Here’s an amusing thing I’ve noticed recently.
There’s a gap between what the “experts” teach us about marketing on Twitter and what the Pro bloggers actually do.
Everyone knows that Twitter can be a huge source of traffic, so we’re always eager to learn any new strategies that the “experts” teach us.
But lately I’ve stopped listening to the “experts” and decided to take a look at how professional bloggers behave on Twitter and what brings them traffic.
Here are the two popular myths that got busted right away:
1. “Experts” say: Follow relevant people
Really? Let’s look at Brian Clark, who’s only following 203 tweeps. Or Darren Rowse, who’s a little bit over a thousand.
Why do they ignore such a popular tactic? Because it doesn’t work.
I already see some of you checking out Twitter account of Francisco Rosales, who’s following well over 5000 people.
I didn’t ask him about it, but I think this is his way of saying – “Hey, you’re cool!”
Whenever someone will reach out to him with something interesting, or tweet a thoughtful comment about what he does, or just mention him somewhere – Francisco will follow that person to show his appreciation.
2. “Experts” say: Grow your Twitter following
Really? Let’s do a little experiment.
Open FollowerWonk and search for people who have “social media expert” in their bio. You’ll get a list of people ranked by the number of followers they have:
Then open their Twitter profiles and see if they were tweeting any Bit.ly links lately.
I’ve picked Mari Smith, who has 341K followers:
Fun fact about Bit.ly links: you can easily see how many people clicked them by adding “+” at the end of the URL.
Like this: https://bitly.com/1EZMaAR+
I’ve checked just a few links and it seems like Mari Smith is getting somewhere around 50 clicks on the links that she tweets:
I’m sure that “50 clicks” is not the kind of traffic from Twitter that you’re looking for.
Which means that “following relevant people” and “growing the number of your followers” are totally useless activities.
And here’s what actually works:
1. Writing “contagious” articles
There’s one simple concept that a lot of bloggers don’t seem to understand:
You get traffic from Twitter when OTHER people tweet your articles, not you.
Why even bother growing your own Twitter following, when you can have hundreds of other people tweet your article to their followers and bring you traffic?
All you need to do is write the kind of article that makes people want to tweet it – a “contagious article.”
Contagious articles get spread in viral cycles:
- first readers will tweet the article to their followers;
- the followers of the first readers will tweet it to their followers;
- the followers of the followers of the first readers… well, you get the idea.
But how do you write the kind of article that people can’t stop tweeting?
There are many strategies you can use, but the easiest one is to copy what already worked for someone else.
Just go to Buzzsumo and type any keywords related to your niche. The tool will give you a list of articles ranked by the amount of shares they got:
Use these articles as an inspiration and try to write a better piece on your own blog.
There’s always room for improvement. Just spend some extra time on research and create custom visuals for your article.
Here’s how Jimmy Daly used this tactic to write an article that generated 36,282 readers and 1,000 email subscribers.
2. Creating “tweetable quotes”
Everyone loves smart quotes by famous people. Just go to Pinterest and see how much traction a simple image with a quote can get:
If you use catchy relevant quotes in your articles and make them “tweetabe” – you’re going to get a lot of extra tweets.
Let’s see a great example from the blog of Michael Hyatt. If you scroll through his article you will notice a fancy-looking quote by Jeff Coins, which can be tweeted with a single click:
Does this actually work?
Just search this quote on Twitter, and you’ll see a ton of tweets, linking back to Michael’s article:
So how do you create such “tweetable quotes” on your own blog?
If you’re looking for a free solution, you can try an online service called ClickToTweetor a WordPress plugin that has the same name.
But if you need a more advanced solution, I invite you to take a look at my own plugin called TweetDis.
3. Reaching out to influencers
If you want your contagious article to take off, you have to make a few influential people tweet it to their huge audiences.
How do you do that?
First of all, you have to write the kind of article, that would be worthy of a tweet. And then you need to feature some influencer in your article:
- ask them for a quote;
- link to some of their content;
- use their products and share your experience.
One of the most effective tactics I know is The “Drip” Technique by Gregory Ciotti.
While you’re in the process of writing your article, reach out to a few key influencers who are the most knowledgeable in that field and ask them for a short quote that you can use in your article.
Once the article goes live, reach out to them once again to thank them for their contribution.
From Gregory’s experience, many of them will tweet your article to their followers.
So what’s your focus now?
I hope I was able to convince you that it’s much more effective to concentrate your efforts on writing “tweet worthy” content, rather than trying to get more followers on Twitter.
Do you agree with me? Or do you still believe that “engaging in conversations” and “following relevant people” is the best way to get traffic from Twitter?
