JTPratt’s Guide to Twitter

Page 2: What Can Twitter Do for ME as a Blogger?

So, now that I have a twitter account it’s time to find out what it can do and whether or not it will be another web tool I use a few times and throw away or not. Now that I have an account, I wrote a few updates, but it’s not like a got a response back or anything. Then I decided to get the “badge” or whatever puts the updates on your sites. To display twitters on your blog, you (of course) just need a badge. Twitter works with myspace, facebook, blogger, typepad, or nearly anything else with HTML or flash widgets. You can choose from a simple one, a fancy flash one with pics, or a simple text based one.

I tried to use the second flash based one at first, but it just never seemed to display right. So then I went with the HTML one, but decided to go poking around for some WordPress specific tools. I found that Alex King has a plugin called “Twitter Tools”, so I downloaded and installed that (it’s WP 2.5 compatible). Even his plugin page didn’t tell a lot about what the plugin did, so I installed it to find out. Turns out, it had some pretty cool options:

So, as you can see you can turn your tweets into blog posts, or even a daily digest (like I do). So this is the first thing to note: Twitter updates can be turned into blog posts, which equals most indexed pages for you! You can choose the category, tags, header, and order to have “tweets” displayed in a widget in your sidebar (like I do). You can even have a box displayed (for admin only) under your tweets to post an update directly from your blog! So – now not only are twitter updates I write posted in my sidebar AND my twitter home page, every day they are listed in a “digest” blog post automatically with no intervention from me. Twitter Tools will also send twitter an update automatically every time you write a new blog post, and that’s the next thing twitter is good for: promoting your blog posts to your twitter ‘followers’!

Next I found “Twit This”, which is a little button you can put on your post pages, and anyone with a twitter account can just click and tweet about your post! This is the next thing I found twitter can do: help you promote your blog as other people tweet about your posts.

So, as I’m installing these plugins my phone goes off a few times, and I got some text messages. I got a couple from doshdosh and one from AffConfession, and I thought it was really neat because the messages were updates on what they were doing. doshdosh was talking about whether or not to buy a Wii, and AffConfession said he had hired somebody to write 15 articles for one of his sites through Freelance. Microblogging is all about random thoughts and what goes on behind the scenes. It takes your regular blog to the next level. What I mean is, for your twitter “followers” it can make it more personal for them. People reading your tweets may have a better understanding of who you are, what you do on a daily basis, and they will connect with you on a level that your “about” page could never describe.

This type of “personal” connection is what every online marketer has dreamed of for years, because everyone knows that building a “brand” and making a “connection” with people is what makes conversions soar! On the bulk of the web (like myspace), the ads have a conversion rate that I’m sure is an abyssmal 2-3% CTR or click-through-rate. On many blogs (especially niche ones) you can get 5-8% conversion or CTR because the ads are more relevant to what people are looking for. But when somebody like (adsense marketing guru) Joel Comm says he has a 20-30% conversion rate on his email list, it’s because he has (over time) been able to make a connection with his “following”. He’s built up a trust factor over time where people will actively buy the products he reviews and recommends. If you are serious about blogging and making money on the Internet – it’s very important that you understand what a service like twitter can do for you in this regards. It’s the first “social media” tool I’ve ever seen where you can build a “list” (following) automatically just writing a bit every day and integrating it into your blog and work habits.

Like any other tool, shady shysters will eventually get ahold of it for black and grey hat things, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also take advantage – using it for good old fashioned marketing to build your online business. Just don’t abuse it, or your following will of course die off.