Twitter is a very helpful tool for marketing. Twitter can help freelance writers earn more money when they depend on page views for a portion of their income. While there are tools that are effective to help you manage Twitter, none of these tools is going to help you “get rich quick” they will however help you manage your social media accounts more effectively. Remember, if you depend on page views for any portion of your income, Twitter provides a lot of value for a small investment of time. More page views means more earnings.
Twitter is a powerful social networking tools that can assist you in gaining new readers to your blogs, your articles or other online work. Twitter provides a platform that allows you to target followers in specific geographic areas (using Twitter Places). Twitter provides the platform, you supply the tweets!
If you do any type of online promotion, you are missing a huge marketing opportunity if you are not using Twitter. Learn about how to use Twitter and some of the best automation tools. It is important to understand that this form of marketing will not work for everyone. However, many people do report an increase in page views by using Twitter and other social media sites. Let us take a more in depth look at Twitter and some of the tools available to enhance your Twitter experience.
Getting familiar with Twitter
In order to effectively use Twitter, there are certain factors that go into getting started. Proper set up of your Twitter account and profile will help you establish credibility as a Twitter user. Remember, establishing credibility means more followers, more followers means more traffic, more traffic means more earnings. Most of us are not going to log in to Twitter and immediately be popular. Take some time to set up a good profile, look around and get familiar with others on Twitter. Reading helpful guides about use of Twitter is one of the first things you should do. This guide will walk you through all of the steps that you need to create a strong profile, familiarize yourself with the platform and find out what Twitter users are interested in. Remember, according to Alexa, 681,415 sites link link to Twitter and more than 30% of the traffic on Twitter is generated from the United States.
Getting followers – Followers are an integral part to successful networking on Twitter and other social networking sites. There are some simple things you can do to get followers on Twitter, it does take some time, patience and dedication. This helpful guide will show you how to get followers on Twitter. Followers should be carefully vetted to insure that you are getting real people and not bots. Make sure you understand Twitters Terms of Service to understand the restrictions placed on followers/following.
Using RSS Feeds – RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help you automatically submit your new blog posts, or other sites articles directly to your Twitter feed. No more worrying if you remembered to “tweet” when you finished a project! This guide shows you how to Twitter using RSS feeds to help you get the most of Twitter. Customized RSS feeds can also be set up to send other information to your Twitter followers that they may find interesting and helpful.
Submit your work as tweets to Twitter
Because Twitter has a 140 character restriction, preparing your work for use on Twitter can be time consuming. You should learn how to set up articles for use on Twitter which will allow you to keep track of your work easily, but also to take advantage of shortening your links in bulk. Your article titles, alternative headlines and presentation of your tweets can make all of the difference when it comes to getting readers to click on your tweets and read your work. Why take a chance of your work being ignored because you failed to shorten your Tweets?
Setting up your work for Twitter is not that difficult. You’ll need the title, URL and a couple of keywords (to use as hashtags) to help you set them up correctly. This also helps other Twitter users find work that they are interested in reading, so make sure that you use relevant keywords.
Now that you have learned how to set up your Twitter account, find followers and prepare your work for Twitter it’s time to get serious and get down to the brass tacks. Submitting your work to Twitter as tweets can be time consuming and can be frustrating if you are uncertain how to get started. When in doubt, remember it does not hurt to double check what you are doing! In the Twitter environment you will find many helpful active people who can help if you are encountering problems! Twitter also offers a great help section. Making sure that you are staying within Twitter’s terms of service, providing good content to your followers and carefully building your reader base are some of the things that will help you increase your page views.
Twitter Challenge – Time
Perhaps one of the most significant challenges you will face with Twitter is finding time to properly promote your work. Keep in mind, that the more frequently you submit your work to Twitter, the more likely it is that your work will draw traffic. This can present problems if you can’t be sitting at your desk doing nothing but sending tweets. However, there are some great automation tools that can help save you time and allow you to send out tweets without investing a lot of time in managing your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. Since most writers feel that time is money, these tools can provide an answer to the time crunch that many face.
- HootSuite – HootSuite is an easy to use program that is available free. They have announced a paid version that launched in August of 2010 but there are still several options available for those who are interested in the free version.. One of the best things about HootSuite for Twitter is that you can use it for your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare accounts. Hootsuite is simple to use and this guide will walk you through all of the steps needed to set up a Hootsuite account, submit your tweets and schedule your tweets.
- TweetAdder – Automating Twitter functions is extremely helpful for most Twitter users. The more blog posts and articles you have, the more likely you are to consider automation. TweetAdder is the most cost effective method for those who are interested in full automation and do not wish to be tied to a monthly fee. This guide shows how to use TweetAdder for Twitter. Make sure that you understand that TweetAdder does require your computer to be active in order for it to run. Should you lose your internet connection TweetAdder will automatically shut down. This is a cost effective way to automate your Twitter functions. TweetAdder does support the use of LinkedIn and Facebook with special tags.
- SocialOomph – While SocialOomph does carry a monthly fee (around $30), it is still a great way to promote your work on Twitter and Facebook. It also can hold unlimited numbers of RSS feeds and you can control your followers when you use Social Oomph. There are some freelance writers who also do social media marketing for clients. In these instances, these writers would be well served to explore SocialOomph which has several outstanding features that it the ideal tool for freelance writers who are also working on marketing for customers. They offer unlimited account management which makes it very cost effective for writers who have multiple clients and are interested in promoting their own work as well.
How To Guides
Over time, I have been working on various How To guides that are designed to take the guesswork out of Twitter usage. You can access these by visiting: Twitter How To Guides The titles include:
- How to get started using Twitter
- How to get followers on Twitter
- Increased Earnings with Twitter
- How to submit your work as tweets to Twitter
- How to set up your articles for Twitter
- How to use Facebook to promote your blog or articles
- Automating Twitter
- How to use HootSuite for Twitter
- How to Twitter using RSS Feeds
- How to use TweetAdder for Twitter
- How to use Social Oomph for Twitter
- How to automate Twitter without violating their Terms of Service
- How to connect your Social Oomph account to Twitter
- How to use Hashtags on Twitter for SEO
About Doreen Martel
Well-rounded freelance writer who contributes to various blogs, paid to write sites and revenue sharing sites. Doreen is legally blind and has worked at home for more than 10 years. She uses the lessons learned from this experience to enhance her writing and share information with others.
