To Tweet or not to Tweet
In the past year, Twitter has risen to a level of use rivaling most every other site and service on the internet. As a result, many are asking how it can be used to increase traffic to their site. There are many tutorials and basic ideas for how to approach Twitter; I suggest you read them as well. This posting will focus on two fairly obscure questions to consider for your site and Twitter.
Do you really care if people think you’re a jerk?
A Tweet can consist of as little as you pasting your url in a post and sending it on. While this method is viewed more as a SPAM act than any, you’ll find that many people simply pawn their site through Tweets up to 50-100 times a day. The choice is up to you on how you wish to be received. Obviously if you’re only doing this once a day, there won’t be nearly the humor and snide statements made of you like the ones who are hitting up 20 an hour.
The last sentence was not to assume that all of the Super-Tweeters are simply over-posting jerks. The fact remains that they create inbound links on a constant basis. While using many other SEO techniques, Twitter directs traffic to your sites and can in turn lift your rankings in many systems that effect search engine visibility.
Who are you really wanting to reach?
With Twitter, who are you after? If you’re trying to push traffic to your NSFW site, it might be a good idea to set up an account with people who would be willing and able to see that content. In turn, you wouldn’t want to send invites to a corporate team that would abhor the content of the site. (if this sounds to stupid to be possible, you have not visited fark often enough). There may be a need for several Twitter accounts for each business or site. There is no reason to keep you reach small, and each individual account can aim for a different target market.
The best way of getting like minds to follow you is to begin by following people of a like mind. When setting up each account, consider your site definition. If your site is built to target designers, following designers would be your goal, if you paint, following people associated with painting…ect. This method will result in the people you follow usually following you in response. By this method, you should receive a fairly strong and targeted market.
Comments (3)
So repeating my url like everyone else really won’t help? Why waste your time if all it’s doing is making a quick link that fades after a few hours?
Nice article. I just don’t get why you seem to be coming down on Twitter. With every ten minutes on CNN and FOX News being some story from a Tweet, isn’t it here to stay?
Joseph– I agree, I get highly annoyed with the people I’m following that spam everyone with links to their site. And yes they are short lived, but it is a realistic approach to generating a little more traffic. At higher than 1.5 million ranking on Alexa, 1-3 more people visiting a day can mean a full percentage point in. It has also been suggested that even these hidden and stacked inbound links can be seen as beneficial by some search engines.(I take no stance on that one, there are enough people arguing over it.) Regardless of if it’s true or not, It can’t hurt.
Big Guy
Yes, it’s big now, but so was myspace a year ago. FB is hanging on to its highs mainly from its refusal to sell. I personally feel that Twitter will not have leaders with the desire of protecting their creation like FB did… ie, facebooks refusal to sell.