10 tips for successful blog promotion on Twitter

Twitter is a great way to promote your blog. How can you ensure that your promotional efforts are successful? Here are 10 tips to help. To get more tips or just say hi, follow me on Twitter.

1. Start by following people who interest you.

Don't just follow anyone and everyone. Quality is better than quantity!

2. Say things that are worth reading.

Saying things that are worth reading applies to Twitter as well as your blog. If you're just rewriting other people's comments or not sharing your own opinions, why will people read your blog or follow you on Twitter?
The execution is a bit different for each medium. With Twitter, if you can give people a compelling reason to follow you, they might read your blog, share your posts, retweet your comments or get their friends to follow you too.

3. Look for when people are online.

Posting on Twitter will be a lonely experience if there's nobody to interact with. If you know there are people online who might be interested in what you have to say, try posting and see what happens. This may help you choose a time of day to publish a new post on your blog.

4. Reply to people with relevant links.

A blanket link to your blog is easy to do, but not very likely to get clicks unless people want to find a blog exactly like yours. Try linking to specific posts when it's appropriate to share them - for instance, the topic just came up in conversation. This is an extremely effective way to get people actually reading your posts.

5. Have a personality.

This isn't just about saying things that are worth reading. If all you do is post links, people who view your profile will see nothing but links, and probably won't follow you. Having a personality means talking, not just promoting.

6. Be wary of auto-posting.

If I see a Twitter profile that is nothing but links, it looks like spam. When all of the links go to blog posts and they were all posted by Twitterfeed, you aren't even trying to participate - your profile is just a feed. If anyone replies to you, do you actually read the reply?
I wouldn't want all of my posts to be shared on Twitter as soon as I post them - site news is a good example. If you can get away with auto-posted links and you also use Twitter to talk to other people, fine; just don't set up Twitterfeed and think it's an excuse to never use Twitter directly.

7. Don't be too persistent.

PLEASE check out my blog, nobody's looked at it today, or ever... Maybe there's a reason for that.
Don't guilt people into viewing your blog. Also, don't keep posting the same link over and over again. I've seen people posting a link, then deleting their tweet and re-posting a few minutes later. This wasn't due to a typo - they did it maybe 10 times in 30 minutes. In my view, that's just obnoxious.

8. Don't tweet constantly.

Take the time to read what others are saying. If you flood the screen with your own comments and nobody else can get a word in, the conversation may start to move elsewhere.

9. Follow your commenters on Twitter.

This can make the difference between a one-time visitor and a repeat visitor. There's much more to promotion than the result of good promotion - visitors, subscribers, comments - it's vital to establish an ongoing communication channel with your readers. Don't ignore them.

10. Persevere.

Promotion takes time. I've seen too many people giving up on blogging or just not bothering to promote because it didn't give them a huge traffic boost overnight. You have to keep doing it, and you have to be really patient. It can be tough at times, but if you have something to say that people want to hear, you'll get there in the end.