An Open Door, a Gust of Wind, & Twitter Tools
I have not been blogging for very long – a little over two months now. In that time, I have learned a little bit about many things, and more importantly, I have met several really great people. Five years ago I found it fascinating that, in an era of assumed on-line anonymity, one could find, meet, and relate to people half way across the world so easily. Today there are many people who think that has changed. Perhaps I am hopelessly optimistic, but I do not believe that it has.
An Open Door
I guess there is nothing I can do about it. Despite my understanding of computer science, business, and other fun things, I still know only so much about blogging.
I had been thinking about starting a blog for a while, not really knowing what I would write. Then one day, without doing any real planning, pulled the proverbial trigger. Few people would label me as spontaneous, but there you go.
Really, I just like the idea of being able to communicate with people from different areas of the world, and the technology related to social media also interests me very much. So, how does one make new friends in the current state of the ever changing World Wide Web (and does anyone call it that anymore)?
A Gust of Wind
Some people say that the best ways to attract attention to your blog are with SEO techniques, commenting in other people’s blogs, etc. These are all things that I am working on right now. The first paragraph, for example, could include an opening question that includes words that are currently being searched for on Google. But, that seems a bit cheap in the context of this article.
Other people have said that motivation and constant posting is what it takes to bring readers to your blog. Could be – so far I have not posted all that much.
Probably 70% of the traffic that I receive on this site is due to Twitter advertising. It seems weird to me, but it is true. And, I was getting no traffic from Twitter prior to using a tool to help.
Twitter Tools
A while back a person going by the moniker myservesa tweeted a link to a “Real time targeted marketing engine to me. I visited the site and noticed that it is supposed to “find new potential customers on twitter according to chosen keywords and help you initiate a conversation.” Hmmm. I wondered what this meant, and if it worked. And, what is a customer in my context anyway?
On this blog, we are currently using the Latest Tweets and Retweet plugins which seem to be pretty good. The former shows icebluebanana‘s most recent tweets in the sidebar, and the latter creates a Retweet button in each post. It is not clear if we are going to keep these yet. Also, we are using Sexy Bookmarks in each post that include a button to Tweet about a specific post, so that is not a concern.
What I want out of a Twitter-related plugin is as follows:
- It should enable us to automatically send a single Tweet when there is a new blog posting. We should be keeping the followers aware but should not be spamming anyone. That is really important.
- The people writing comments in a post at icebluebanana should be enabled to include their Twitter id as part of their comments. I am not sure just yet in what form this should be.
After a quick Google search, I found many different options, but none really seemed to match up. I found Simple Twitter Connect, which seems ok for our needs. So, I set out to test it.
The first thing that I noticed is that Simple Twitter Connect requires you to have a Twitter application. Now, that makes me nervous as I know that Twitter applications are still in beta. What if something changes and this plugin fails because of it? How much do we intend to rely upon this for our Twitter interactions?
Plus, the further I got into this plugin, the less I liked it. Not that it is a bad plugin – on the contrary, it is quite impressive. However, it seems that it may be too much for what we need today. Plus, on the developer’s blog, he is downright abusive to some of his commentators. That is not something I want to support.
So, onto the next one – Twitter Tools. As you might expect, installation was very simple. I entered the Twitter account details, chose to enable the ability to “tweet” any time there is a new post, and then turn on the sidebar widget to show recent tweets.
What were the results you say? Well, it just works. There was almost no hassle. As I write this, one of the scheduled posts went up. On twitter.com, it looked like this:
Your Turn
Well, that is it. What tools do you use to make it easier to attract readers?
Related posts
- 10 Ways To Come Up With Blogging Topics
- Local development part 2: Folders and Java
- Affiliate marketing – Amazon, Audible, and Gamefly
- Blogging Goals Wrap Up & Free pdf
- Are You A Keyword Analysis Tool?
Twitter: bigredtomato
said:
Great article Mark, I hadn’t realised you’ve only been going 2 months. It seems like you’ve been around forever.
This is really useful. I’ll have a look at this now.
Facebook has got to be part of the strategy to drive content to your blog. As a new user to Facebook though I’m still getting to grips with it.
.-= Matthew Needham´s last blog ..Why you don’t achieve your goals =-.
Hey Matt,
Yep, just over two months & its been fun. Sometimes I feel like I have been around forever.
I have not really gotten into Facebook much at all yet. There are a few security issues that I was concerned about. Hopefully next month I will have some time to put into that.
Have a great day!
Twitter: jeansarauer
said:
I’ve used Tweet Deck and twitterfeed for feeding blog posts but both ended up having their moments of unreliability so I gave up and went back to manual posting the links. For that I use Yoono, which lets me update everything (twitter, fb, linked in) at once.
.-= Jean Sarauer´s last blog ..Empire Building 101: Designing a Custom Content Strategy =-.
Hey Jean -
Thanks for mentioning those! I will have to look @ Yoono later today. I tend to send most tweets via blackberry UberTwitter or from cotweet. Both have their drawbacks, but work reasonably well.
I have not yet gotten much involved with Facebook or Linked In. I suppose I am behind the times again…
Have a great day!
Mark,
Thanks for the great article and Jean, thanks also for the info about Yoono. That’s one of the cool things I’ve learned since I’ve really started to just learn about blogging recently (yes, I had one before, but didn’t know what I was doing), is that by getting involved in these little communities and getting to know people, it’s nice taking nuggets of information from all of them to improve myself and my blog.
Thanks again for sharing your experiences with Twitter.
Brandon
.-= BrandonBurgh´s last blog ..Instant WordPress Training is LIVE! =-.
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for the comment – let us know how Yoono works out for you. Have a great day!
Twitter: TheJohnSoares
said:
Mark, thanks for sharing this info about Twitter.
I’ve only been truly active on Twitter for a month, and I’m very interested in the most efficient ways to use it. Soon I’ll put this on my high priority list.
.-= John Soares´s last blog ..Beat Parkinson’s Law — Get More Done More Quickly =-.
Hi John,
I have not been hugely active yet myself. Right now, I am in the process of trying to determine how I will use it.
Thanks for stopping by & have a nice day!
Twitter: TheJohnSoares
said:
Let us know what you decide…
.-= John Soares´s last blog ..Beat Parkinson’s Law — Get More Done More Quickly =-.
Twitter: buildrankprofit
said:
Mark! Great post about the power blogging can have! I have been at it for about 3 months now, and I too am noticing the hill gets easier to climb the more momentum you build. You certainly are making an impact for a 2 month old blog.
Can I just point out to you and your readers that the way I first found you was because you RT’d one of my posts. Not sure if it was from bloggers base or from my site, but when I saw the RT I thought, if this Mark character is taking the time to tweet my stuff then I will take the time to check his site out.
Wow – the power of twitter – and Retweeting!
I just use TweetMEME to insert the tweet button, WP to twitter as the plugin to auto post to twitter, but I think I will add the option as you have below to insert commentators twitter ID
.-= alex´s last blog ..The Power of Copy =-.
Hey Alex –
Just to be clear, I retweeted that link to your article because it was really well written. I have been reading your blog on my phone while traveling to work (which I have been doing too much of, really) & it is great. Yeah, that is dangerous. Sometimes you need to take risks.
Notice the three trackbacks below the comments here – Karen Ruby (@kruby), John Soares (@TheJohnSoares), and Maggie Mayfair (?).
I am a huge fan of Karen and John‘s blogs. I was not able to find Maggie on Twitter, but would love to so I can thank her. These are great people to follow and learn about.
There are plenty of half-good bloggers, but there are quite a few really excellent, thoughtful writers & that is what I like about it.
I think that the plugin is called TwitterLink or something like that.
Thanks for the vote of confidence – I really appreciate it!
Have a great day!
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the info about Twitter. Oddly enough I just posted a question on Alex’s website asking him about his Twitter account.
My Twitter score is an embarrassing 64%. I went through today and deleted a bunch of people & places I was following for no real reason.
So I’ll ask you, and your readers, do you ever clean house on Twitter?
Do you follow everyone who follows you, and vice-versa?
How do you find quality people to follow and make sure they follow you. From what I understand, the number of followers and followees needs to be close for Twitter to find you relevant.
Once again, thanks for all your help and I’m so glad you posted about this.
.-= Scott Barron´s last blog ..Choose a Fax Service =-.
Twitter: buildrankprofit
said:
Tweepi baby Tweepi
Scott my friend, the only thing I do in terms of ‘house keeping’ is to login to tweepi (dotcom) every few days and follow a few hundred people who have similar interests. I then login a few days later and unfollow those not following me.
Tweepi is great for that as you can search under these terms and just ‘unfollow all’
Check it out – it obviously works since I got a 95! LOL
oh yeah, and it’s free
.-= alex´s last blog ..How does your Blog Stackup? =-.
Great recommendation Alex! Yet another tool I will have to look into at some point. Thanks!
Thanks Mark & Alex,
You like how I take over a blog? Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.
But I gotta check out Tweepi now.
Added to my “things to do” list for the day!
.-= Scott Barron´s last blog ..Choose a Fax Service =-.
I have not yet removed anyone from my following list, but I may at some point in the future.
When someone follows me I tend to look at what they have tweeted in the past couple of days & if I am interested in what they have tweeted or linked to, I will follow them.
I don’t know what my score is, but I really just try to focus on following the right people and tweeting things that are helpful in some way.
Thanks for the conversation and have a great day Scott.
Your Twitter Grade : 90.44.
Obviously you’re doing something right!
Thanks for the email, look forward to a Twitter tutorial for dummies like me. Sometimes I scare myself.
.-= Scott Barron´s last blog ..Choose a Fax Service =-.
Ha –
Thanks for checking that! Have a good night!
Twitter: otto42
said:
I’m sorry that you find some of my comments “abusive”, but if you want to try Simple Twitter Connect again, I’d still be glad to help you with any problems you have.
.-= Otto´s last blog ..Ottopress – A New Blog =-.
Hi Otto,
I appreciate you saying so. I will take a look at it again this weekend.
Have a good day!
Mark,
Really enjoyed this post, and your about, in terms of why and how you’re here in the blogosphere. I’m fairly new myself and also really enjoying meeting the community of people, in my case, in personal development. I really need to do more with my design, I’m just using a free WordPress template. But I really have no idea how to put up my own design, even though I have the domain for Insanely Serene…That would allow me to add more code like the share love icons, and twitter apps, etc. Well, one can only do what one can do, and I’m pretty happy just posting and talking to resondents and visiting other blogs for now.
Linda
.-= Linda Wolf (Insanely Serene)´s last blog ..7 Things that Keep Me Sane – Guest Post by Christine Livingston =-.
Hi Linda,
I know what you mean. There are so many things to learn. I tend to have more of a problem with time, though.
I use a free template as well, though I modified it quite a bit. Having said that, it seems like the theme does not matter so much so long as it looks good and is not the same one everyone else uses. Your content looks pretty good to me (obviously) and that is what got me to read your blog.
Anyway, I am glad you took the time to stop by and leave a comment.
Have a great day!