Twitter timeline is both a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, it’s raw, unabridged, always moving and shaking – we love it how it keeps us on our toes.
On the other hand, it’s raw, unabridged, always moving and shaking – it’s not easy to grab someone’s attention.
Here’s my personal Twitter Traffic Hack to combat the problem of Twitter visibility:
Tweet in Blocks.
How Does Tweeting in Blocks Work?
Instead of tweeting once and immediately getting lost in the sea of other tweets, tweet in a group of 3-4 tweets.
The first 2-3 tweets should be other people’s posts, quotes, etc, but the last one is always yours – leading back to your blog.
That way, your content will be on top of your Tweet Block and will be likely to get clicked on first.
How to Make Tweeting in Blocks a Breeze
Scheduling all your blocks in advance, spaced 3-4 hours apart is a must.
Thankfully, Buffer makes this task a breeze.
Here’s how to set up your Tweet Blocks in Buffer dashboard:
- go to your Twitter account;
- click on ‘Schedule’;
- click on ‘Add Posting Time’;
- Voilà! here’s your Tweet Block.
Of course, if you don’t use Buffer (do yourself a favor, don’t tell anyone… or better yet, give it a shot!), you can apply the same principles of creating Tweet Blocks with any other scheduler you use.
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~Leonardo Da Vinci
If you are thinking this Twitter Traffic Hack was awesomely simple, actionable, and result-focused, you are absolutely right.
And I’ve got a LOT more where this one came from.
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- What two-minute tip DOUBLES engagement, without any copywriting expertise?
- What three-minute checklist triples conversions even with no coding skills?
Marketing Takeaway
Yep, that’s it.
Now go do it.
Today, tomorrow, and every day.
Off to block in tweets… oops, tweet in blocks,
Just on the day that we are reviewing and revising our Twitter strategy, I stumble upon this pearl of a hack! Thanks for your infinite, actionable wisdom Ana and for sharing the little nuances that make a big difference. I’ll be sure to test this out, pronto.
And if I may ask…
1) What difference did this tactic make to your engagement and conversion rates?
2) Why place the self-serving tweet at the end of the queue? Have you tested other positions?
3) What do you think about applying this tactic to other platforms, e.g. Facebook?
4) Might this tactic run the risk of getting on people’s nerves?
5) Or might you run the risk of missing the prospectrs who are online during those 3-4 hour gaps?
I’m intrigued! Would love to hear your insights.
Konrad x
PS. This post gets a big fat share
All great questions, Konrad.
I wish I could give/show you some concrete stats on this one… but I can’t.
This technique came out of listening to others, watching my Twitter stream and my followers’ reaction to it, and paying attention to Twitter traffic back to TGC. Add a bit of creativity to the mix… ? and there you go!
A couple of random points that might help:
1. Over the years, I’ve noticed a strong trend as far as Twitter traffic is concerned: the more I tweeted (quality is important as well, of course!), the more traffic I got.
2. People unfollow others for all kinds of reason and a) I don’t care, if they don’t like what I do on Twitter, then why would I want them to follow me anyway, right? and b) I’ve never observed a particularly unproportional number of unfollows when I tweet in blocks vs when I don’t have the time to schedule them.
3. I did wonder about the tweet placement as well. And no, haven’t tested it specifically – too much work, quite honestly. Plus, Buffer is a mystery to me; they often end up shuffling my tweet blocks anyway, so I stopped caring too much. ? Over-analysis only takes away from business, not adds to it – my personal belief.
If you do have any stats to share after trying this out, would love to hear from you!
PS And no, I haven’t tested it with Facebook.
Since I do my Weekly Marketing Skinnies, I share a LOT on FB as is – more than most. Considering FB has a very different culture than Twitter… I think I am living dangerously as is. ?
Hi Ana, this article helped me at the right time. I am looking for this type of information and found this helpful. Thanks for sharing and have a great weekend!!
Glad to hear it, Gurunath.
Hi Ana this article came at the right time. I just started working on figuring out how to get through all the noise on twitter.
I’ll give this strategy a roll!
Thanks for sharing
Happy to help, Larry; thanks for stopping by!
Is there any WordPress plugin that can tweet old articles automatically at certain periods of time?
That way there will be a tweet every single day starting right from old to new articles and the loop repeats.
Also, is there any plugin that automatically retweets the tweets that were twitted by my readers from the article?
There are certainly plenty of plugins to retweet old posts, not sure about retweeting readers’ tweets though.
However, the whole point of this post is tweet visibility and simply tweeting out old posts won’t do much for that.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s better to tweet your posts this way than no way at all.
Well yes. Simply tweeting out articles won’t help. I have started with buffer using this guide. Have been harnessing Pinterest for targeted traffic but never really cared about Twitter. Time to do that as well to enhance more visibility to tweets. Thanks!
You are very welcome, Shefali. Let me know how Twitter is treating you. 😉
Hi Ana,
Really a very nice, informative and useful article. I am sure the tip you shared here will help us to make our tweet more visible. I will surely try it.
Thank you for taking time to share such a wonderful article with us.
Pleasure, Vikash; thanks for coming by.
Hi Ana,
Great twitter hack! Thank you for sharing this. I have been doing some twitter blocks, but the blocks were too much of my own content. I do this at convenient times, like in the bathroom, and I’ll retweet people’s shares of my content. Not that I don’t tweet other people’s content, it was just that I wasn’t including those in the “tweet blocks.” With Buffer, I can change that.
I’m glad to know the “tweet blocks” were on the right track. Thanks to you, I’ll adjust and make them more effective.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend,
Matthew
Hmmm… you tweet while in the bathroom? So… next time I see your tweet, I’ll know exactly where you are. 😉
And yes, tweeting others’ (mine, for instance) content is the key to successful tweet blocks.
See you on Twitter!
this is the great trick, i really like it. from few days i am finding the best trick to get more visitors from twitter. this trick is very helpful for me thanks.
Glad you like it, Arun.
I was always thinking to keep tweeting and one day… will be seen, but then later the more I do, the more I’m willing to learn the detail of it… how to be more visible by using variation of twitter features.
You are putting the effort into it, might as well get the most out of it, right, Louis? 😉
A little late but….why do you prefer Buffer to Hootsuite? I was just about to start using Hootsuite. Great article +Ana Hoffman.
No particular reason, Annie; just personal preference I suppose.
I know a lot of Twitter pros like using Hootsuite – take a look: https://trafficgenerationcafe.com/how-to-manage-twitter/
Be sure to attach an image to the tweet with your post too, to make it stick out just a bit more than the others 🙂
Always a good idea, Todd.
On the other hand, posts with images are becoming more of a norm… maybe soon enough the advice would be to stop using images to stand out! lol
Interesting hack and something I’ll definitely try out, Ana! I even had to sign up for the other hacks 😉
Are all the tweets you tweet in one block similar to one another? Or do you do something to make your own tweets stand out, for example by only adding an image to the tweet that links to your content?
I always try to tweet out completely different tweets in a block, Camilla.
I mix posts from other blogs, random thoughts, quotes, and yes, some are with and some without images. But ALL are always helpful. 😉