Buffer App – you may have heard about it over the past few months. Lots of people have been talking about how they use the Buffer App to Tweet more effectively.

You may be wondering – What Is Buffer App. In this article I’ll explain what it is and why you may (or may not) want to use it.

What Is Buffer?

The Buffer App website says it best:

Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.

Buffer App is really very simple. It works on the premise that a lot of the time, the Tweets that we send aren’t seen by our followers. This is because of the way that Twitter is. Twitter, like Facebook (well at least, like Facebook used to be) is based on a timeline. So your tweets appear as they happen in someone’s Twitter stream. If they have a lot of friends, then they may not notice your tweet, particularly if they aren’t looking at Twitter around the time that you make your tweet.

So if we accept that a lot of our tweets aren’t getting the biggest audience that they could, we need to figure out how to change that.

And this is where Buffer App comes in.

Buffer lets you schedule your tweets at a time that your followers are more likely to see them. I’ve written before about how I live in Australia and most of my followers are in America and Europe. So I’m asleep for a lot of the time that they’re active on Twitter.

The way I get around this is that I automate some of my tweets, using TweetAdder. But whilst Tweetadder is good, it doesn’t give me as much control over the timing of my tweets as Buffer does.

How Do I Use Buffer App?

Schedule Your Tweets For The Maximum Audience

Buffer is very simple to use.

Firstly, you register on their site and enter the details of your Twitter account.

Next, you go into the ‘Settings’ tab and enter your preferred Tweet schedule.

I’ll add another blog post soon about how to determine your ideal tweeting schedule.

Next, you download the Buffer App browser extension. I use Firefox, so I downloaded the Buffer App extension for Firefox. Once the Buffer App extension is downloaded, you’ll see a little Buffer App icon sitting at the bottom of your FireFox window.

The rest is so simple. Whenever you’re on the web and reading something you want to share with your readers, you click on the Buffer App icon at the bottom of your Firefox window. This will open a pop up box that has the title and description from the web page.It also automatically shortens the URL. You can also add your Bit.ly details in the Buffer settings if you want to use Bit.ly as your URL shortener.

You’re able to change any of the text around to suit what you want to say (HINT: always try and add the Twitter ID of the person who’s content you’re tweeting. If you do this they’re more likely to see that you’ve re-tweeted their content).

When you’re happy with your Tweet, just click on the ‘Add To Buffer’ button at the bottom and the tweet is added to your buffer.  It’ll be sent sometime in the future, depending on how you’ve set up your Buffer account.

It’s that simple.

There are some other ways you can add content to your buffer – I’ll explain these in a later post or alternatively, head on over to the Buffer App site and see what else it can do.

What Is Buffer App – Is It For You?

I’ve blogged before about how some people are comfortable automating some aspects of their Twitter use, and others aren’t. That’s fine. Figure out what suits you and do it.

If you’re not comfortable with automating any aspects of your Twitter use, then Buffer App isn’t for you. But consider this – Buffer App isn’t just mindless automation with no quality control. You determine what goes into your buffer. The only bit of the automation is when the tweet is sent.

If you are happy to automate some of your Tweeting, Buffer App has its place.

Buffer App – Pricing Plans

I’ve been using the free version of Buffer App. It gives me the ability to add one Twitter account and one Facebook account. I can have a maximum of 10 tweets in my buffer.

There are two other paid plans that give you the ability to add more Twitter and Facebook accounts and have more space in your buffer. Whether you need these extra features depends on how you think you’ll use the Buffer App.

My advice is to start with the free version, get used to it and work out whether you need one of the premium versions.

And if you refer other uses to Buffer App, they give you one extra space in your buffer for each new user you refer. So use my link please!

Other Options

I mentioned earlier how I use TweetAdder for some of my automated tweets. It does the job, but doesn’t allow me to schedule specific times for the tweets to go out. It also does a bunch of things that Buffer doesn’t, so it’s not fair to compare the two.

Hootsuite is my main Twitter dashboard, and it gives me the ability to schedule tweets. The only problem is that it’s more complicated to do this than Buffer App. Buffer is set up to send tweets at the times I’ve pre-set. With Hootsuite I’ve got to enter the date and time in every time I want to schedule a tweet.

The concept of Buffer App is excellent. No-one wants to send out Tweets that don’t get seen, and Buffer App helps you increase the visibility and effectiveness of your tweets. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more companies copy the Buffer concept. I just mentioned Hootsuite – it’d be a relatively simple thing for them to add some customisable tweet schedules like buffer. Or alternatively, perhaps the Buffer App starts to talk directly with the other Twitter apps out there so the scheduling happens automatically.

My preference is to have all my tweeting done from one interface, so using Hootsuite, TweetAdder and Buffer App is not the ideal, but it gets the job done.

I’m convinced in the merits of using Twitter to connect with other bloggers and people who would be interested in the topics I write about. Buffer App is another tool that I can use to make sure I’m getting maximum leverage out of Twitter. Go ahead, sign up for the free plan and see what you think.

Did you know that you can feed RSS feeds into Twitter? In this article I’ll explain why you may choose to automatically feed an RSS feed into your Twitter account, and I’ll explain how to do it.

Why automate an RSS feed into Twitter?

In previous articles I’ve written about how to get more Twitter followers and how to use Twitter more effectively. One of the keys was to make sure you Tweet lots of interesting content.

When I made a decision to use Twitter more effectively as a strategy to get more people to visit my site, I found that Tweeting other people’s content was a good way to get noticed, and it was also a great way to help other people. I didn’t want my Twitter stream to be all about me, so having a healthy amount of links to other blogs was a good thing. I also discovered that people who’s blogs I liked reading may not be as well know to my Twitter followers, so it was a good opportunity to introduce my followers to some other quality bloggers.

When I talk about ‘Tweeting other people’s content I’m not talking about re-Tweeting their tweets. I do this sometimes, but not all that regularly. What I am talking about is tweeting other people’s blog posts. So if I was  reading a good article on a blog, I’d make the effort to hit the Tweet button (if there was one) or I’d copy and paste the link into Twitter and post it there.

After a while, I realised I was Tweeting a lot of posts from a small group of bloggers. Around the same time, I discovered how to feed RSS feeds automatically to my Twitter account. In the rest of this article I’ll show you how to automate this. I’ll show you how easy it is to get RSS feeds into Twitter.

What if I don’t want to automate it?

I know that whenever people talk about automating anything to do with Twitter, it opens up a can of worms. I wrote an article about why I automate my Twitter Direct Messages a while back, and it generated a bit of interest.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide how you feel about automating things. I’m comfortable automating some things to do with Twitter, but I’m still very active on my Twitter account, making sure I interact with people.

In my opinion Tweeting other people’s blog posts can be a good thing as long as the content is valuable to your followers. You may decide to automate this. If your entire Twitter stream is full of these Tweets, it’s not a good thing. There needs to be a healthy balance.

As I wrote last week, wear your own armour – make a decision about your values and the way you want to do business. If you’re comfortable adding RSS feeds into Twitter, then do it.

Using TwitterFeed to add RSS feeds into your Twitter account

I use a service called TwitterFeed to manage the RSS feeds I want to put into my Twitter stream. It’s very simple to use, and it’s free.

There are other ways to do this, but I wanted to find a way that was simple and automatic, and didn’t need me to remember to login to a program or website to make it happen.

Step 1 – Set Up An Account

Go to TwitterFeed and you’ll see an option at the top of the screen to create an account. Click on it and it’ll ask for your email address etc.

Once your account is set up you’ll be able to start adding feeds.

Step 2 – Find a Feed

Find a site that you want to promote and grab its RSS feed. You’ll usually see an RSS button somewhere on the site. Copy the RSS feed URL to your clipboard.

If you’re looking for a good one, you can always add http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bloggerbusinessplan!

Step 3 – Add The Feed

In the TwitterFeed dashboard, you select the option to add a new feed. You name the feed (only you see the name), and copy the feed URL into the URL field. There’s an option to test the RSS feed – select this to make sure you’ve got the right URL.

Once the feed is in place, select the ‘Advanced Settings’ button to open up some more options.

Update Frequency – the option you select here determines how often TwitterFeed will check the RSS feed for new blog posts. You are also able to tell it how many new posts to Tweet at a time.

Post content – you have the option to choose both the post title and the description to be added to the Tweet, or just the title. A lot of the time I choose just the title. You do have the option to post to other social media accounts, such as Facebook. If you are posting to Facebook, you may prefer to post both the title and description.

You also have the option here to shorten your post link using a URL shorter. I set up an account with Bit.ly and entered my account details into here. The advantage of having an account with Bit.ly is that you’re able to login to Bit.ly and check your stats – in particular to see which URLs have been clicked on and how many times.

Post Sorting – I leave this set at the default option of the most recent published date.

Post Prefix and Post Suffix – you’re able to enter up to 20 characters for the post-prefix and post-suffix. I tend to not use the post-suffix option, but do use the post-prefix option. Usually I enter something like ‘latest article from …’. I’ll either add in the name of the blog or the twitter name of the blog’s author.

Keyword Filter – I haven’t used this option, but it does allow you to filter the RSS feed by adding certain keywords. It may be useful if you are adding an RSS feed that features a whole bunch of different topics, but you only want selected tweets on a certain topic to come through.

Once you’ve completed all the options here you select the ‘Continue to Step Two’ option. This takes you to the next page.

Step Four – Select Your Account

On the next page, you will have the option of selecting which social media accounts the RSS feed will go to. You have the option of Twitter, StatusNet, Hellotxt, Facebook and LinkedIn. At this stage, I’m only adding RSS feeds into Twitter. In the future I may also post them to other Social Media accounts.

When you’re starting out, you need to authenticate your Twitter account before you’re unable to add it. This is a really simple process and involves you logging into Twitter and authorising TwitterFeed to post to your account.

When you’ve done it once, next time you will be able to select your twitter account from the drop-down box.

And that’s all there is to it. As you can see it’s really simple to add RSS feeds into Twitter using a tool such as TwitterFeed.

I also like using TwitterFeed, because its dashboard gives me the ability to automatically pause or edit the RSS feeds. So if I want to stop automatically tweeting somebody’s blog posts, I can simply pause that feed in the dashboard rather than having to delete it completely. I can then turn it back on later if I want to.

RSS Feeds Into Twitter – What Else Do You Need To Know?

I must admit, I got a bit carried away when I first started doing this. I added a lot of RSS feeds to my twitter stream end soon realised this was properly too much. I added some feeds that weren’t producing a lot of great content so I quickly paused these and stopped automatically tweeting them.

I suggest you start off small, and perhaps only add a couple blog feeds initially (including mine of course!). I also will only add RSS feeds for blogs that I also read regularly, and that produce quality content. I’m very careful who I will tweet about.

What do you think about adding RSS feeds into twitter. Do you think it’s a good idea? Is it something you’ve done before? Do you think you would do it now?

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. And don’t forget to Tweet this post!

In this week’s weekly wrap I talk about Triberr and ideas around how to price your ebooks.

Triberr is a site I’ve mentioned before, but this week I started to use it. It’s a great way to get your blog’s content shared to a wider audience. You join a tribe of people, and whenever someone adds a new post to their blog, the tribe sent out an automatic tweet to their followers. The tribe that I’ve joined has a combined audience of just over 50,000 followers, so when I write a new article (like this one), it’s going to go to the Twitter streams of over 50,000 people. Hopefully, some of them will click through and view the blog article and become part of my community.

I also talk a little bit about pricing of e-books. This part came about because of a blog post over at Blogging Bookshelf called Why You Already Have a Money-Making eBook.Whilst it was a guest post by someone else, Tristian left the first comment (it is his blog!) and talked about how he would find it hard to charge much more than $14 for an eBook. This resulted in a lot of comments around how to price an eBook. I’ve got an opinion on this subject and I share it in the video. Let me know what you think. How much should an eBook cost? I’ll do a follow-up article on this sometime in the future, as it’s something I feel strongly about – most bloggers underestimate the value they provide.

Hope you enjoy the weekly wrap. Please leave a comment and share the post with others.

Here’s the direct link to my YouTube page

I’ve written a few articles about Twitter this year – you can see my Twitter Summary here. One of the things that I’ve learnt about Twitter is that very few people know how to write an effective direct message. In this article I’ll show you an example of the Direct Message I send to all my new Twitter followers, and I’ll give some examples of what not to do.

My Opinion on Twitter Direct Messages

There’s two uses for direct messages on Twitter.  Firstly, you can send direct messages to your new followers.  I think this is a good idea.

You can also send direct messages to either selected people or all your followers at other times.  I’m ok with sending a DM to a particular person if there’s something you want to say in private to them, but I’m not a big fan of direct messages being sent to all your followers – I see this as spam.

In this article I’ll explain how to set up an automatic direct message to go out to your new followers.

Sending an automatic direct message to your new followers

Some people are against sending an automatic DM to every new follower – they hate the automation aspect of it. I think the bigger issue is that most people don’t know what to say, so most of the welcome DM’s that they send don’t have any real value.

Earlier in the year I followed @JohnHaydon and received the best DM back from him.  I’ve copied his idea (he said it was ok!) and started using it.

I’ve created a tweet that suggests other people that the recipient may like to follow.  I can’t remember who John had on his, but I made a list of some of the bloggers who I was following and who I thought my followers may also like to follow.

This approach is different to most of the other DM’s you receive – they’re all about promoting the person who sent it.  My DM’s are all about promoting other people.

Here’s an example of one of the DM’s I send:

@TwitterUserName: Hi, thanks for following. You may also like the tweets of @patflynn @problogger and @johnhaydon. You can see my site at http://bit.ly/blcLH7

There is is – simple, but providing the recipient with recommendations of three other people they can follow. You may have noticed I’ve also put a link to my site at the end. I figured there was still space to promote myself, as long as it wasn’t the main focus of the DM.

I have a couple of alternative versions of this message, each promoting different people.

How I Set Up My Automated Twitter Direct Message

It’s actually quite simple to set up an auto DM as your Twitter welcome message.

Firstly, go to SocialOomph and set up an account.  They have two types of account – free and premium – you’ll only need the free version for the process I’m about to show you, although the Premium version does provide some pretty nice features.

On the left hand side menu in SocialOomph is a button called “Direct Messages”. Hover over this and click the ‘Schedule New DM’ option.

Enter a couple of versions of your welcome direct message – there’s a section to click on to learn how to do this. It’s a good idea to mix up the people you’re going to recommend – maybe have three or four different options.

Above the box where you insert your message, click the “Auto Welcome” box to ensure the message gets sent to all new followers.  This is important! I used to use TweetAdder to send my welcome DM’s, but it was a manual process, and sometimes I’d forget to use it and send the messages.  With SocialOomph, it’s completely automated and I don’t have to worry about anything.

Mistakes I’ve Seen That You Should Avoid

I use HootSuite to manage my Twitter account, and I have a column set up to view all the DM’s I receive.  Unfortunately, the majority are DM spam that provide no real value. I’ll usually unfollow these people.

There are some people who send DM’s that are valuable and interesting, but there are many that are ineffective.

Things I’ve seen that shouldn’t be repeated:

• DM’s that are over the 140 character limit so sentences are cut off abruptly (I’ll admit it, I did this by accident once!)
• DM’s that are trying to use spun text to create different versions, but something has gone wrong with the spinning, so you actually see two versions of the message.
• DM’s that are pointless – “Thanks for following – I don’t have anything special to say, but watch my tweets”. Is that really the best you can do? Don’t send me anything!
• DM’s that are lies – “I’ve created a special video just for you…”. Really. I don’t believe you. You’ve created a generic video that is trying to sell something and this is the only way you can get anyone to view it.
• If you are going to add a link, make sure it works!

When Else Should You Use A DM?

Rarely! I only use DM’s for my welcome message to new followers, and I automate it so I’m sure every new follower gets a message. I don’t use DM’s for anything else.

Whilst the option exists to send bulk DM’s to all your Twitter followers, please don’t. I hate it and it comes across as impersonal and spammy. It’s also a great way to lose lots of followers.

If you’ve got something valuable to say on twitter, do it in the public stream so everyone can see it, not by DM

Feedback I’ve Received

I’ve received some very positive feedback since I’ve started sending these DM’s out. A couple of things will happen when people read your message:

• If they haven’t heard of the people you’ve suggested, they’ll probably start following them.
• If they’re already following the people you’ve recommended, they’ll thing you’re a pretty smart person because you like the same people they like – it makes you look good.

I’ve had messages back from people thanking me for the recommendations.  I even received one from John Haydon’s cousin telling me he was related to John!

So, go ahead and craft your direct message to your new Twitter followers.  If you like the suggestions I’ve made, I’d love it if you’d add me to the list of people you recommend in your message – www.twitter.com/blogcoaching101 (@blogcoaching101).  And don’t forget to add John Haydon as well – www.twitter.com/johnhaydon (@JohnHaydon).

What do you think? Is it ok to send out an automated welcome message? What’s the best welcome message you’ve received on Twitter?

And remember, if you’ve enjoyed this article, please re-tweet it.

A couple of people have asked me the question ‘What is Twitter good for?’ In this article I’ll explain my position on Twitter, why I think Twitter can be a useful marketing tool and where Twitter could fit in your marketing strategies.

Twitter and your marketing strategies

I’m assuming that if you’re reading this you have a blog or website that you want to promote.  Your goal probably is to get more visitors to your site so they can subscribe / learn from you / buy products from your site.

In other words, you have a goal to get traffic to your site.

Getting traffic to your website

There are two broad strategies when it comes to traffic generation.

• People find your site
• You find people and tell them about your site

Option 1 usually comes about from people searching on Google and finding your site listed in the search results.  To be successful you need to do lots of keyword research, produce topical content, and generate backlinks and increase your page rank.  Whilst it may be easy to rank for some long tail terms quickly, to do well for some of the major search terms can take time.  Alternatively, people find you via word of mouth – other bloggers talk about you etc.  This usually takes a while to occur.

For many new bloggers, option 2 is the best option to drive traffic to your site.  You find people who fit your target market, have a conversation with them and let them know about your site.

And this is where twitter, Facebook and other social media sites are useful.

Is Twitter a good marketing tool?

In previous posts, I’ve written about How To Get More Twitter Followers.  My Twitter strategy revolves around finding people who fit my target market, interacting with them on Twitter and developing a relationship with them, and providing them with information and content from my site.  The aim of this strategy is to encourage people to visit my site.

I believe Twitter is a good marketing tool because a) it’s free to use, and b) you can search by a range or criteria.

I search in a number of ways, but usually it involves one of two strategies:

• Searching by relevant keywords i.e. internet marketing, SEO etc
• Searching for followers of another Twitter user.

By using these searches I’m able to find people to follow who fit my target market.  A reasonable percentage of these people will also follow me back.  They’ll see my Tweets and my Twitter activity.

The search abilities within Twitter are huge, and make it a very powerful tool for finding people in your target niche.

The Human Touch

The important thing about Twitter is to make sure you interact with people! I try and login to Twitter two or three times a day to Tweet and join in the conversation with people.  Sometimes I’ll ask a question, other times I’ll RT interesting content.  The important thing is for your followers to see that you’re a real person, and aren’t just automating things.

I’ve also found Twitter useful to get ideas for my blog.  I’ll ask people what topics they want covered, or what software they use for a certain task.  This gets a good conversation going amongst my followers.

Don’t make all your Tweets about affiliate products or get rich quick schemes.  Make sure there’s a good balance of Tweets that don’t have links compared to those that do.  My strategy is to direct most of my links in messages on Twitter back to my blog.  I also re-Tweet a lot of other Tweets about new blog posts on other blogs, so I’m actively promoting other people’s content, not just my own.

So What Is Twitter Good For?

In my opinion, Twitter is good for two purposes.

Firstly, it’s a great tool for connecting with people who have similar interests.  I’ve found new friends from all over the world who have similar interests to me, and I’ve discovered a range of new blogs that I wouldn’t have known about if it wasn’t for my Twitter connections.

Secondly, it’s useful to build up a following.  It enables you to find a group of people who fit your target demographic, and interact with them. If you’re good at what you do, you’ll find that some of your followers will visit your web site or blog and become regular readers.

So what do you think about Twitter?  Do you use it much? What do you think Twitter is good for?

Share your ideas and experience below.

Over the past couple of months we’ve been blogging about How To Get More Twitter Followers.  We’ve been looking at ways you can use Twitter and other Twitter-related tools to find more people to follow.

Our first article in February was all about Your Twitter Strategy.  In this article we looked at the pros and cons of having a large amount of followers and we briefly looked at whether it’s best to have multiple Twitter accounts.

The next article was How To Get More Twitter Followers – Part 1. The article looked at the advantages of building a list of followers in Twitter who you can direct to your website.  We also looked at ways you can help people to find you in Twitter.

After that, we looked at How To Get More Twitter Followers – Part 2 – How To Follow.  In this article we talked about ways you can search for people to follow on Twitter.  You can use Twitter search to help with this and I also talked about using Tweetadder to help find people based on the content of their Tweets or bio, or even the city they live in.

The next article in How To Get More Twitter Followers was called Be Follow-Worthy. I looked at ways you can deliver valuable Tweets that enable people to find and follow you, rather than you finding them.  We talked about using RSS feeds to deliver content, as well as Re-Tweeting interesting Tweets.

In Part 4, we looked at the importance of Being Regular with your Tweets.  I talked about automating and scheduling Tweets and the pros and cons of doing so.

In the post from last week , I talked about the strategies I use to Get More Twitter Followers.  In this post I talked about how I search for people to follow, when I un-follow people and how I schedule some regular Tweets using RSS feeds.

This is the summary of my posts so far on How To Get More Twitter Followers. I’m currently writing a series of posts that review some of the Twitter software that’s currently available.  As I post those articles I’ll link to them here so this page becomes a central Twitter resource for this site.

Please have a read through the articles and let me know what you think.  How do you use Twitter.  Do you have other ideas on how to get more followers on Twitter?  Leave a comment below.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Over the past month I’ve been writing about ways to Get More Twitter Followers.

In today’s article, I want to provide a summary of the strategy I use to get more followers.  Because this looks at the strategy, I won’t go into detail about the actual sites of programs I use to do it.  There’s two reasons for this:

1. Probably within a year, some of the sites I use will be closed or substantially different to what they are today.
2. It’s more important to understand what I do, instead of how I do it.

If you understand the strategy I use to get more Twitter followers, then you can go away and find the best tools that suit you and do it in the way that you feel most comfortable with.

My process is actually quite simple.  To find new people to follow on Twitter, here’s what I do:

1. I search for people who Tweet about interesting topics, have certain terms in their bios, or who follow people who operate in my niche.
2. I follow these people.
3. If they don’t follow back within a period of time, I unfollow many of them.  There are some people who I whitelist (don’t unfollow).  These are some of the big Twitter users.  I don’t expect they’ll follow me back (yet!), but I want to continue to follow them.
4. I keep a close eye on the ratio of people I’m following against those who are following me back.  I make sure I never follow more than 110% of the people following me.  For example, if I have 3,000 followers, I’ll make sure I don’t follow more than 3,300 people.
5. Because I’m regularly following new people and un-following others, I can usually keep the ratios in check and make sure that every day I’m adding some new followers.
6. I don’t try and follow too many people, too quickly.

Here’s a diagram for those of you who prefer visuals.

In addition to finding people, I want to deliver value to my followers, and help other people find me.  Here’s how I do that:

1. I have some RSS feeds from blogs I like converted into Tweets.
2. I have some regular Tweets I schedule in advance.  Between (1) and (2) this ensures there is a regular number of daily Tweets to my account.
3. I communicate with people who follow me.  I’ll re-Tweet Tweets that I like, I’ll thank people for re-Tweeting mine.  I’ll have conversations with people, ask questions, answer questions and make some random posts about what I’m doing.  This is an important part of my strategy.  I don’t mind automating some of my Twitter posting, but I’ll always make sure I’m interacting with people a few times a day on Twitter – that’s what it’s about.

These last three steps are very important.  There’s no point trying to gain 100 followers each day if you lose 100 of your existing followers because they don’t see any value in your Tweets.

How To Get More Twitter Followers

This has been a very high level view of the strategy I use to get more Twitter followers.  I hope it makes sense and helps you to become more successful on Twitter.

I’m interested in your feedback.  How to you get more Twitter followers?  Do you schedule Tweets?  Do you have another strategy you use that works for you?

And please don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

I’ve been posting about how to get more Twitter followers for a while and looked at a range of different strategies and tactics to help you grow your Twitter presence.  Today I want to look at one of the essential keys to success with Twitter – regular Tweeting.

Twitter is different to email.  With an email you can send it to your subscribers and it’ll sit in their inbox until they take some kind of  action with it – delete it, read it etc.

With Twitter, your post is put into the Twitter stream, and unless your followers are watching the stream at that point in time, they’ll probably miss your Tweet.

So whilst it may be easier to build up a list of Twitter follower quicker than an email list, this method of communication is not as effective.

So why are you Tweeting?

Don’t Tweet for the sake of Tweeting.  When you post make sure you’re saying something that other people will find interesting.  I have a couple of goals with each post:

• That it’s interesting for my current followers to read.
• That some of my current followers will re-Tweet it to their followers.
• That new people will find me and follow me because of the post.

Don’t talk about automation!

Automating your Tweets is a bit of a controversial topic.  The Twitter terms of service don’t allow automation of Tweets other than for an automatic direct message (DM) to new followers.  Despite this, there are a number of programs out there that allow varying degrees of automation.

My view on automation is this:

• You can send spam and rubbish out either manually or automated.
• Automation done well can save time but still needs be interesting to my followers.
• You can’t automate everything.  You need to have real conversations with real people.

How to automate some Tweets

There’s a couple of ways to automate Tweets.  In the last article on How to Get More Twitter Followers I looked at using TwitterFeed.com to automate Tweets from RSS feeds.  There are a few blogs I regularly read, and I’m comfortable re-Tweeting their content.  I use TwitterFeed to do this automatically for me.

I don’t use this for lots of blogs, but it may lead to approximately five tweets a day recommending content from other people’s blogs.

It’s also possible to schedule future Tweets.  I live in Australia, but a lot of my followers live in other parts of the world.  They’re usually awake when I’m asleep so it would be difficult for me to converse with them in real time.  I schedule some Tweets to go out overnight while I’m asleep so my followers get to see them.

There are a few ways to schedule Tweets – I use the function within Hootsuite sometimes, but I also use TweetAdder to schedule future Tweets.  TweetAdder enables me to queue a series of messages to be sent out in a random order over a period of time. This is less time consuming to set up than HootSuite where you need to individually load each message.

Is scheduling Tweets the same as automating Tweets?

Technically, ‘yes’.  But is it?  And is it a problem?

I don’t have a problem with scheduling some Tweets for the future.  I do it with blog posts – I don’t see that my Twitter stream is any different.

I do have a problem with sending out a lot of Tweets in a short space of time that don’t add any real value.  Particularly if by using automated means you can send out a lot more.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s ok to schedule some tweets that I’ve created to be posted at some time in the future.  It’s also ok to use some RSS feeds to highlight other bloggers who I read and would usually re-Tweet.

I balance this with a requirement to manually Tweet each day.  I’ll thank people who RT my Tweets, I’ll feature other articles I’m reading etc.  It’s very important to me to have daily interaction with my Twitter followers.

So, what do you Tweet?

Over the course of my day I’ll post some manual Tweets.  It could be in response to other people’s Tweets – answering questions etc.  I may Tweet a link to an article I’m reading or a news item.  I may Tweet about  a song I’m listening to or a book I’m reading.  Sometimes I ask questions about how to do something.  I try not to be boring, but I also try not to censor my thoughts too much.

So, how do you feel about automating Tweets or scheduling Tweets?

What do you Tweet about that’s interesting?

Leave a comment below.  And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at How To Get More Twitter Followers.

In Part 1 I gave an overview of how I think you can use Twitter to drive traffic to your website. In my last article I looked at another way to get more Twitter followers by finding other people to follow.  Today I’ll continue the series and look at strategies you can use to get people to follow you.

Remember, these articles are written from the point of view that Twitter is an excellent way to not only connect with interesting people, but also to drive traffic to your web site.  Once they get to your web site, ideally you want them to take some kind of action – subscribe to your email list, buy something etc.

Are You Follow-Worthy?

Be honest.  Would you follow yourself on Twitter?

I started on Twitter in the middle of 2009 and I had no idea what I was doing.  I actually felt sorry for people who followed me because I hardly ever Tweeted, and I’d only visit Twitter every couple of weeks.  I now feel like I have a much better system to make my Tweets interesting to people – I think I’m now ‘follow-worthy’!

As I explained in my last post, there are two options to gain more Twitter followers:

Strategy 1: Follow people you’re interested in and hope they follow you back (i.e. find people yourself).

Strategy 2: Make your Twitter identity (bio, Tweets etc) so interesting and relevant that people start to follow you (i.e. people find you).

Strategy two makes a lot more sense to me.  I think I’ll always use a combination of the two, but I hope to reach the point where the number of people who find me and choose to follow me far outweighs the number who follow me back because I first followed them.

Becoming Follow-Worthy

The simple way to become follow-worthy is to create great, compelling, interesting, (insert adjective here) content that your chosen niche loves. OK, so how do you do that….read on.

A large factor in your Twitter success involves being visable on Twitter.  This means you can’t post once a week – you need a strategy to create regular Tweets so that people can find you, either through the general Twitter stream or by targeted searching.

Here are some strategies I’ve been using to help people find me on Twitter.

Have a great Twitter page

I mentioned this in my last article where I suggested using sites like mytweetspace or twitbacks.com to help create a custom Twitter background.  Twitter doesn’t give you much space to write, so use the left hand side of the page on your custom background to write more about what you do and the benefits you provide. If you have a mailing list or give away a free report be sure to mention this.

On the right hand side make sure your bio is interesting, and contains the right keywords (remember, people can search bios by keywords to find people to follow – you did this last week).  Make sure you include a good photo of yourself, and the URL of your website or landing page.

Your objective with your Twitter page is to appear interesting enough to people so they’re motivated to click through to your web site.

The Hashtag is your friend

Use Twitter hashtags as much as you can. Look at a site like WeFollow.com and search for the popular hashtags.  Make a note of the ones that are relevant to you and use them as much as possible.  For example if I were a restaurant in Sydney, Australia, I’d be using the #Sydney tag as much as possible.

Hashtags give you two advantages – people search by them, so it makes you more easily findable.  Also, there are a number of Twitter uses who try to aggregate feeds for their local area or their niche.  Use the right hashtag and you may find yourself being Re-Tweeted to thousands of other people.  Hopefully some of them will find you interesting enough to follow.

Re-Tweet other people’s stuff

One of the things I love about Twitter is the ability to Re-Tweet interesting content. I love finding a good article or seeing a good tweet and then sharing it with my followers.  And I love it even more when someone Re-Tweets something I’ve written.  This gets my Tweets out to a larger audience.

So make an effort to Re-Tweet other people’s Tweets.  Get in the habit when you’re looking at blogs on the internet to Tweet about interesting articles you’ve found.  It helps people learn more about what you like reading, and it helps others find articles they would never have found themselves.  And if they like the things you Tweet about, they may Re-Tweet it as well.

Use RSS Feeds

Many people don’t realise that they can automate RSS feeds to post to their Twitter account.

Now, the obvious example of this is to feed your blog to your Twitter account so every time you post something, it also gets posted on Twitter.

That’s great if you’re posting daily, but what about if you’re only posting weekly?  It doesn’t help to build up your Twitter posts.

Why don’t you post from RSS feeds from other blogs or content providers that are in your niche?

This is so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t come across it earlier.

I use TwitterFeed.com to automatically post RSS feeds to my Twitter accounts.  There are some blogs that I read regularly that consistently provide great content. I plug in their feed details to TwitterFeed, link my TwitterFeed account to my Twitter ID, and every time the RSS feed is updated, it posts a Tweet to my account.

Here’s an image from the dashboard showing the options I have with the feed.

As you can see, I have the ability to schedule how often the RSS feed is checked for updates, and I can also add a prefix or suffix to each post.

I only use this for blogs that I trust to provide quality content.  In the example above, I’m using the feed from DailyBlogTips.com.

So, are you ready to become ‘Follow-Worthy’?

You’ve just read a bunch of ideas on how to beef up your Twitter stream to produce great content that allows people to find you.  It won’t produce thousands of followers overnight, but that’s not my goal.  I’m more interested in producing content that is interesting and relevant to the people I’m trying to reach. I use all these ideas, and I definitely Tweet more than once every couple of weeks now!

One thing I haven’t covered here is the concept of recurring and automated tweets – we’ll look at this next time.

What do you think of these ideas?

What other strategies do you use to make your Tweets more interesting and attract more Twitter followers?  Let me know in the comments below.

And remember, if you enjoyed this article, please Re-Tweet it.  An don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

When people ask me how to get more Twitter followers, I explain that there are only two ways to increase the number of followers they have.

Strategy 1: Follow people you’re interested in and hope they follow you back (i.e. find people yourself).

Strategy 2: Make your Twitter identity (bio, Tweets etc) so interesting and relevant that people start to follow you (i.e. people find you).

Obviously strategy one has the potential to be more time-consuming than strategy two.  However, when you’re starting out on Twitter, strategy one may be the quickest way to build up your followers over a short period of time.

Strategy two (people finding you and following you) is the most attractive as it requires little work on your behalf.  Also, I have a belief that these people have the potential to be better quality followers than those who only follow you back after you follow them.

In this article we’ll look at ways to find more Twitter followers.  In my next article we’ll discuss ways you can attract more followers.

Find people on Twitter to follow – Twitter Advanced Search

The easiest way to find interesting people on Twitter to follow is to search for them.  Go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced and have a look at all the search options.

Assuming you’ve already done your research about the type of person you are targeting, think about the words to search for. In this example I’m searching for users who are Tweeting about Frank Kern.  At the time of writing, Frank is launching a new product and there’s a lot of Tweets about him.  Parts of my target market are people who are involved in internet marketing.  Many of these people would be tweeting about Frank’s product launch.

If I use Frank Kern’s name in the ‘Exact Phrase’ search box and submit the search, I’m taken to a page that lists all the people who’ve been tweeting about Frank. I can then click on each person to view their user profile and decide whether I’ll follow them or not.

You can also search by Twitter hashtag. This is helpful if there’s a tag (or tags) relevant to your niche.

What if your business targets a specific geographic region? Say you own a restaurant in Boston and want to target people in the Boston area.  Use Twitter’s advanced search to find people who Tweet from the Boston area.

Find people on Twitter to follow – WeFollow

WeFollow.com is a useful tool to find people to follow on Twitter.  You search for people to follow via the use of tags.  Interested in internet marketing? Just enter ‘Internet Marketing’ into the search bar and it’ll show you the most popular people in that field.

You can also register your Twitter account and select from a range of tags (categories) that reflect your interests – internet marketing, entertainment etc.  Once you’re registered people can find you using the website.

Find people on Twitter to follow – Follow other people’s followers

Identify who the influential people are in your niche and follow them to see what they’re tweeting about.  But take it a step further – follow their followers.

Think about it.  The followers are following this person because they’re interested in what they’ve got to say.  If they’re interested in him, they’ll probably be interested in you and the things you’re tweeting about.

Head to ReFollow.com and login using your Twitter ID.  On the right hand side of the page you’ll see an option to search “Users who are following…”.  Type in the name of an influential Twitter user and ReFollow will display a page showing 100 of their users (there is an option to see more).  Click on the users’ picture and have a look at their Twitter profile.  If they look interesting, follow them.

Find people on Twitter to follow – Search their bios

I’ve been using Tweetadder to help with some of my Twitter following.  It has a neat feature that allows me to search the content in someone’s bio.  This is particularly useful if you want to search for specific words in someone’s Twitter bio.

Looking for guitar players?  Use Tweetadder to search the bio boxes for the word ‘guitarist’.

Use your imagination, but think about how powerful this tool can be. I’ve used it a bit recently to search for people in particular niches and it’s been very useful.

A free tool that also searches bios is TweepSearch.com.

So there you go.  Some simple ideas you can implement right now to get more Twitter followers.

In the next Twitter article I write, I’ll look at strategies to get people to find you on Twitter.

Let me know what you think about this article.  I know there are a lot of different sites out there that make following someone on Twitter easier.  Let me know your favourite sites and any strategies you have to get more followers.

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.