by Mike Nielsen
If you were unaware of the potential you have to create Twitter magic with your blog, here are 9 easy steps to follow to make that happen. We'll start at the beginning where you choose your followers. That's right you get to choose your followers. You'll be surprised to see just how easy that is. So why wait? Right!
1. Follow niche targeted people.
I promised that you'd get to pick your own followers, and you do that by choosing who you follow. You see, on Twitter a lot of people will choose to follow those who follow them right back. Not everybody will do that, but around 30-50% will do that. Occasionally, you will have to prune out those who don't to avoid hitting the Twitter limit. That's right there is a limit to how many people you can follow on Twitter so that's something you have to keep tabs on.
2. Stay in touch with your followers.
Once you have a good bunch of followers you want to make sure you don't risk losing them again. That's why you need to communicate with them. It's important to play an active role in the Twitter community. If you don't already it's time to start doing so.
3. Be actively involved in the Twitter community.
As I said in the previous step you need to be active on Twitter. Not just when it comes to your followers. You see, every time you post a new tweet it appears on the public timeline. Every time you appear on the public timeline, there's a good chance that someone will choose to follow you if they find your tweet interesting. Don't start posting useless tweets just to get on the timeline though.
4. Put a link to your blog in your profile.
The one place you're actually expected to put a link to your blog is on your profile page. Do yourself a huge favor and don't forget to do so. This is a really simple, yet really important step to get right.
4a. Put your domain name on your Twitter background image.
It's always a great idea to stand out from the ground when it comes to promotion. So, even though it may take some effort it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a custom background created. If you do get a custom background make sure that the domain name of your blog is shown prominently in the background image.
5. Retweet when you don't have anything to say yourself.
If you don't have anything useful to say yourself, try to see if some of the people you are following has provided something of value. Don't be afraid to share the stuff other people come up with. Doing so is totally in sync with the spirit of the Twitter community.
6. Answer questions people might have about your niche.
Along the same lines people may be asking question related to your niche that you may be able to answer. Answering questions posted by others is not only a great way to take part in the community, it will often make sense to create a blog post around a question and lead them to that post as your answer. So in addition to providing valuable information to others it is also a great source of inspiration for blog posts.
7. Be as helpful as possible at all times.
Did I tell you that you need to be helpful? All kidding aside, this is really important. Building relationships is the key to being able to drive traffic from Twitter.
8. Remember to post a tweet with your blog posts.
This may be one of the most obvious steps, but that doesn't make it any less important. Every time you post a new blog post remember to post a tweet about it on Twitter as well. Which leads naturally to the final step.
9. Automate the tweeting of your blog posts.
If posting tweets about your blog post manually seems like a chore you should get a plugin that will do it for you automatically. I'm using Twitter and can highly recommend the WP to Twitter plugin, but I'm sure there are others on the market as well.
