Attention! Any business that is investing in great content for a corporate blog: If your team isn’t using Twitter to promote what you’re saying, it’s missing a huge free exposure opportunity.
Too many businesses still discount Twitter as a mouthpiece for sharing random personal thoughts or silly photographs.
The truth, as any storyteller or writer knows, is that Twitter is a great medium to incite interest in conversations about your industry. It’s also a great way to get people to look at content that is being published elsewhere. It turns out that 140 characters is a great length for the sorts of headlines or revelations that leave readers begging for more – and that position your company as an expert in a given topic. I personally use Twitter to drive traffic to all of the blog posts that I write.
Here are three ways you can use Twitter to build a bigger following for your blog:
- Promote content more than once. One challenge with Twitter is the amount of noise at certain times of day. That means, depending on when you send out a Tweet linking to your blog, it may be overlooked. So, Tweet it again. And again. By examining the time of day your Tweets create the most blog views, you can fine tune your posting schedule.
- Schedule Tweets so they coincide with your blog’s publishing schedule. There are plenty of third-party tools (including HootSuite or TweetDeck) that allow you to write a Tweet and schedule it to go live later.
- Respect your followers and retweeters. Don’t make the mistake of considering Twitter as a one-way broadcast medium. If Tweets about your blog are inspiring conversations, retweets, or comments, take note and respond accordingly.