How to Get 300 Visitors a Day from Twitter

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Today I want to give you a blueprint on how I get 300 visitors a day using Twitter.  I know there’s been a lot written on this topic, but I don’t think too many sites give a step-by-step list on how market their blog.  So this isn’t going to be one those overly-hyped “get THOUSANDS of visitors of day from Twitter” type of posts.  Instead I’m simply going to list the steps I use to generate traffic from this social media site…

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.

Now if you don’t have money to spend here is anteresting 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 Wendsday) It will then ask for twitter name/password.  Press “Blast” and BAM!  It starts to follow everyone in that hashtag you aren’t following.  Quick, easy, and about as discriminating as a shotgun blast to the face.

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.

How to Market Your Blog with Twitter

I’m not particularly aggressive with my Twitter marketing.  You won’t ever see an affiliate link in any of my Tweets.  Really the only thing I do is link to quality content I think people would like.  Here’s how it works…

First I link to posts from other blogs.  This is important because you don’t want to come across as a shameless self-promoter.  I get most of these links from a mastermind group that helps one another with social media marketing.  In addition, I also like to link to interesting articles I know my followers would find useful.  If you put all this together, I’d say I average 7 to 10 Tweets a day that point to other sites.

Next, I use the free Hoot Suite program to schedule three of my old posts each day.  I do this because I honestly feel like I’ve written a lot of useful content in the last seven months.   By Tweeting old posts I’m giving new followers a chance to see some of my best stuff!  In fact, some of my best commentators came to this blog because of an old article I posted using this method.

In addition to scheduling old posts, I like to Tweet my “marquee posts.”  Each week I’ll pick one article I’ve written during the week.  This usually a massive post (like this one) that provides a lot of value to readers.  What I’ll do is Tweet a link to this post once or twice each day.   It’s a great way to get a little bit of extra exposure to the best stuff you’ve written.

Finally, I like to market my blog on Twitter using a bit of the “human element.”  Let me explain…

…Being a Real Person on Twitter

I can admit that I haven’t always been great at using Twitter as a communication tool.  I’m not one to make excuses, but it’s really hard to consistently Tweet while you’re traveling…especially when you don’t have a cell phone.

With that said, Twitter is an excellent way to become a real person to your followers.  Since each Tweet is only 160 characters you don’t have to write a lot.  Just quick updates about what’s going on in your life.  I use a number of methods to show that I’m a real person…

First, when I was home I used to connect my Twitter account to my iPhone.  Then whenever a Tweet came to mind, I’d send a quick text message to Twitter.  Doing this on a regular basis was a great way to let people know what was going on in my life.

Unfortunately I don’t have working cell phone so this technique won’t work till I’m home from my travels.  Now I do my best to update my Twitter account every couple of days with the places I’m visiting and what I’m doing.  I know this isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I can do right now.

Next when I link to other blogs, I 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.

Thirdly I do my best to respond to every @ that comes my way.  Since I don’t check personal messages (see below) this is the way I interact with other people on Twitter.

Finally I respond to a few tweets I see from the people I follow.  The problem is when you have almost 5000 followers it’s pretty hard to follow what everyone is doing.

Twitter Marketing Odds and Ends

There are a few things I recommend with Twitter:

#1- Don’t read messages- I’d like to (sarcastically) thank the Twitter guru who came up with the idea of automatic replies when you follow somebody.  At this point I have over a thousand messages in my inbox that I’ll never read.  Most of this is Spam that’s a pitch for a product.  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 posts on Hoot Suite.   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, when I end my travels in November, one of the first things I’ll do is implement the many techniques I found from this one technique.  Which leads us to…

…Why This is NOT a Perfect Twitter Marketing System

Like I said in the intro, this is the system that I use.  It was put into the place while I was packing my bags for Europe and it’s been teetering along during my travels.  The end result is I can definitely improve upon this process.  In fact I know there are areas that need to be tweaked.

This Twitter marketing plan helps me get about 300 visitors a day which is 1/3 of the total traffic to the Steve Scott Site.  So it’s a crucial aspect of my overall traffic generation strategy.   It’s not perfect.  And it might be a little link-happy. But it does get real results.

How Do YOU Market with Twitter

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough about my Twitter marketing plan.  Now it’s YOUR turn.  I know a lot of readers are active members of Twitter.   So now I’m asking for your help.  In the comment section below, please give a few tips or tricks that you use with this site.  You’ll get a nice do-follow link back to your site, plus the awesome karma of helping others succeed with their Twitter marketing…

Take Action. Get Results.



69 thoughts on “How to Get 300 Visitors a Day from Twitter”

  1. Hi Steve,

    Twitter is one of my primary traffic drivers.

    I post affiliate links sparingly, maybe a few times a day. I RT almost every blog post which I read. I answer every RT of mine with a Thank You and engage frequently.

    The key is to share other people’s stuff as I get plenty of RTs when I RT others. Pure twitter karma 🙂 Engagement is important too. I remember Jonathan Budd saying 30% of your tweets should be casual. I think that ratio is a little high for someone not as popular as he but I’ve tried to lighten up and chat more each day.

    Thanks for sharing the tips.

    Ryan

    • Ryan,

      You make a good point I should have put some emphasis on and didn’t.

      RT’s. I am not always perfect on it, but I agree. I try to RT a fair amount. This is always a good deal, because most people you RT are doing the same for you. But even if they don’t it seems fair to RT someone if you enjoyed their work.

      I definitly need to up my “personal” numbers. I am riding at less than 5% (maybe a lot less) and I agree it should AT LEAST be 20%

  2. Hi Steve, a great post. I’m familiar with Tweepie and I’ve been using that since Alex Whalley mentioned it a few months ago. I’ve been hovering around the 2000 mark, but I’m looking to break that now that I have a similar level of followers.

    Like a lot things the constand rinse and repeat process is the key to growing your followers. But it’s extremely tedious and I tend to forget about it. Then I read a post like this and get inspired to add more followers….!

    Several things spring to mind here. 1) outsourcing the adding of followers, I’d not thought of that and 2) using a second ‘learning’ twitter account. Great idea 3) I also like your marque post idea and process for promoting the articles.

    Until recently, my 4th biggest source of traffic was a site I used to regularly guest post on. The fifth source of traffic was Twitter. I set up a process similar to yours with a mastermind group, and promoted the work of people that I respect, which I did religiously for a week or two. Ended up with RSI on my iPhone. I then saw the light outsourced it…the tweeting, not the RSI.

    I think I’ve found a Wednesday Wisdom Post here!

    • Glad you liked it! I actually wish I were “better” at tweeting. It does seem to be a way to connect with a lot of people and get your message out there. It also needs more of a personal touch, that I know I sometimes am lacking on. (due to all the sated issues)

      The good thing is that as the twitter list grows it becomes more powerful when you really do take the time to connect.

  3. On my main twitter account, I would never post affiliate links – the followers i have there have been built up over many years (i was a very early adopter of twitter). Its a trust thing. I plug the odd project of mine but 99% of the tweets are about other people. If i do plug something of mine, the response is obviously very positive. I also only follow 100 people.

    • I am not actually saying to bombard people with affiliate links, though of course you could. Most of what I mass send people are links to this this site. Old articles and RT’s of sites I visit mainly.

      I think that mass blasting people with affiliate links is a great way to be considered a spammer. Maybe I would send an aff. link if it was something I believed in…but I would have to think about it even then. Credibility is important.

      I also really see why you would never want to “betray” your original followers. It makes sense. Though I have a decent number of followers it is probably only a couple hundred who are really “active” and matter.

      Thanks for dropping by and commenting!!!

  4. Steve, thanks for all this excellent info on Twitter. I do a mix of tweeting interesting posts by others, a bit of posts from my own blogs, and a bit of personal stuff.

    And I just retweeted this…

    • Thanks for dropping by John,

      Sounds like a well balanced system you have going. That sounds pretty close to my “goal” idea for when I get back to the states.

      Oh, and thanks for the RT 🙂

  5. Hi Steve:

    Wow this Monday morning I started blog hopping after checking my emails. You are my second stop and wow I am surprised to see your post. After reading Preeti last night, this morning I got to read something positive about the site that I use myself for traffic. It is my second source of constant traffic. I never tried to learn about twitter but followed my own sense of promoting and keeping the friends happy there. I do have two sites this way my traffic doubles.

    Your post gave me lot of insight how to improve my site for traffic, that is going to help me more. Thank you.

    Make it a great day for yourself

    Fran Aslam

    Fran’s post: “Writing Articles with effective time management turns writing time into less than half” http://franstips.com/?p=196

  6. Glad you liked it Fran,

    Twitter really can be a wonderful source of traffic. You sort of mentioned another important point I may have missed. Keeping friends happy.

    For promoting purposes building huge numbers is important. mainly because a few of those huge numbers will become genuine friends. Your “friends” or acquaintances on Twitter are much more powerful than any number general “follower” who contribute spam only. But you never know what good people you pick up in the blind scoops too.

  7. This is an excellent post Steve. Twitter is one of the best tools to use for marketing. There is also a site that I use called twuffer, which also allows you to schedule old posts. I think I should use it more than I do though. Thanks for sharing

    • I use Hootsuite for that, but it sounds like a great thing. Tweeting old posts is a great Idea. I know I have at least 100 to 150 posts from the days when just about no one visited. Alerting people to them is great. Even better is the fact that they often draw NEW people.

  8. I’m curious about the need for the second, clean Twitter account. Could you not use a list instead and eliminate the need to check two accounts? I know most Twitter clients support more than one account, but I like using either the Twitter web interface or Brizzly, and selecting on the list I’m most interested in at that time. A great thing about Brizzly is I can actually follow someone, but mute them, so I don’t actually see those tweets.

    Another thing I like to do is find those gurus and scan down the list of people they follow to find more gurus of interest. It’s a little more reliable about finding good content than depending on #hashtags.

    • James,

      Well you got me thinking, I guess it isn’t anything “needed”, more of just my way. A lot of the unfollow programs do so blindly, but you could set up white lists and exclusion lists for that. And like you say for the other reason I like it is simply lack of clutter, but you could use lists to do it. So you are right. it isn’t really needed. More of a personal peculiarity I guess.

  9. Hey Steve

    This is an awesome post, love how you covered so much about twitter from so many different angles. Half these things I have never heard of so will now go and check them out. I have used Blast Follow a couple of times, like you no more than twice a week, and do a flush with Just Unfollow a couple of times a week to.
    Many things for me to go research now, as much as I know Twitter is important to my online business and presence, it honestly bores me… and I get slack with it. I need to pick up my game and work in a real strategy
    cheers
    Nat

    • Nat,

      Yeah the Blast Follow program is really cool. But does seem a little dangerous, though. Tweepi I think I like a little better. More discriminating, though it takes more time. Likely the best bet is to mix it all up. Likely this will decrease any sort of “pattern” too.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

  10. Hi Steve,

    You have gathered a lot of good information here. I am going to check out Blastfollow because I could use something a couple of days a week that helps me grow my Twitter following without spending quite so much time.

    I love HootSuite for scheduling tweets when I know I will be away from my desk.

    I would never use a mass unfollow tool that works the way you describe Twitter Follower because some tweeps are worth following even though they don’t follow me back.

    Thanks for the tips!

    • Blastfollow is really cool, and quick. Just be careful not to “overuse it” or twitter could give you a time out. ( I think it only lasts a few days..but still…) 2x a week seems to be fine though from what I have read/tried.

      Yeah I don’t like Twitter follower any more because of that (though the speed of it is great). Most pay programs have white lists you can use to exclude people you want to keep. Tweepi is a decent free one too. It takes less time than doing it all manually, but you still have to make a conscious choice for each person so a little better in that regard.

  11. Really comprehensive post Steve,

    This and Adam’s combine makes one heck of a blueprint. I normally do the RT, Tweet the blog posts and follow, unfollow manually. Using friendorfollow.com which does the sorting for me, leveraging the follow and followers count keeps my account even.

    Overall, you’ve listed some pretty cool tools here I will check out myself. Thanks so much for informing us on how to better Tweet and gain followers!

    • Yeah I do a lot of RT manually. As for the rest, I just don’t have the time now. I may catch some stuff manually, but I try to limit my “time” actually on twitter to 1x a day for no more than 20 mins. If I didn’t I would never make all the other deadlines.

  12. Hey Steve,

    Very comprehensive, informative and engaging post. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot too.

    I like to spice things up when I use twitter. You know a little bit of RTs, little personal stuffs, little of interesting reads from around the web and a bit of promoting my own blog posts.

    I am going to bookmark this post so that I can refer to it later…

    @Thu, thanks for the mention.

    Later…

  13. Hey Steve,

    The last tip about creating another account and watch how the big gurus use Twitter is an awesome idea.

    I want to make some note about promoting other sites. Sometimes, if you read blogs from Google reader, you can retweet those blogs’ articles.

    There’s another program called TweetAdder. I use it once but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t follow people in the list properly. Does the program you recommend work for you?

    • Yes, I am pretty happy with that program. It seems to cover a lot of bases pretty well. Particularly in follow/unfollow and following of followers of a person. It also has options to search tweets for keywords based on location, which is another nice tool. It is pretty decent but you do have to make sure you use it to its potential as it does cost $. Tweepi is pretty darn good as a free alternative, though.

  14. Hi Steve, I have resisted using automation on Twitter (except Hoot Suite) because I feel I miss so much from people I like as it is. Also, when you follow a bunch of people, you then have to go back and unfollow a lot later. I will check out Tweetpi though. I have manually gone through and followed people my friends like which leads to a lot more quality tweets/tweeps. I also schedule older posts to tweet because I know most people never saw them the first time!

    • Hootsuite or one of the other s that do sinilair are just about needed. Most of the other programs I recommended are built on the assumption that you want to push for a amount of followers fast. Of course there are drawbacks to this, you pick up a lot of spammers and get a lot of clutter and many of the follower are not very “quality”

      Tweepi is nice though, you can gain a little speed to any process, but you also have a finer level of control

  15. Holy crap Steve!

    This is only the most excellent post on Twitter that I have ever read. Seriously mate – I really found awesome value here – and will be investing in that tool you speak of.

    My methods are very similar to what you mentioned, whereby I simply adopt the habit of using Tweepi to follow those who follow people in my niche (say @viperchill) and then wait three days and ‘flush’ my account, and of course do it all again.
    This takes time – granted but I have had my account since Feb this year and already have 6000 followers and get almost 1000 visitors a month to my blog from there.

    Granted its not 300 a day, but I’m on the right track!

    I am actually in the middle of posting my own Twitter guide (based on what I have done) but its no way as good as this.
    Think a trrackback is in order – you’ve already done all the hard work after all 🙂

    • Thanks Alex! 🙂

      I have about the same followers and have been doing it for a similar time frame (mar-apr started) one reason I met get a little more is RT old stuff. I have about 300 articles now, a ton from when few people read here. So I retweet about 4-5 a day. All together this pushes the traffic to 300. You may want to try to RT some older articles. (of course you may be allready…lol)

  16. Hi Steve, I looked at the TweetAttacks software and it looks like a spammers dream come true! But I can see it having a lot of potential if used in the way you suggest. Anyway, I bought the Lite edition, and as soon as I have written this comment I will be testing it out. I just wanted to say thanks for the heads up, and if you search for the Warrior WSO on TA you can get the lite edition for $47, $10 less than the price on the main site. Funny how that discount made buying it so much easier!

    Here is the link – http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/195904-tweetattacks-lite-get-thousands-twitter-followers-few-days-without-getting-banned.html not sure if you will publish this or not, but I thought I’d include it.

    • NO doubt it could be (and probably is used by spammers) In a way you could view any mass attempt to try to get people as a mild form of spam. Though I do not try to bombard people and hopefully offer quality stuff rather than just links to buy stuff.

      Yeah, that is why they offer the little savings. Somehow it becomes a little more palatable when you get a bargain, even though the prices are arbitrary to begin with.

      • Hi Steve,

        Comment Luv brought me here, so who needs Twitter, right? LOL

        Seriously, I don’t know what Ana does with her six accounts, but I have a handful and it’s not hard. The trick is to make most of them notification-only, which is what I call accounts that don’t reply to @ tweets. I use them for my products. I like having a chance to brand my stuff and it’s a great way to have targeted followers.

        Another thing I did was to create an experimental account, where I did all the hypey things that actually suck. It does no good to take peoples’ word for these things, you have to try em for yourself. (If you’re curious, the experimental account is @OrangeJackass.)

        Bottom line, you probably only need one “Social” account. With Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck, it really doesn’t matter, anyway, since they let you post to any account from the same interface.

        The rest of your accounts are just like your supplemental email accounts – autoresponders, listserv etc. Your imagination is the only limitation 🙂

        Cheers,

        Mitch

        • Mitchell,

          Thanks, some very good additional points on ways to use (and handle) multiple accounts. I agree that “really” keeping up more than one account would be too much. I am pretty bad at handling my @ messages on one. (I get them usually, but often very late since I only check it 1x a day)

          Anyway thanks for dropping by and leaving a great comment! I hope you come back soon.

  18. Great tips! I am certainly going to look into them. I am really new at the twitter thing. I would like to thank you specially for the unfollow tips. I had participated in quite a few Twitter Follow Hops and could not figure out how to “easily” find who didn’t return the favor.

    THANKS!

    • Glad you liked it. Getting mass followers certainly has its downside and getting rid of those people who do not return the favor is one of them. Doing that without losing those people who you WANT to still follow and haven’t followed back increases the challenge. There are luckily some great tools out there to help. (probably dozens i didn’t mention and/or don’t know about)

  19. Steve, this is excellent material. However, I must admit I have not used any of these techniques. I have built up my almost 8,000 followers by tweeting tips about writing (my specialty), retweeting a lot of posts I like, and answering every @ reply I get. All of this has resulted in 10 to 50 new followers a day. I do go back and remove most people who do not follow me manually. I do follow back everyone who follows me.

    For those who want to build a list quickly, these techniques will work. I also like that you emphasize targeting those you follow to create a more responsive list.

    Like you, I prefer just one account. It’s hard enough to follow and talk to one list, let alone several.

    • Lee, your way is probably the “right” way to do it. I am sure your followers are actually worth a heck of a lot more on a per person social interaction basis than mine. My way was sort of a speed way to ramp up fast. I do like your ideas on interaction and follow through.

      Thanks for an insightful and helpful comment.

      • You are welcome. I’m not sure there is an exact right and wrong way to do it. Mine is somewhat slower but does attract a better quality of followers. The trick is taking care of your followers once you do get them.

  20. Wow, this is really a detail explanation of the process, and I agree with everything written here, I use a very similar method. Although I do all of my follower and un-following via Tweepi.

    The only thing I need to work on is my persona on Twitter, I don’t have too many personal tweets and I really wanted to work on that, personally I don’t have an excuse and I need to start doing it right away!

    Thanks for this great post 🙂

    • Tweepi is a great tool. It takes a little longer, but much more precise.

      I am also in the same boat as you. I know what i need to do…but I need to work on my persona a lot more. Without becoming so involved it works as a time sink.

      Thanks for dropping by and commenting! 🙂

  21. Hey Steve,

    Twitter is a powerful marketing tool, if used the right way and provided you take benefit including the tips you mentioned and can get you a lot of quality traffic!

  22. Hi Steve, I appreciate the thought that went into this post and I think it is very well written. However, I feel like a kill-joy because to me this strategy defeats the whole purpose of why I use Twitter. I don’t like automated following tools and I can’t imagine having someone else send out my Tweets. Look at it this way, I use Twitter as a social networking tool. How can I socialize, meet people and cultivate online relationships if I use a program like this to do my work? I feel so Old Skool, like I’m out of the loop while I’m reading this post and even the comments.
    I focus more on quality rather than quality when it comes to Twitter. I do have 2 accounts, I do use HootSuite to schedule Tweets and Retweets during the day but most of the time if I send a Tweet – you can rest assured that it’s me sitting right in front of my monitor reading, tweeting, following and unfollowing all by myself.

    Oh I take that back, I rarely need to unfollow people and I’m certainly not going to unfollow them just because they aren’t following me.

    Even with all that said, I still enjoyed reading the post, I mean it’s about Twitter for goodness sake, how could I not enjoy it 🙂

  23. Ileane,

    Your way of using Twittter really is the “right” one. Mine is more designed for marketing. I have so far not really been a big “tweeter” of personal type stuff, just using it as a way to automaticaly promote older articles. I do hope to engage more when I get back to the US. (a little hard to do more than automate with no cell and spotty internet while traveling) It is really like using it for two different things. If you JUST want it for socializing that is what it is really meant for. But it seems like it can also be a great advertising tool. The secret I think is not to be overly “spammy” throw lots of good comments and updates in there too (which of course have to be done by hand. Currently I am bad on those things…

    Anyway, thanks for dropping by and leaving an insightful comment. I hope you swing by again. 🙂

  24. Hi Steve, for my personal taste, this is a lot – maybe too much – automation unless we write off Twitter as a social media tool that we use to communicate on a personal level. With all this automation and with all the extra followers, it is natural that at some point, you may not be able to FOLLOW everyone and read what they tweet. And to follow some people to get some followers only to unfollow them later just does not resonate with me…..I unfollow plenty but for real reasons such as not liking someone’s tweets or that they tweet too much or I lose interest in their topics etc….In fact, I have a hard time keeping up with slightly over 100 people so I simply do not follow anyone who follows me back just for that – I follow people I find interesting and would learn from or have had some sort of impressive association with….and I post personal Tweets at least every day because I think my followers like to know something about me rather than just follow an automated robot :)! I know your strategies are excellent for driving traffic and my hesitation is not very logical and perhaps I can feel more comfortable at some point but it’s just been hard to go into so much automation for sake of traffic.

    • What you say makes sense. To be honest I do not use twitter as a social tool that much. I try to keep up with @ comments and send some myself to people, but if you want it for a social tool, then you are right…this messes it up. Of course you could make a “real” account and a “Business” account if you desired. But you are right..this definitely isn’t for everyone

  25. Hey Scott,

    You have written a great article here. It’s really useful to me especially since I don’t usually use Twitter as much. I am also not using any of the services you mentioned. Do you think that following lots of people is a good idea?

    • Following lots of people can be good if you want to use twitter a s a tools to drive people to your blog/articles/site. As some people pointed out it can have some negative impact on the “social aspect”

      I have a nice backlog of articles (like 250+) and over 5000 floowers now (still working on growing the) so I tweet 5+ older articles a day and always get a nice little chunk of initial traffic…and with so many articles…it is highly unlikely anyone gets one twice.

      It is not great until you start getting the high number of followers (as a marketing tool) but once you do it can really rock

  26. Hi Steve,

    Very detailed post about using Twitter. I use most of the tools you use there like Hootsuite and Tweepi. Not sure what tool you use for automation but I use SocialOomph. You’re right about having no time to reply to all so I have this automated DM configured with SocialOomph

    Hmm, you mentioned something interesting about having a twitter account to observe how the gurus do it. Pretty interesting stuff. I think I must try that and Ana having 6 accounts, I can’t imagine myself even handling more than 3.

    Thx for sharing 🙂

    • I have used socialoomph a little too. the free version does a hell of a lot. I Haven’t tried the upgraded version. For pay versions I am currently using twitter adder. It has a lot of socialoomph features and a few more. I still use tweepi some too. It takes a little more time but that program really rocks.

      For me two twitter accounts is enough. I do not know how Ana handles 6. Even with automation, it seems like it would take a while to get things done.

  27. Hi Steve!

    Excellent post! All this while I never give weight on tweeter marketing until lately. Your article can be excellent resources for me. Thank you for sharing & have a great weekend.

    • I had a similar epiphany before I wrote the article. I never lent much credit to it (but was building up my list anyway) until I reall tried to use it a little bit. I was shocked how it really did add a lot of traffic.

      Thanks for dropping by and commenting, glad you liked it. Hope to see you again 🙂

  28. Very useful and informative blog post concerning How to Get 300 Visitors a Day from Twitter. I have bookmarked your blog for future posts.

  29. Wow, this is an amazing Twitter article, Steve! Very detailed and straight to the point. I’ve been on Twitter for a while, but haven’t really made the most of it, I have to admit. This article will definitely be very useful to me in the long term as I further build up my blogs.

    • Twitter is an awesome tool. It truly is. Using it as an advertising can be a very powerful tool. In many ways it is like blog commenting. You put stuff out there hoping it : a. helps people b. gets people to visit your site. Much of the rules are the same the more quality you are able to give the better results. The only difference is that you have the ability to reach vast numbers…many of whom will honestly be spammers…but not all.

      One thing I have to work on is my quality. I mainly post old articles now. Which I hope are quality, but I desire to increase my personal interaction…while remaining aloof enough it doesn’t kill my productivity.

  30. Very very useful post indeed.
    I have set up a hootsuite account and I am looking for how to setup a schedule tweet of my quality posts. Tweepi is definitely going to require a whole load of time to filter through on those i want to unfollow, as you did point out some people are just worth the follow, because of their track records.
    Every time I come across a post like this, I am constantly being reminded of how much success online is as much a matter of staying up to date with tools as well as building tangible relationships. You’ve got to balance between using tools and networking with people. Blogging, is a full time business!

  31. Ok Steve,

    Despite this step by step procedure I am still very overwhelmed by what I need to do. Maybe, let’s start simple by what some of the commenters mention: How do I retweet people’s blog post?

    If you still have the patience with me, maybe you can elaborate on the next three simple steps to take to start getting twitter to work for my blog. Do be specific as to what I need to do like what to install, where to click and so on.

    I am still keen on engaging you as my technical coach. Let me know.

    Cheers

    • Jimmy.

      OK, Step 1. Obviously get a twitter account. Within Twitter if you see something you like, hover over it and by the bottom a few choices will appear. one being Retweet.

      Now for me to go to a site with no tweet button and tweet it I have to open twitter (or one of many many programs designed to make using twitter easier (a few above) ) grab the URL and type a short tweet. Not much work. But more than most people are willing to do.

      so you want a plugin. On my site I have two ways to tweet. ON the bottom I have the button with multiple choices for sharing. One of them being “twitter” all anyone has to do is click one of those they have an account in and it will open a new pbrowser linked to share.

      That is a WP plugin called shareaholic.

      The main one people use is a WP plugin called Tweetmeme

      Make sure when you set it up (I don’t think it does this in default) that in the block called “source” you put @yourtwittername this time everytime someone retweets you will get an @message. It can be helpful if you either sometimes (or always at first) at least thank people when they RT. It is just being polite, though if someone “always” RTs I only thank sometimes to not flood them.

      Again, this is a simple process to “use” just click Tweet and it should open up with a message. Change it how and if you see fit (staying under 140 characters) and tweet. Simple.

      The ways above are mostly to get volume of followers. You will also want to work on trying to connect with people for “quality” of followers. Some people focus on quality some on numbers… I think trying to do both works… But you will need management tools for that at some point… for now just worry about getting on…getting a handful of followers and figuring it out.

        • Jimmy,

          OK, I gave a look at a couple of the articles. I have a couple things

          1. I commented on two and both went to spam bin. If you could look through your spam real quick, “approve” them (and perhaps anyone else with an avatar that doesn’t look like spam…I wouldn’t waste time reading none avatar comments in spam bin 99.9% are spam) Then in the future my comments there shouldn’t be binned.
          2. I saw the tweetmeme (and gave a RT) I also saw the sharebar next to it (that is nice one too) But since that sharebar has a tweet button I would move the Tweet meme to upper left or upper right. (a pretty industry standard place for tweet button) that way people have a way to tweet at the bottom OR top of the article. (It is all about making a tweet as convenient as possible)
          3. I know some people like tag clouds, But I am not a fan of them. Most SEO’s don’t think they are a great idea. (but some do) . This isn’t “wrong”, but is something I wouldn’t have in the sidebar.
          4. Right now both your commentluv and name blocks are “nofollow”. This is an area that is real tough to say is ‘wrong” There are some advantages to keeping it nofollow (and keeping all “link-juice” on your site) Personally I like to go with dofollow for comments, as a way to encourage people to comment. But some people would tell you the opposite…and be right. I would say make a point that you are a dofollow blog and use options to make it so that you only give dofollow on 3 or more posts….that is sort of rewarding people who comment and NOT giving it to fly by night people who are only hunting links. (no follow free is the plug in I use…. but there may be better)

          hopefully that is a couple of things to think about for now.

          • Yo Steve,

            I got 1-3 done. But am having some problems with 4. Can you take me through how I can ‘dofollow’ on my commentluv?

            I heard that keyword luv is good. How can I set this up too.

            I have included your link on my blogroll too.

            cheers

  32. Hey Steve,

    I get some great traffic from Twitter and I could possibly get more if I interacted with my Twitter following more frequently. It really is a challenge when I have over 60,000 followers.

    I simply prefer to focus my time on content creation, memberships site creation, value added offers/backends and link building. Now I’m really revealing what a geek I am. 🙂

  33. Tweet Attacks and Tweet Adder are very cool, I use them everyday! Twitter marketing is very powerful if you know how to do it so these tools make a really huge difference.

  34. Hey Steve,

    I just think so many people are focusing a lot on the quality than quantity. I mean, what good does it do if you have 1000 followers who aren’t even interest in what you have to say. Wouldn’t be better to hand pick and manually attract followers who will actually read your tweets and participate in the conversation!?…

  35. A lot of great tips here, Steve. Had never really considered the balance needed between followers and following, but it does make sense.

  36. I really didn’t think that Twitter was a viable source of traffic until I read this post. My thoughts were always that Twitter people tend to click on funny pictures or humor posts or stuff. This seems to show them in a different light.

    I still have to wonder if traffic from twitter is “valuable” or not though. It’s been my experience that social traffic isn’t really “buying” traffic and thus don’t translate into earned income for a website, just higher traffic stats. Maybe the RIGHT group of Twitter users though….

    • Twitter traffic can be funny. It is one of those things that it is what you make of it. If all you are doing is retweeting your stuff. I agree, the value may be minimal. But for those that really connect and try to find people who are active in their niche and really make a connection it can be a great source. Of course this does beg the point of “how much” time is needed to be spent to really make those solid connections and honestly this is something I struggle with.

      And of course, like you pointed out, a fair bit of this traffic may not be the “buying” kind. I think a lot really does depend on niche, the amount of work you invest within the system and what you are marketing.

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