Wednesday, May 6, 2009

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?


Micro-blogging platform Twitter is all the rage at the moment. Twitter allows you to send out 'tweets' which are small responses to the question: What are you doing?

Bloggers are particularly crazed over Twitter, and many claim that it's a great way to drive traffic to your blog. The idea is that twitter friends will begin following your tweets and every once in a while you can 'tweet' one of your posts, thereby exposing the post to all of your friends.

I've tried this method and found that it doesn't really work...or, it hasn't particularly worked for me. To be honest, I'd rather spend my time crafting killer posts, but still, I feel like I'm missing out on something.

Have any of you found good results from Twitter? What value does it add for you?

6 comments:

  1. I'm so new that I don't really have any major stats to produce, nor enough traffic yet to know. But I figure, every avenue of promotion is a good thing, especially when it doesn't cost me anything - not even time. So I have a plugin installed on my Wordpress blog that automatically sends a tweet whenever I post a new post. So, it tweets for me, and I do nothing special. Can't hurt, right?

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  2. I love Twitter and less than 10 minutes a day has driven tons of traffic to my blog and many die hard fans.

    There are a few tricks to make it work for you and it takes awhile to pay off because you have to earn your reputation.

    Keys to Twitter success are: 1) Follow awesome people, 2) RT generously, 3) Only say interesting things, 4) Be nice (mostly)

    I also love a service called FoodFeed that collects all of my meal TwEats when I type @having to start a Tweet. Everything I eat goes there, and I have the RSS streaming on my blog. My readers love it.

    Come Tweet with us! I'm @summertomato

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  3. Thanks Digigirl...I've tried a similar thing and found that it drove very little traffic to my blog. Most Twitter tips actually discourage you from doing this...I'd be curious to see how it works for you though.

    Hey Darya thanks for the advice..this is exactly what I was looking for. My only reservation is that it seems like it takes a lot of work to establish a reputation....how long did it take you before you started seeing results?

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  4. Major traffic driver... I think the key is making sure your tweets match the "brand" of your blog. Consistency is amazing and it provides yet another touchpoint to gain followers and establish your blog identity.

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  5. Thanks Amanda...Maybe I'll give it another shot...I'm @dannyjayy

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  6. It took a couple months, but I did not put in very much time each day. TweetDeck is a huge help, because you can keep an eye on the best people to RT. I spend 5-15 min on Twitter per day, and it is a joy. I have found great resources there too.

    You can get a lot of followers quickly by using Twitter Search for your keywords. If you don't look like a spammer most people will follow you back.

    I also recommend SocialToo and Twimailer to manage your followers.

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