.

Make sure to use the @Twitter ID for the owner of the site.  This is a nice way to build a relationship since this person knows you’re posting their stuff.  If you do this enough, it’s only natural they’ll want to return the favor.

#2- Updates: Whenever the mood strikes me, I’ll post updates about what’s going on in my life.  If you have an iPhone or similar device, connect it to your Twitter account.  Then whenever a Tweet comes to mind, send a quick text message.  Doing this on a regular basis was a great way to let people know what was going on in my life.

#3- Questions: You can build connections with people by asking basic questions.  Like “What are your plans for the weekend?” or “What’s bothering you today?” Get in the habit of Tweeting a random question every other day.  You’d be surprised at how many replies you’ll get back!

Finally I respond to a few tweets I see from the people I follow.  The problem is when you have 15,000 followers it’s pretty hard to follow what everyone is doing.

#4- @Responses: Respond to every @ that comes your way.  This is a great way to build a sense of community with people on Twitter.  Personally, I don’t believe in checking personal messages (see below), but I try to answer each and every @ message I get.

#5- #Tags: A great way to build followers is to jump into conversations using the #tag.  Do a search on Twitter and find conversations currently going on for a particular keyphrase.  Then jump in and give your own perspective.  Of course remember to add the @ sign to attract people talking about this topic.

#6- Inspirational Stuff: In my opinion, this technique is one of those proverbial dead horses.  But you can build relationships with followers by Tweeting quotes or a powerful song lyric.  I say do this once or twice a week.  This should be used as a spice, not a main course.

#7- Funny and Unusual: People love humor.  Go to Digg, Mashable, and Fark to find interesting Tweetable content.  Again, use this technique sparingly.

#8- MVPs: Odds are, you’ve written a number of MVPs (Massive Value Posts).  These are articles that provide a ton of value to people in your niche.  I recommend selecting the top 20 to 40 posts you’ve written.  Then Tweet one or two each day.

#9: Weekly Marquee Posts: Each week concentrate on the best you’ve created.  My advice is to Tweet this article, each day for the ENTIRE week.  Do this at different times each.  That way, it’ll be seen by people who live in different parts of the world.

#10: Brand Channels: Of course you’ll want to Tweet content on other “brand channels” like Facebook and YouTube.  The amount really depends on the content you create.  If something is good enough, be sure to send a Tweet about it.

How to Schedule Tweets

Many people have problem with Tweeting on a regular basis.  To fix this, I recommend using a software program that allows you to schedule Tweets.  In the past I’ve used HootSuite.  But recently I’ve decided to switch over to the Market Me Suite which manages ALL your social media accounts in one central location, which saves a lot of time.

What you want to do is spend an hour each week scheduling the majority of your posts.  Then each day update your account with what’s happening in your life and interacting with others.  A combination of automation and personal touch is a great way to manage a Twitter account without wasting too much time.

Building a Followers List

To get great results from Twitter you need to build a list of people who’ll respond to your Tweets.  In this section, I’m going to break how to build a massive list of followers:

How to Get More Followers on Twitter

To have success with Twitter you need followers.  That’s why I recommend a program called Tweet Attacks to automatically handle this process.  A program like this helps save a lot of time as you’re building up your list of followers.

First I created a list of the “guru” Twitter accounts in the personal development, Internet marketing, and lifestyle design niches.  Then I used the Tweet Attacks program to automatically add followers from these guys on a rotating basis.  So on day 1 I’ll follow people from ‘Guru A,’ day 2 I’ll follow people from ‘Guru B,’ so on and so forth.  I’ll go through this list of ten people and then on the eleventh day I’ll start at the top of the list again.

I built my group of followers from scratch using this method.  The trick is to do it in a slow manner.  I recommend you don’t follow more than 50 people a day during the first few weeks.  After that, don’t follow more than 10% each day of your current following number.

What if you don’t have the money to spend on a program?   You can use this free follow tool:

Blastfollow: This is all about following people FAST by using #hashtags.  Personally I wouldn’t recommend using it too often.  Maybe two times a week with cleaning up people who don’t follow back in between.

The way it works is simple.  Input what hashtag you want to follow everyone from.  Say #ff (Follow Friday). It tells you how many in that tag it found.  (349 for #ff on a Wednesday) It will then ask for twitter name/password.  Press “Blast” and BAM!  It starts to follow everyone in that hashtag you aren’t following.

How to Unfollow People on Twitter

The trick to building a big list of followers is to the keep an even ratio of followers to following.  That means you have to pretty aggressive with “unfollowing” people.  Every couple of days I unfollow people who don’t follow me back.  You can do this pretty easily with the Tweet Attacks program.

Now if you don’t have the funds for Tweet Attacks, you can use these tools:

Tweepi: One of my favorite unfollow tools is Tweepi.  First off it is much more than just an unfollow tool.  I mainly use it to unfollow, but it is great to follow also.

For following: After you get all your set up done go to “follow”  you then put in @personyoulike this will give a list of everyone that follow this person.  You can go through the list and check the ones that look good.  Picking out people that retweet, have a good follower/followed ratio,  and are active.  This gets you people that are much better than a blind “follow”.  On the flip side it does mean more effort and time on your part.  Time is the reason why I sometimes skip this method.

For unfollowing: At the top bar click “flush. “  This generates a list of the people who you follow that do not follow you.  At this point it’s a matter of going down the list and “checking” each one you want to get rid of.  This is a little better than a “true” mass unfollow because you can keep following certain people even if they never follow you back.  I don’t expect Tim Ferriss to suddenly follow my every word, but I want to be able to still follow his.  Again going down a list and clicking each unfollow adds a little time to the process but you can still knock out 500 unfollows in 10 minutes.

If you are willing to take the time you can also search through followers to find people to unfollow.  It shows the last time people were on.  You can locate people who have not been on twitter for over a year (a pretty useless part of your list) and unfollow them.

Twitter Follower: This is a site made by the great John Chow.  It has a list you can add your name on for more followers, but to be honest that part is pretty weak.  The unfollow part is very attractive, though.

Log in. Go to the “unfollow” tab.  Press unfollow.  Done.

It couldn’t be simpler.  Of course this unfollows EVERYONE who is not following you.  There is no discrimination.  Though it is much simpler I still enjoy using Tweepi a little more.

The Dreaded 2000 Follow Limit

You can build a large list quickly…up till you reach what I call the “dreaded 2000 follow limit.”  This is where Twitter gets nit-picky about the followers/following ratio.  So you have to stay on top of your account and make sure this ratio stays even.  Otherwise Twitter will prevent from following others until you remove some of the people who aren’t following you back.

Twitter Marketing Odds and Ends

Twitter is a great tool you can use to promote your blog.  With that said, you don’t want to spend too much time on your site.  There are a few things I recommend you do in order to maximize the results you get from this service:

Three Rules for Managing Twitter

There are a few things I recommend with Twitter:

#1- Don’t read messages- I get almost a hundred direct messages every day.  Unfortunately most of this is automated spam that provides zero value.   Bottom line is I don’t waste time looking through my emails.  Yes, I might miss a message or two, but I’m not going to sacrifice a half hour each day trying to figure out which is a real message and which isn’t.  I figure if someone really wants to get in touch with me they’ll either use the @ sign or send an email to the Steve Scott Site.

#2- Customize Your Twitter Template- I recommend a customized look for your Twitter profile.  Usually you can find someone on Elance for $50-60 to create a nice looking template.  It’s also a good idea to have the template match the style and logo of your blog.  This is a great way to put a little bit of branding into your marketing efforts.

On this template you should have the URL of your blog and other important accounts like Facebook, YouTube, etc. This is a great way to do some cross-promotion between the things your followers might find interesting.

#3- Outsource the Tedious Stuff– I outsource a number of things in this process.  Primarily I have my outsourcer link to posts from other sites and schedule my MVPs.   Frankly I think it’s tedious to post links on a daily basis.  By outsourcing this process I’m able to free up my time and concentrate on the important things…like writing content for this site.  If you have the means, I definitely recommend hiring an outsource worker to handle the day-to-day activities.

Who to Follow on Twitter

Here’s a sneaky little trick I haven’t seen anywhere else…

Create a second Twitter account and follow the top 10 to 15 “gurus” in your niche.   These should be the guys/gals with a massive list of followers and send Tweets on a regular basis.  They will provide the best education you can get on how to market with Twitter.

Don’t add anyone else to this second account.  You want to keep it clean so you can easily track how these gurus talk to their followers.

When following the big dogs, you want to analyze their entire marketing process. How many links are they posting?  What are they saying?  Do they respond to @’s?  Do they link to other posts?  Overall…how are they talking to their audience?

I did this awhile back and it gave me a bunch of ideas.  In fact I’ve started this activity again and it’s helping me bring my Twitter results to the next level.

Final Thoughts on Twitter

Twitter is one of the best ways to spread the word about your content.  Unfortunately many people miss the boat with this site. Don’t look at Twitter as a way to make money.  Instead use it to connect with people and let them know about the quality content on your blog. That’s the way to get REAL results from this site.

In this post, I gave a lot of information about the best use for Twitter.  Now it’s up to you to put this plan into action.   I get a lot of traffic from this site.  But this came from following the system that I just provided.  Now it’s up to YOU to follow these steps and get the most out of the Twitter experience.

Good luck!

Take Action. Get Results.