No matter your industry, Twitter can be a powerful tool in helping bring users to your site.
A while back I played around with my Twitter marketing strategy and saw a 400% increase in blog traffic!
In this article, I’ll show you how I drove more traffic to my website through a Twitter marketing strategy.
Is Twitter Marketing Really Effective at Increasing Traffic?
Plenty of people have their doubts about Twitter, and they’re not entirely unfounded.
Because the truth is, getting noticed on Twitter is hard. It takes time and lots of tweets.
The average Twitter user spends just one minute a day on Twitter. That’s a pretty small window for brands to deliver targeted social media messages to their users.
And with 500 million tweets a day to compete with, the process is understandably daunting.
So what makes it worth it?
First, it connects you with customers. Commonly used for customer service, Twitter is a great way to ask questions and interact with followers. It’s where you build relationships, and solid relationships = solid sales/customer retention.
It also amplifies your message. If even one of your posts gets retweeted by just 1 or 2 followers, you’ve already practically doubled your reach.
And as I’ll cover below, it’s an effective way to send more traffic to your blog or website. Think of Twitter as your introduction, before you send them to your real message on your blog.
Best Practices to Drive Traffic Through Twitter Marketing
Before I share my best tips for traffic increases, let’s cover the basics.
When using Twitter for business, these are a few tried and true tips to make the most of your tweets.
- First, keep it short. The good news here: Twitter recently doubled its character count to 280 – a big leap from the infamous 140. So while you have a few more characters to play with, you still want to keep them simple and to the point. Focus on conveying one clear message, and if you have more to say, include a link.
- Use images. Put simply, posts with images catch more eyes. In fact, tweets that include an image are 34% more likely to be retweeted. Use pictures, videos, or gifs to engage, and make sure they’re optimized for Twitter by using a site like Canva to create an engaging image and size it accordingly.
- Engage. Ask questions, run polls to interact. At its core, Twitter is made for conversation. Start one by asking your followers interesting questions they’ll be prompted to respond to. It’s also a great way to get customer feedback and learn how to improve through twitter polls.
- Retweet and Reply. Don’t keep the conversation one-sided. Retweet any relevant industry news or helpful articles you find, and always respond to any questions or comments. Twitter is a great place to provide customer service; make sure you do it correctly with prompt replies.
- Add a Voice to Your Company. A little personality goes a long way on social media, and Twitter is an excellent place to add a human element to your brand; make yours stand out unique voice. Present the fun, light-hearted side of your brand to better connect with customers.
4 Tips to Increase Website Traffic Through a Twitter Marketing Strategy:
Here’s how I did it:
1.I realized, if I focus more on Tweeting website blog posts I can drive more traffic to the website.
Ultimately, your end game is likely to drive website traffic from Twitter to the desired location (like your website.)
But to get to your site, customers need a reason.
This is where strategy is key, and in my case, I found a direct correlation between more blog post promotion and more visitors to my site.
Blogs work especially well for Twitter because the low character count allows you to give followers just enough of a tease to make them want to read more – and to do so, they have to follow the link to your blog.
Which means that your headlines and descriptions need to be creative and intriguing enough to earn a click.
Here are a few tips:
- Include a call-to-action (CTA); tell your followers what you want them to do; in this case, tell them to click the link or ask for a retweet
- Capitalize the first letters of every word in your headline (according to a Conductor poll, people prefer them this way)
- Include an intriguing quote from your post, or creative summary
- Use @mentions where possible
Tweeting posts also provides a great way to recycle some of your older, still-relevant blog posts and repost for followers who didn’t catch it the first time.
Because that excellent post you wrote last week deserves to be seen than once, right?
2. I Set Up Auto Twitter Marketing Tweets With MeetEdgar.
Automation is an absolute lifesaver when it comes to Twitter.
As you know, tweeting multiple times a day and at the right times is a must.
But let’s be honest, no one has the time to sit around and wait for the perfect time to compose the perfect post – multiple times a day.
So instead, you use a program like MeetEdgar, where you can preload and schedule all your tweets to be sent when you want them.
As a general rule, you want to send a tweet every hour or two, and as you use the platform you’ll begin to see which times yield the highest engagements for you.
Automating your tweets allows you to control when each tweet goes live, scheduled around the times your customers are most likely to see it.
Now, there are many platforms besides MeetEdgar that are designed to automate the same way.
But the beauty of MeetEdgar is the library function. Every tweet you upload into the system is stored in your own library for future use, so you never lose them.
Each time you load an update into MeetEdgar, you select a category and time slot for it.
Week after week, MeetEdgar will run your posts until it runs out of fresh ones, at which point it will begin to cycle back through old posts based on the category you’ve assigned to each time slot(unless any posts are marked as “use once,” these will be saved in your library, but not reused.)
It will cut your Twitter time in half while likely doubling the number of tweets you’re able to send.
Sounds like a win/win to me.
3. I Started Tweeting Out Blogs About 8 Times Per Day.
With Twitter, frequency is your friend. And if you want to drive traffic through Twitter marketing, the more frequent, the better.
That’s because in the Twitterverse, things move fast. So fast that 5,787 tweets are posted per second. And with numbers like that, it’s not hard to see how your tweet could get lost in the crowd.
So tweet often – 15 times a day is recommended.
I already talked about the importance of blog promotion, so make sure a good portion of those tweets lead directly to your blogs.
That doesn’t mean tweet the same blog post every hour; vary it up and post new posts as well as older ones.
Remember, a tweet’s shelf life is short, so refresh often to get as much traffic to each blog post as possible.
4. I Made Sure to Use Relevant Hashtags to Drive Traffic Through Twitter Marketing.
Twitter 101: Hashtags play a crucial part in expanding the reach of your tweets.
Why? Because tweets with hashtags 2x more engagement than those without one.
Choose them like you would a keyword; make it relevant to your business and one that customers would be likely to search for.
And while it may be tempting to include as many hashtags as possible, keep in mind that tweets with only one are 69% more likely to get retweets than those with more.
On the flip side, posts that include more than two actually show a 17% drop in engagement.
This is why choosing the right hashtags is so important. You don’t get many, so make ‘em count.
But don’t worry; you’re not alone. There are plenty of tools available to help you find the best keywords for your content, such as Hashtagify.me and RiteTag.
From there, do a little research. Which hashtags are your competitors and industry influencers using? Which tend to create the most engagement?
And remember, the character count is still important.
As a reference: Hashtags with 18 characters typically perform best.
Increase Your Website Traffic Through a Twitter Marketing Strategy Today!
Using the four tips above increased our blog traffic from Twitter by thousands.
And the best part is, it’s extremely doable for you too.
By keeping in mind a few best practices and using the four steps, you’ll soon be seeing a big traffic increase to your blog as well.
