How can twitter help you in branding your blog or business?
Introduction
One of main reasons to blog is to build a community. A blog gives a human touch to your brand – be it you as a person or your business. Social networking, and specially micro-blogging can go a long way to create or enhance a community around your business or yourself.
This article talks about various tips on starting micro-blogging on twitter with focus on creating a community around your brand.
Starting with a human touch
Human touch starts with having a people-friendly twitter ID say your name. Don’t be tempted into creating names like Cash4you or TwitterMarketing. Of course you want to help twitter in increasing your sales eventually. But trust me, making it too obvious does not help much. The sales comes when a lot of people trust you and like to receive your tweets. That’s what is the branding concept – no?
Having your own picture on twitter home, helps a lot. People like seeing you as a person, much less a logo or flower. If you put a good smiling picture of yours on your twitter homepage, it will help a lot in getting you a good number of followers.
Understand who should you follow and why?
Building a community will start with following others first. One mistake most of the tweeple do is to follow anyone that comes in the way.
You may find people twittering about your niche segment by using a number of twitter search services e.g. http://search.twitter.com or www.twazzup.com. You can start following those having authority in your niche segments. This can also help you analyze how are they maintaining their community.
Going Live on Twitter – What to talk about?
What can you say about on Twitter? People are always divided on what should they talk about on twitter – the so called twitter strategies. There are various articles on choosing a twitter profile.
You can definitely talk about the main topic of your blog. But, talking about only one thing, does sound a bit robotic in a while, and probably make your voice go unheard later on. Also, as it is true with any other medium, if tweeple know that you are trying to sell them something, they might start ignoring you.
The keyword is “interest”, you need to understand how can you keep the interest of your followers in a particular niche.
Whatever you choose to say, it should have some human elements to it, and it should be pretty low on the marketing or sales pitch. You should mix tweets from industry news, replies to tweeple, interesting quotes, your actual life updates etc.
But again that is my opinion, and I look forward to your comments below.
Communicate with those who follow you
When people follow you, you get an Email notification (if you’ve turned it on). Or you can also learn about who is following you by clicking on your followers list.
Here’s a tip to create a loyal following – tweeple who will look forward to talk to you in future. Read through the bio of your follower, and send a custom direct message probably with name and some praise from his bio.
This little tip will make a friend out of your follower, looking forward to hear from you in future. If you intend to use twitter for Marketing, you should treat your followers like friends in real life. Of course, every body likes to be talked about. You can reply to their tweets once in a while, and provide feedback/comments on their updates.
If somebody is replying to your tweets, or referring your twitter name, you can find out who by clicking on @yourname link in the sidebar. You may either reply or DM (direct message) to them with a positive feedback or a thank you message.
I am sure these tips will create friends out of strange faces you see on your twitter stream, and will help you a long way in branding yourself, and your blog(s).
Should you put all of your posts or RSS on the Twitter?
In my opinion, you should not tweet about all the posts – once in a while it may make some sense, but tweeting everything may not be a good idea. Since, most of the people on twitter are tech-savvy, if they want to read more of your posts or RSS, they may just subscribe to your RSS or Email newsletter. Also, blog post names usually don’t make good tweets.
Your blog can be made visible on twitter by some other options – the URL on your twitter home, or a signature in the background image. You can also drop a link in your tweets whenever something interesting happens about your blog e.g. your blog gets into news, or won some award.
Or, you can involve tweeple in asking their opinions or feedback about your blog or any interesting post.
What is the best way to automate or link your blog with twitter?
There are a variety of plug-ins available for Wordpress, but the best way to approach this is using Retweet plug-in. This plug-in allows your users to retweet a blog post or update on your blog, with an automated URL.
This effectively means that if tweeple like your post they will tweet it. This is also more likely to increase your legitimate follower count. If your readers likes your articles, and are following you on their own, they are more likely to read and respond to your tweets.
Another good way to increase your subscribers, you may put a good looking mug-shot of yours on top of sidebar of your blog with a “Follow me on Twitter” badge just below it.
More Twitter Followers – Should you use software?
You should include twitter follow link in your Email Signature, and all the good places. It will help you getting a good number of followers.
I can see established brands spending 1000s of dollars in creating a large number of twitter followers. You can see twitter links on billboards, TV ads, and other form of media.
Should you use some software to increase your twitter followers – well yes and no! Most of the available software are myths and may cause you to pay huge amount – starting from $30 per month to about $200 one time. There are some interesting facts to consider. Also Twitter may update its API affecting many of the such software products.
I will talk about in details about using software or services to get more twitter followers in my next article, keep following my updates.