Social Media, Affiliate & Internet Marketing

There are many positive uses for Social Media and today I am going to talk about the site of the moment – Twitter. This site has grown into a gargantuan monster (see the graph below) over the last 18 months and you should ignore it at your peril. I’ve already touched on basic tips for Twitter, but I want to elaborate on it further.

No matter how well your website is performing, either through visitors, sales, sign-ups or just recognition, there is always room for improvement, no? Furthermore, just because your website may be performing well now it doesn’t mean this trend will continue and continuous promotion in one form or another is advised to keep you at the top of your game (or get you there if you’re not already!).

The whole of the Internet thrives on one thing – traffic – and it is this that every website and online marketer is desperate to attract. Let’s look at how we can leverage the power of the tweet for our benefit.

#1. Twitter Tip – Know Your Niche & Get The Right Audience

The first thing you should consider is who your audience are and react accordingly. Untargeted traffic is a waste of your time and effort. Ensure you know what your audience wants and needs. How they interact with others. What topics are they currently talking about and what upcoming trends are popular?

The Twitter search tool is  a useful place to find what people are talking about so use it to chat to others about the popular trends.

#2. Twitter Tip – Engage Your Followers

Don’t think of your followers as simply numbers and potential customers. Talk to them regularly and treat them as humans like they are! Ok, so some of them are bots and spammy users but it’s easy to know who’s who. Remember to be social. Have conversations with others, ask them questions and ask for feedback if you need to. This will all help raise your profile and become known to the thousands of other people your followers follow.

#3 Twitter Tip – Forget Following By The Masses

Some people believe Twitter is just a numbers game. This is not strictly true. By all means follow people that are related to your niche with the aim of building your follower base but make sure your followers are quality and don’t simply go for tens of thousands of followers.

You need to avoid ‘auto-followers’ as they are highly likely robots that scrape and spam. They will not read your tweets. If they are real users then their aim is simply to be able to direct message you with spammy adverts.

The best piece of advise with obtaining real followers is by talking to others, re-tweeting and promoting a Twitter link on your blogs and websites. It is often easy to spot a real user from a bot. Look for bespoke backgrounds and the style or content of peoples tweets. These usually give good clues as to who is real and who isn’t.

#4 Twitter Tip – Feed Quality Content

One rule which will always bode true for successful Internet Marketing revolves around quality content. After all, ‘content is king’, always has been and probably always will be.

Don’t simply send link after link promoting yourself and your products. Give your followers links to other random and useful information. Send them funny stuff, comedy is always a winner. If you keep boring them with your own ads and links you will find your follower count will increase at a lower rate and people will pay less attention to what you have to say.

Re-tweet the good stuff and offer users cool things to see.

#5 Twitter Tip – Rinse & Repeat

It is worth re-tweeting and repeating your successful tweets and ads a few times. Remember not everyone is online at the same time and worldwide timezones will ensure not all of your potential readers will be available at any given moment.

Vary the times that you send messages and monitor the response. Know and plan what times you are going to tweet if it is aimed for an audience in a certain geographic location. Make notes of your successes and failures with your tweets and ads and rinse the bad, repeat the good.

That concludes my generic Twitter tips. How are you getting on with your Social Media Marketing and Twitter advertising in particular? Share any thoughts and tips to the comments below. I’ve also added a graph below showing just how big Twitter is becoming – nearly 50 million tweets per day at the time of writing and rising fast.