Thursday, October 14, 2010

Using Twitter to Drive Traffic

Traffic. My big problem with making money blogging is getting traffic. At one time, this blog had a pretty decent following. Unfortunately, I didn't make blogging a priority, got bored and traffic levels dived. Now that I'm back into blogging I have to work on driving traffic levels up again. A slow, time consuming process.
Since I last attempted to make money blogging, Twitter has become very popular. I'm on it here. I drive traffic using Twitter by first, posting a new blog entry. Then, I use HootSuite to shorten the url to the new blog entry and post a new Twitter update with a blurb about the blog entry topic along with the shortened blog entry url. That's it. Pretty simple.
I use HootSuite because the status updater has a built in url shortener, and you can also add a comment when you retweet someone else's status.
Apparently, there are automated tools out there which will write your blog entry for you and then update your Twitter status. I haven't tried it and probably won't. I prefer to keep my blog posts real and write the entries myself.
You can also network yourself by following lists of users created by other users. You follow everyone on a given list, wait a few days and unfollow anyone who has not followed you back. Then find another list to follow and repeat the process. Be careful though. You don't want to be following a lot of people and not have many following you. That makes you look like you're not really worth following. I haven't tried that technique yet, but am going to give it a shot, so I'll keep you posted on how that Twitter traffic driving technique works out.


Make Money Blogging