Yesterday I had a minor Twitter breakthrough that would go unnoticed by my visitors but is a major development to me.  I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but my posts have had a different focus of late. Instead of writing about things that pop into my head, like 90% of my attempts at shooting trash into trash cans miss or how I hate this frigid weather, I focused on a specific topic that is current and hopefully trending.  This is obviously done to make efforts to gain traffic with Google.  What came as a surprise was what happened yesterday.

I had a post in the works about the 5 best Alt bands which I posted two nights ago.  Knowing that this post would be seen by nobody if I didn’t try something different, I tweeted the link to Madison of the Sirius channel Altnation.  To my excitement, she replied.

“@rnningfool: @RadioMadison What do you think of my rankings of the top 5 alt artists? http://t.co/xC3dWFxzh8” #1 not Alt! Ditch it

— radiomadison (@RadioMadison) February 5, 2014

 

A Twitter Breakthrough

What her reply did was send about 150 people from Twitter to my page.  The analytics show that most people didn’t spend much time on the page, which should give an indication of attention span from people on Twitter, but 150 people is 150 people.   This concept worked for a few reasons.

• Madison has 16k followers which is a nice number in that it’s not too big or too small.
• The post was specifically targeted at something that she is familiar with considering she is the DJ for Altnation
• My Tweet asked a question which leaves room for a reply
• Madison keeps an up to date Twitter account and probably sees everything that comes her way

 

Twitter Missteps

After getting this response from Madison I decided to shoot a bit higher with my two latest posts.  I was on Reddit and noticed the fat kid, SirFedora, who was blowing up on Youtube and figured I’d make a page on his rise to popularity and see if I could tweet at him and have my link snowball. Nothing. Then last night I created the Erin Andrews post spontaneously from a link I saw on Facebook and decided to roll with it.  Erin has 2 million followers and the tweet I constructed basically asked her to read my post and comment on it.  With that many followers, the chance of Erin Andrews reading my tweet is <.00001%.  Fail.

The problem with this strategy is that these posts are straying away from my own creativity and I’m molding posts at what I think is going to get me more traffic.  It’s not that what I’m writing are not my own thoughts, they are just formed around the idea that I’m writing them hoping to get attention.  This idea isn’t the highest form of posting and even though it may generate some results, it isn’t going to take rnningfool.com to the next level.  What I’m learning though is what works and what doesn’t.

 

How To Use Twitter For Website Promotion

Step 1:  The first thing that has to be done is create a page that is original and dedicated to a subject matter that you are knowledgeable about.  Having a good post is key.  Do you think Madison would have replied at all if the post sucked or she wasn’t interested in the material?

Step 2: Targeting the proper people on Twitter to potentially reach a wider audience than you are capable of reaching yourself.  These are people who the post relates to.  If you write a post on fantasy football, target Nathan Zegura or Sigmund Bloom, not Matthew Berry.  Zegura has 49k followers and Bloom 29k, Berry has 590k.  Think about what actually has to happen for this to work.  The targeted person on Twitter has to read your post and then actually reply or retweet your post.  The higher the amount of followers, the more people who are desiring their attention, thus the better chance your post gets lost.

Step 3:  Once you’ve nailed down your targeted celeb or notable person, somewhere in the 10k-100k follower range, construct the tweet.  I think this is the probably the hardest part and one that I have to continue experimenting with.  Asking a question seemed to at least elicit a response whereas asking the person to read the link did not.  I think executing the concept of putting yourself in the reader’s shoes and working on what they’d want to read is what has to be done.  What question or statement would get them to not only think about reading it, but then replying or retweeting.  This is probably a skill that once learned expertly, could be turned into a profession.  Using the hashtag feature of Twitter is also useful.

Step 4: If you are able to get a reply or retweet, it’s time to follow up on people’s comments or tweets and be actively involved in the process of answering or conversing.  I believe in 2014 and learning how to use Twitter as a vehicle of communication and social networking, these are the steps involved to developing a wider audience.

 

 The Power of Twitter

Twitter isn’t growing as quickly as it should because people are confused about how to use it.  With the #’s, @’s, retweets, difficulty in gaining followers and how to read a conversation, it takes some time to get used to the social network.  One thing is evident though and that’s how many celebrities have taken notice to it and use it exclusively to communicate with their followers. Twitter provides a global identity which no social media does as well.  Facebook brought you together with friends, Twitter brings you to the world.

Wallstreet misunderstands this power and focuses on whether it makes money or not which is short sighted.  Twitter has 241 million active users and I’d assume most people don’t have the proper understanding of how to use it.  As celebrities continue to gain followers and more people are driven to the enjoyment of Twitter, it will grow as the social media powerhouse with revenue potential far exceeding current expectations.  Time will tell.