Twitter Tricks to get you Traffic

Twitter is here to stay and if you aren’t familiar with it you need to be. You can sign up for a Twitter page here http://twitter.com

Now on with some tips and tricks.

For the beginner Twitter here are some basic rules to follow.

1. Figure Out Why You Want to Use Twitter

One of the key things to do early on is to figure out what your goal is. It could take a little while to work this out but the sooner you nail down what you’re going to use twitter for the better. There’s no right or wrong with how to use Twitter - your focus might be:

* to use it on a personal level to share what you’re doing with real life friends and family
* to build up you and your blog’s profile in your niche
* to unwind and have fun with new friends
* to build up your network in a niche

The list could go on (and it could include multiple goals) - however knowing them up front will help you as you explore how to use it.

2. Start Tweeting

One of the things that I noticed is that a number of user’s had only ‘tweeted’ once or twice. Some people think they need a ton of followers before the start to tweet. The problem with this thinking is that one of the best ways to build your Twitter network is to be active. Your Tweets are your best advertisement for people to follow you. If you don’t tweet or have anything interesting to read on your Twitter account why would people want to follow you?

So start tweeting today. You should try to tweet once a day.

3. Find others you are interested in and follow them

I try to seek out other twitter users who were Tweeting interesting stuff. Once you start following others it will also help build up your followers as they will see your profile in all those other twitter friend profiles.

This process is a bit of an experiment and involves following people and then seeing if their tweets ‘resonate’ with you. Sometimes it means you’ll follow someone for a while and then unfollow them - but you’ll eventually find a group of people that you enjoy conversing with. Which leads me to my next point….

4. Get Interactive

OK - so you know why you’re using Twitter, you’re actually tweeting, you’re following what others are tweeting - the time now is to start reaching out to others and getting a conversation going.

This happens on a couple of levels:

Firstly it’s about writing things that others will want to interact with. The best way to do this is to ask a question. People are wired to reply to questions so start asking some. Keep them relevant to your goals and be willing to reply to people’s answers.

Secondly it’s important to respond to what other people are saying. The ‘reply’ feature on Twitter is key and should be used regularly, otherwise your use of Twitter will be quite one sided.

After a while you’ll find that the conversation becomes quite natural as you get to know others that you mutually follow and track what they’re doing, what your common interests are etc.

The beauty of being as interactive as possible with other Twitter users is that you’re talking to them in public and you’ll find your other followers and their other followers will chime in and make the conversation a little more multi-dimensional - it’s a great way of finding new friends to follow also.

5. Don’t Spam

Another thing that I noticed happening with a few of those that I added yesterday is that the only thing they were using Twitter for was to promote their own content. While it’s possible to do this I wouldn’t advise it. I do promote my posts on Twitter - but I try to balance them with other natural and organic conversation as well.

Another tip is to not just promote your own links, promote others. Keep them on topic and interesting and your followers will thank you for the links that you suggest.

Good Luck and more Twitter tips soon.