How to Use Twitter for Traffic

A few days ago someone posted a thread with ideas on how to use Twitter to generate traffic.

I followed those instructions and to my surprise I found it to be true, all what the author of that thread said.

So over the next few days, I decided to get more into Twitter, since it has been bringing me some extra traffic, list subscriptions and yes, even AdSense clicks.

That is when I decided to really get into Twitter and maximize my returns.

I was able to refine my process, and, as expected, it more than doubled my Twitter traffic (of course by this I mean, if I received 30-45 subscribers on my first attempts, now I receive 60-85... per day, if I work on it).

The great thing is that your system is always improving and as a result you get more and more traffic.

If you are going to jump into Twitter thinking it's a quick way to drive traffic to your site you will fail.

I find that things like Twitter and others (Article Marketing, AdSense, CJ...etc)... they all work... if you rub them the right way. You can mis-use article marketing and then claim it doesn't work. But ask Alexa Smith for example and she will tell you that you are dead wrong, and rub the evidence in your face.

Same thing here. So what are these special rules you have to follow to build traffic using Twitter?


Initial Setup

1. Define a niche you want to pursue. Important. You don't want to be random at all.
2. Create a Twitter account with a username that somehow rings a bell with that niche.
3. Or create a Twitter account with a username that is your real name. Twitter users are authenticity-aware!
4. Find an authority on this subject, it's easy, just type the subject into Twitter search.
5. Browse through several people, but don't follow the ones with less than 10,000.

Dynamics of Twitter Ecosystem

1. Your profile lists last 50 or so tweets you have made.
2. You don't want all of those 50 tweets to include links to your site.
3. At least 75% of your tweets should have nothing to do with your business important
4. Random people will follow you when you tweet a message
5. It's about 1 follower per really good post (you made people laugh, for example)
6. Gain followers by following others
7. Gain follower by tweeting
8. Gain even more followers when people re-tweet your tweet.

Why 75% of your Tweets should have nothing to do with your business? Because Twitter users can quickly tell who is spamming by going to your profile page. You've got to be more inventive than that.

You want to add authorities on your subject with 10K followers, because when they re-tweet your tweet, 10K people see it. I tried posting just a few links to jQuery tutorials I made, and they get re-tweeted like crazy. What if one of your tweets becomes viral? (Of course, you have to point them to some extraordinary content you have created.)

My Own Results

So I found John Resig, who is the creator of jQuery. I have been writing jQuery tutorials for who knows how long, so it made sense to me. I went ahead and followed 2000 of his followers. I knew that people who followed John Resig must be web developers:



Guys...this account is only 5 days old! (as of Jan-11-2012)

Imagine what can be done in a month? two months? Is 5,000 following possible in that amount of time? I think so! How many followers/rss subscribers or list subscribers do you get in 2 months? This is a great way to get a small targeted audience, that you can use to bring traffic to your websites for years to come, and it's growing if you put some effort into it...

In two days of following people who followed him, using up my maximum limits of follows per day, I ended up with 357 followers. That is targeted followers almost like list or RSS in just 2 days! And it's growing by several people every day.

My Re-tweets

Think of funny things to say, and people re-tweet you like crazy!

This is a screenshot from today Jan 11 / 2012 5PM:



If you want to see my funny tweets to get some ideas, Follow Me yourself and check out what I am actually doing in my profile.

Important Rule: Don't post too often thinking it'll bring more traffic. You've got to be more creative than this! Just do it naturally, post some random thoughts, or about things you are doing right now.

Just every once in a while include a link to an interesting piece of content you have written. Works like a charm. But not for people who are impatient. If you are impatient, twitter is not for you... but then if you think about it... if you are impatient online marketing or running ANY business is not for you. What ya doin', messing around like that, son?

Anyway, there are some limitations to what you can do...

Limitations

Twitter has a limit of 2,000 followers for new accounts. This amount is determined by their algorithms. It grows, the more active you are. Post more tweets, get your stuff re-tweeted, and eventually you will be allowed to follow more people.

Because following people makes them follow you back 20% of the time, you can un-follow 2,000 people, and then follow 2,000 new ones! This will again grow your following by 20% of new followers. Yes, it is a difficult task to just physically carry this out, but if you set a goal of say, following 200 per day, your following will be increasing every day by 10 or so.

Remember, that you mostly want to follow people who can relate to your niche somehow. Don't follow random people.