Increase Traffic to your Blogs using Twitter

[Greg]

Here's a giant list of Twitter tools - http://www.briansolis.com/2008/10/tw...unity-and.html

I use the twitterfox add-on for firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

What do you use to twitter?

[FrugalNYC]

I have just succumbed to the twitter bug. I joined yesterday http://www.twitter.com/frugalnyc

I'm using it mostly to alert or remind myself and friends about interesting things and good deals and bargains. I've just written a short post about it called Why I Joined Twitter, its mostly because of this thread This is posted on my off-shoot blog FrugalTech (since I have a good number of tech posts). Just got myself off the default template, I like the new one. Let me know what you all think if you have a minute to visit.

[hermione]

@FrugalNYC

Welcome aboard! I added you. And thanks for mentioning me in your blog post!

Now start following people so you can see what others are posting, reply to things they say and eventually people will start follow you back. Soon you'll have yourself a network and get some conversations going.

I generally add people who follow me as long as they're not spammy. A few indicators of spam users:

• They follow thousands of people but no or few followers
• They have no updates, but just a profile with a link to a website
• Their updates are all links to their own website or a commercial site and nothing personal or interactive (there are companies that do use twitter to promote and update their users on new things, though, so this is more a personal preference.)

Have fun.

[Catana]

Originally Posted by hermione

I sort of wondered the same thing before; that's why I didn't join twitter until a couple of months ago. And I discovered that it really has benefits.

Snip

It’s Official: I am a Full-Fledged Tweeter

I'm terrible at self-promotion, and I'm not a particularly social person, so the social networks have been boring time-wasters for me. I joined Twitter and dropped it almost immediately, but your experience makes me think that maybe I should give it another chance. I just don't want to be inundated with everybody's personal life.

If there are ways to set some privacy controls, maybe I could handle it.

[hermione]

Originally Posted by Catana

I'm terrible at self-promotion, and I'm not a particularly social person, so the social networks have been boring time-wasters for me. I joined Twitter and dropped it almost immediately, but your experience makes me think that maybe I should give it another chance. I just don't want to be inundated with everybody's personal life.

If there are ways to set some privacy controls, maybe I could handle it.

If you don't want everyone to see your personal updates, you can lock them and approve only the people you want to see your updates. If you do this though, you will have less followers. In twitter, the more followers the better as that's how you promote yourself. Just don't put anything too personal that you don't want the whole world to know.

If you dislike a particular person's updates, just skip over them or delete them from the people you follow if all their updates annoy or bother you. You control what you want to see. But for the most part, I enjoy the little personal updates. When someone talks about something happening in their lives that has happened to me, or is happening to me at the same time, we can share tips or commiserate or celebrate together. It gives you a nice little sense of community. (I say community because almost all the people I follow are frugal and finance bloggers, so it really is a community.)

And don't worry about the logistics of self promotion. Just be yourself, post what you find interesting, or what is going on in your world that you don't mind sharing. In fact, constantly promoting will annoy people and probably get you un-followed.

Good luck!

[amyschiff]

Hermione, your post really did a great job summing up what the original article I posted was getting at. It's nice to see a real-world example of it working for someone! I do pop by your blog once in a while when I see that you tweet about a new post. Oh and somehow I made it to your cafe press store and spent quite some time looking at everything on there!

I think one of the most interesting things about twitter is getting yourself in "the loop" by seeing who other people are following. I follow some web design gurus and ended up following a lot more people because they were followed by the initial few people I started to follow.

[Catana]

You're easing my fears, Hermione. I don't mind a little personal chat once I get to know someone on a more formal level. From what I've heard about Twitter, I didn't realize you could be somewhat selective. And I read the article, too, so that helped. At least I'm willing to dip my toe in the water and see what happens. Much thanks.

[hermione]

Amy - Thanks for your visits to my blog and CafePress store! Oh, and I believe it was your initial post and link to the article you recommended on this thread that persuaded me to give it a try. So a big thanks to you for that!

Catana - You're welcome.

[FrugalNYC]

I've spent probably too much time on twitter this weekend.
@hermione Thanks for the tips on Twitter!

[hermione]

@FrugalNYC No problem. Yes, twitter can be a time suck, especially when you're first starting out and building up your following. Do you have Twitterfox? That's a handy tool if you use Firefox. It makes it easy to check for replies and stuff without having to go to the site.