Are you sick of hearing about Twitter? I know I am. So here’s a different image, from the movie “A River Runs Through It.” Recall those gorgeous shots where everything is sun-gilded and glowing? The water sparkles. The man (Brad Pitt, as it happens) casts, and the line snakes gracefully into the air and lands delicately on the reflective surface of the river. That’s what we’re doing here. Fly-fishing. Every tweet is a lure that lands ever so gently on the water. We’re very lucky fisherfolk, too. We reel in a fish, or two or three, or a dozen, every time we send the line out. And the best part: no hours of standing on wet rocks. Just five minutes a day of quick brainwork, and type a few characters.
Here’s how.
1. Sign up for Twitter using a separate account and user name for the site or blog you want to promote.
2. Under the “Settings” link on your new Twitter page, make sure that the box “Protect my updates” (near the bottom of the page) is NOT checked.
3. Open another browser window and sign up for a free account at snipurl. You’re doing this for 2 reasons. Snipurl shortens URLs so they fit easily into a Twitter post, and it also lets you track how many clicks each link gets. You can use this information over time to see what your readers are most interested in, and give them more of it.
4. Decide what page or post on your blog you want to promote. Copy the link, and paste it into snipurl to shorten it (make sure you’re logged in first). Copy the shortened version of the URL and use it in Step 5.
5. In one short sentence, say what the reader will gain or learn from your blog post or web page that will help them in their lives or business.
The jargon for this is “adding value.” Marketing guru Robert Middleton says this about adding value:
When your focus is the welfare of others, you win every single time. If I write an article or an eZine, if I give a talk, or help a client, if I share a realization or a strategy, it’s all about making a difference….Businesses based on this principle thrive.
Share something with your followers (and anyone else who might search Twitter for information on your topic) that helps them solve the problem your business exists to remedy. Try to use a keyword or two. This one sentence will be your “tweet.”
Do NOT say what you had for breakfast, that you’re on your way to a dentist appointment, or that you’re having trouble finding a parking space! The point here is to give people something useful, helpful or entertaining. Also do not try to hard-sell anything. That’s not the point either.
For example, a useless tweet (for our purposes): “Stuck in traffic in the rain, commuting really sucks.” True, but not helpful.
An obnoxious tweet: “Buy my incredible product X [fill in the blank] now.” Just plain bad sales technique, anyway. (For more on how to identify Twitter spam, check out Bernard Moon’s post at Mashable.)
A tweet that adds value for my audience of business web site owners: “18 reasons to choose WordPress for your blog or non-blog web site, new post at http://sn.im/iaxm3”
6. Type or paste your tweet into the box at the top of your Twitter page where it says “what are you doing.” Add the “snipped” link from step 4. Press the “update” button.
Do this once every weekday. If you temporarily run out of new material to tweet about, link to a helpful, related post on someone else’s blog.
Voila. That’s it. You don’t need to understand Twitter. You don’t need to follow anybody until you want to. And, you don’t need to worry about who’s following you. Just track your site statistics, and watch your traffic stats improve. And enjoy the river.
