"May I just say that I am honored that you checked out my tweet and then sent me an email. Wow. That just made my day today!..."
Now, let me share, I don’t normally receive thank-you notes for leaving a response on a blog post. When I left this message, I let the owner know that a Twitter "tweet" caught my attention and drove me to her blog. I decided to leave a message, not only because the post was good, but also because I wanted to encourage the author that her media campaign worked.
That is the goal!
That is the idea!
That is when you know your tweets are working!
Sadly, most people do not think out the strategy. In fact I’d wager to say that most media campaigns are haphazard or unplanned. I speak from experience. Only recently have I planned a strategic campaign for all of my posts! Teachers of social media tell us to get online and blog, tweet, join Facebook, LinkedIn and go for it! What ends up happening is there is much confusion…you spin your wheels…you join every and any site…and you spend hours of wasted time. My goal is to keep my social media to about fifteen minutes per day. Yes, sometimes I go over that time, and spend about thirty minutes!
For some tweeting is:
a hobby
a place to post famous quotes
a place to share their current location or status
a place to share what they are eating
The advertising benefits for driving traffic to your blog, websites or articles is huge. I joined the Southwest Florida, “Empowered Women Network” to share my business expertise as an author, with other women. My reach, not only is Southwest Florida, but through this blog I reach countless others. When I tweet to share my blog post, the reach is world-wide. Twitter is free. Therefore, I think many people forget it is a powerful advertising tool. Investing in networking groups takes money and time, and for me local groups have paid off. I would not consider my business group a hobby, or waste my time at a local networking events. However, loss of productivity can be directly traced to social media sites such as Twitter. In reality Twitter does cost you money in the long run.
You never know who is reading your tweets and taking action. Most people don’t let you know how they found you. And when the twitter posts do work, how can you track whether or not someone clicked on a link for a website URL you posted? You can with URL shortening accounts. I have a free bit.ly account. There is a two-fold benefit to bit.ly. First, it will shorten your website URL and second you can name the URL extension…anything after the words http://bit.ly/YOURTAGLINEGOESHERE You can track the number of clicks for each of your shortened URLs through this account. You can use tiny.url or any similar type of service, there are hundreds of them. Twitter will automatically shorten a long URL.
So, how do you tweet about blog posts? Here is how *not* to do it!
"Here is my blog, read it!"
A better way is to make it cryptic and lure them into the end goal, clicking the link to read the post...
1. How can you get me to your blog? http://bit.ly/EmpoweredWomenNetwork
2. Does Twitter Work? http://bit.ly/EmpoweredWomenNetwork1
3. Twitter Success Stories: http://bit.ly/EmpoweredWomenNetwork2
After each phrase I have typed in a different number, which I have set up using my bit.ly account. In this way I can track the success of the phrases to drive traffic to the specific post I want to bring to the reader’s attention. If you had to choose from the list above, which would work to lure you to this blog post? Number one, number two or number three tweet? If you are here from a tweet containing one of those posts let us know! Many times people read blog posts and do not follow them, nor do they post comments. Believe me, posting a comment on a person's blog makes their day, ask Karen at Faith, Family, and Fibromyalgia!
I will share with you my success rates in the next post, as well as some time saving devices.
Felice Gerwitz held a social media seminar series which is still available to view. For details:
Social media class on Blogging, Twitter, Facebook and Linked In
3 comments:
Felice
Great BLOG post, educational and understandable for someone that is learning the benefits of the social media. Thank you for your continued efforts.
I am terrified of twitter, not that I've ever been to the site, I've read post after post of addicts who must need to have their tweets for some sort of personal gratification. It's all a mystery to me.
I am new to blogging and really enjoy it. People have come to my blog and left very kind comments and even started following it.
Why isn't that good enough? What am I missing here?
Thanks Tammy! I am also learning more and more about social media. The twitter posts were suppose to end last month, yet I keep finding more beneficial information I'm extending it through this month.
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