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How to Drive Traffic From Twitter the Right Way

Let me first comment on what I mean by Twitter traffic “the right way”: easy way, smart way.

My way.

It works differently for every niche, but I am yet to see a niche it doesn’t work for.

Let’s get down to business.

Twitter Traffic: Where Do You Start?

So you have a blog you’d like to generate Twitter traffic to.

The reason I say “blog” is because it’s a lot easier to drive traffic to an online property that actually generates solid valuable content for the potential readers vs a squeeze page.

Let’s assume for the sake of this post that you need to drive traffic from Twitter to your blog.

Now, where do you start?

In this post, I will be referencing some of the older posts I already wrote on the topic of Twitter, as well as adding come new information I’ve never published on my blog before.

I did however share these tips with my email list in the past, so it goes to show that had you been on my list, you would’ve know all these little secrets that generate me thousands of monthly visitors from Twitter.

So I strongly suggest you join my honorable Traffic Hacks email subscribers while at it right now before you go any further (it will open in a new window, so you will still have this post left for you to come back to).

…And we are back.

Why Twitter?

Several reasons, as far as I am concerned.

1. It’s been my largest referral traffic source since day one.

2. It can potentially help you to rank higher in Google for regular organic searches.

3. Your competitors are most likely using it, so you definitely should too.

4. It can be a great hands-free one way link building tool, but more on that later.

Where to Find Targeted Followers?

This is a mistake that most rookies and even some more seasoned bloggers make – follow everybody and anybody who is willing to follow them back thinking that it’s all about the numbers.

It IS all about the numbers when it comes down to Twitter traffic generation, but it’s also about quality of quantity.

Still with me?

You need the kind of followers that are interested in what you have to say/market/sell.

The best way to gain such followers is TO FOLLOW those kind of folks.

Take a few of the keywords that best describe your business and search for them on Twitter.

Now check out the people who come up and start following them.

After you’ve gone through all of your keywords and followed everyone on the list, start looking at people who they follow/are followed by.

With this tactic, you won’t stand a chance of running out of people to follow for a long time. And if you ever do, then go back to the beginning and start all over.

More on the topic:

How NOT to Get Banned by Twitter

But Ana, you say, won’t Twitter ban me for following too many people at once? And don’t they have limits as to how many people you can follow?

Yes and yes – if you don’t know what you are doing or get too aggressive.

Twitter does have limits on how many people you can follow at a time.

It all comes down to the ratio between your followers and people you follow.

You can follow as many people as you want – just about, until you hit 2000.

After that, you have to wait until the number of your followers will reach that number as well. After that happens, you can start following 10% more of the number of your followers.

So if 2000 people are following you, you can follow 2200 (10% more), etc.

Let’s go back to our magic number of 2000 followers.

How do you get 2000 people to follow you and jump over that hurdle?

You have to unfollow those who are not following you back. You HAVE TO.

Here is one of my best kept secrets that only my list saw so far:

My Follow/Unfollow Schedule

Let me show you my exact map for getting thousands of targeted followers in no time.

FYI, the first number is what I call “peaceful” takeover, the second number is “hostile” takeover, meaning you’ll be pushing the envelope with that one, but I never got in trouble doing it before.

Just so you know.

So here it is:

My Follow / Un-Follow Pattern

Week 1 & Week 2

Mon ADD 315-385
Tue ADD 315-385
Wed ADD 315-385
Thurs ADD 315-385
Fri ADD 315-385
Sat Remove those who don’t follow you back
Sun ADD 405-495
(people are more likely to follow you back on Sun than any other day of the week – don’t ask me why)

Week 3 & Beyond

(you still follow the same number of people)

ADD | ADD in AM
ADD | ADD in AM
ADD | ADD in AM
ADD | REMOVE in PM
ADD | ADD in AM
REMOVE | ADD in AM
ADD | REMOVE in AM

Once again, the first way is peaceful (less aggressive); the second way is more aggressive.

I always followed the hostile way, but that’s just me. You have to decide for yourself what you are comfortable with.

Here are some tools to help you with your takeover:

1. As noted above, your potential followers need to be as targeted as possible. Use wefollow.com or twibes.com to find people in your niche and start following their followers or people they follow. Or both.

2. Trust me, you can’t do this by hand. I’ve done a lot of research into automating this process and the best way I found was with TweetAdder.

I use it mostly for following/unfollowing, but you can do so much more with it, like scheduling your tweets, adding up to 5 Twitter accounts, searching for potential followers, adding RSS feeds, and much, much more.

No way around it: if you want to use Twitter as you traffic generation source, like I do, you need to

And now you know how I REALLY do it. 🙂

Why You Need More Than 1 Twitter Account

In one of the Twitter posts I recently wrote How Ana Got Her Twitter Groove Back, I mentioned that, in order to successfully use Twitter for traffic, I would recommend creating more than one Twitter account.

For instance, I have 5 Twitter accounts that I am active with.

How do I manage so many when you are struggling with one?

I don’t want to sounds like a broken record, but I can easily do for 5 accounts what I can do for 1 with my two Twitter tools: MarketMeSuite and TweetAdder.

One of the questions I got a lot after mentioning the idea of more than one account, was this:

“How do you “theme” those accounts? Are they all for different businesses?”

The answer is no – they are all for my Traffic Generation Cafe.

Here’s how I set up mine and recommend you figure out how to do the same with yours:

1. Come up with different interests you personally have.

2. Create an account for each different interest.

Obviously, having 5 accounts over just 1 means that I can get five times more followers than I can with one, plus those followers share similar interests with me, which makes them even more targeted.

How to Get Noticed on Twitter

How do you stand out on Twitter? How do you get through to people despite of all the noise?

This is my best tip on that:

Tweet in blocks.

This is a great way to stand out in your followers’ time line.

Instead of tweeting once and immediately getting lost in the sea of other tweets, tweet in a group of 4 tweets.

The first 3 should be other people’s posts, quotes, etc, but the last one is always yours – leading to your blog. That way it will be on top of your tweet block and will be likely to get clicked on first.

Of course, to make your life easier, I would schedule all your blocks in advance, spaced 3-4 hours apart – you can do that with both TweetAdder and MarketMeSuite.

There are also several great posts on this blog regarding retweeting and how to get more out of it:

How NOT to Get Overwhelmed

Many of you are not using Twitter for this reason alone.

I know, I know. Twitter is noisy, there’s a lot going on, and it’s easy to get carried away and watch your day go down the drain while using it.

My simple answer is: put yourself on a Twitter budget.

You know how the best way not to overspend in a grocery store is to bring a list of things you need and stick with it while shopping?

Well, here’s my daily Twitter schedule that keeps me on Twitter for about 45 minutes per day MAX; most of the times, not even that.

  1. Read your @mentions and reply to all of them.
  2. Post a favorite quotation, recent news link, or just basic info (this can be from online or offline resources) HINT: Go to http://alerts.google.com and set up some alerts for your interests to be automatically sent to your inbox.
  3. Scan your own timeline & look for conversations to jump into.
  4. Go to http://search.twitter.com, search for topics of interest to you, and get into a few conversations there as well. While you’re there, go ahead and search for your own name and/or company name to see if anyone is talking about you.
  5. I don’t ever check my DMs any longer – too much work and too much spam, although if you have a few extra minutes, might be a good thing to do.
  6. Repeat this at least 2 times a day – takes me about 15 minutes per block.

Twitter Traffic Marketing Takeaway

There’s a lot written about Twitter and a lot more being written about it as you read this guide.

Are there any secrets to using Twitter the right way?

If there are, you know them all by now, especially after reading this post.

There’s nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that I didn’t reveal to your in this post, especially with all the additional reading I am sending you to.

STOP thinking about it, researching it, complaining about it.

Just do it – my way or your way, but use it to your advantage.

From Ana with

 

39 Intelligent comments · espresso yours below

  1. Agree with you Ana, I’ve seen and heard a lot of people getting banned on twitter due to aggressive following. I’ve recently started using Twitter for my blog and I shall keep in mind the above tips that you’ve talked about. Awesome post !

    Thanks

  2. The toughest part in social media, not mentioned enough, is the difficulty of building a relevant following.

  3. Great post! I’m always trying to read up on social media traffic generation strategies and Twitter is certainly one of the sites I’m very interested in. Twitter is very effective for targeting your followers and increasing traffic, sales, and your ROI.

    Glad to see someone else is also using multiple accounts. Overall, great advice and great post!

  4. Some great tips and ideas here, thanks Ana! I have not had much interaction with Twitter followers, (my fault I know). I guess I listened to too many internet marketers who said Twitter wasn’t worth it. I have over 1,500 followers, but not nearly all of those are targeted. I’ll need to work on that, following your tips – thanks again!
    P.S. So it is considered legal to have more than one account? LOL, just wondered – thought it might get me banned if it was found out?!

  6. Wow, some awesome information, thank you so much for sharing! It is going to take me some time to read through all of this in detail and start implementing some of these strategies but it will be SO worth it!

  7. Wow Ana, this is simply fantastic. Thank you so much for this detailed guide. Now I understand why you have 5 accounts instead of one, makes total sense. Thanks.

  8. Ana I read on another of your posts that you follow roughly 2500 people per day on Twitter. If I’m accurate in the numbers I have to say that’s an awesome amount — at least it seems so to me. The potential problem as I see it with having an enormous amount of followers is that you can’t make anything coherent out of your stream. So much stuff coming in at any given time. It would seem the people following you might have the same issue and may never see your messages. No?

    • Yes, I found Twitter to be a useless fire hose of information, Thomas, and stopped trying to make sense of it a while ago.

      My goal with Twitter is to bring as many people as possible back to my blog and turn them into regulars. And the best way to do that is by sending them a direct message inviting them to come and promote themselves on my blog.

      I think I mention this tactic in one of the posts you read.

  11. Tweeting in blocks is something that is new to me and I thank you so much for that. The more i think about it, the more it makes sense. I might also copy your schedule to avoid being overwhelmed.

    Also, Hey! Zed! 🙂

  12. Hi Ana,

    I liked Twitter when it was scraped by Google. But I never viewed it as a really effective communication device. To me its way too noisy and cluttered. Are you really getting results with it..still?

  13. Hey Ana,

    A very comprehensive method of building twitter followers. There is so much info here, I think I need to read this more than once. Got to check out the 2 softwares you recommend for managing Twitter too.

  14. You earned every one! If you don’t mind me asking – what plugin/html code do you use to get all of them share icons static on the right hand side?

  15. You are an absolute star! Thanks for this, I’ve had my wrist slapped off Facebook for “spamming!” (I so wasn’t). Thanks again 🙂

  16. I’m glad you found a suitable application, Boris. It is important to think carefully before making a decision, so no problem there.

  18. Very useful tips Ana.
    Have just signed up for wefollow.com and the first two people I added followed me back within 10 min. I have been wondering for a while how you have been able to get that many people to follow you and why you have multiple accounts on twitter. Now I know. Thank you for sharing your ways in this great post 🙂

    • Thank you once again Ana. I have got almost 10% new followers since I read this post. They may not stick around, but you have really made me change my Twitter tactics to a more aggressive tactic.

  19. Ana,

    As always – great stuff. I especially love your twitter posts (for some weird reason) I am not that big of a Twitter fan – but it’s growing on me. Anyway – I did get a whole lot of good ideas and insights from the post, so I felt it appropriate to acknowledge you with a thanks.

    Also, the pay with a tweet thing was news to me…. it’s so simple I felt stupid after reading it… well – thanks again Anna. Keep up the great work.

    Ryan

    • Thanks for visiting, Ryan and for your comment. It’s my pleasure to share new things with my readers.

  20. Great peace of article, i can share with my customers, who are not so active on Twitter. As search engines are giving more and more importance to Social Media presence, having a good active twitter account, should give some brownie points in the eyes of search engines.

    Thanks Ana

  22. I checked out MarketMeSuite based upon a review of sorts that you did Anna and then bought it.
    I am going to be really going over this post to set up exactly like you said and I will tell you the results that I get.
    Lets say 3months to really have a good showing or not!
    Thanks for you content and sharing your insights.
    I am not sure yet about the extra accounts, but after going through this regime I will be better able to report on that as well.
    Thanks Billy.

  23. Hi Ana,
    You’ve made a strong case for twitter. Pretty simple and straight forward especially with the tools added to it. That’s automation on steroids!!!

    Now Ana, if you had to make a choice…must make a choice between…marketmesuite and tweetadder, which will you go for?

    After your post on using marketmesuite for backlinks, I’m in a cross road which to buy.
    Marketmesuite or Tweetadder?

    Tim

      • Thanks Ana, will marketmesuite allow me to mass follow, mass unfollow etc with geo-targeting like tweetadder does?

        Tim

        • Unfortunately, not, Tim.

          No follow/unfollow with MMS; I use TweetAdder for that. Actually, it does allow for targeted follow, but you have to follow by hand – so I never use that feature for this very reason.

    • At least it sticks with you – a dream of every blogger to make “sticky” content. Never mind the means. 🙂

      Thanks, Joe!