3 Steps To Getting Targeted Blog Readers Using Twitter
By fmfblogger
When you’re starting out a new blog in a niche, it’s often a struggle to get the following you want. Most people quit blogging after just a few months because their traffic isn’t very high. They just don’t know how to build a solid following quickly.
It’s one thing to get a lot of traffic to your blog. There are many different ways to do that. But what good is it if you can drive 300 people to your blog in one day if no one wants to come back because they're not interested in your topic?
The problem with many traffic techniques is that they aren’t targeted at specific types of people, ie. the folks you want to become your regular readers. The question then becomes how do you target a lot of people quickly to get them to become blog followers?
Letting Twitter Work For You
I’ll assume at this point you have a few posts up on your blog that you feel are helpful to people. You need something for them to see once they get to your blog to make them decide to stick around.
The technique I’ll describe below also assumes you have a Twitter account.
Let it do most of the work for you. Since they're tweeting about your niche topic, you already know they're interested. Twitter will literally tell you who wants to see your blog. You just have to find them.
1. Download TweetDeck or a program like it.
With a Twitter client like TweetDeck, you can set up multiple columns of tweets to watch. That’s where all the magic will happen.
2. Set up a column searching for the most popular hashtag in your niche
To set up a column in Tweet deck:
- Click the “plus” icon to add a column (see: Figure 1)
- Enter the a search term to watch. In this case, I want to watch all tweets that have the hashtag “#slowcarb” (see: Figure 2)
- Click “Search”
- Watch the tweets roll in!
3. Interact with the people who post in it.
You have now found your target audience on Twitter. They’ll post questions, make comments, retweet stuff, and generally discuss the topic that you’re trying to build authority for. Become part of the discussion!
If you start talking to people, eventually they’ll start following you. You can even follow a few right off the bat, but don’t get too zealous. Try to keep your following/followed-by ratio fairly even. Nothing screams “SPAM!” louder than someone seeing you are following 500 people but only have 2 followers.
Why this helps your blog
One huge reason watching the conversation about your hashtag is a good idea is because you can start to add authority to your blog by answering people's questions without them directly asking you. You'll also know what people are thinking about and will get some fantastic post ideas from it.
Once you have people following you on twitter because of a specific topic you know they’re interested in, you can begin to tweet your blog posts with more authority. If you have a WordPress blog, I recommend the plugin “WP Tweeter”. You can set it up to automatically tweet your new post, and you can even give it the hashtag that you’re targeting.
This method works. The first time I tried it I increased my Twitter followers by around 50 in 2 days (I only had 250 at the time). My blog traffic has also gone up since then because more people know about it and see my tweets when I post new topics.
Let us know how this method works for you!
To take it to the next level, click the link to learn more about how to do a blog from the ground up. Start blogging today, and visit jayzilla.com for more help!
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tamarindcandy 9 months ago
This is very helpful advice, and possibly applicable to hubs too.