Create your presence on Twitter

Go to Twitter.com/Signup, where you will enter your name, email address, and create your username and password. Before you enter the information, consider how you want to present yourself. If you have other social media profiles online, make sure your Twitter profile matches the presence you’ve already setup. This promotes brand consistency and helps with people learning your identity and recognizing it wherever they see it.

Personalize your Twitter profile

Fill out your bio. Be concise, direct, and clear. You only have 160 characters to work with. Put your best foot forward. Personality will help you build more followers. Include your website’s URL. Add your location – some Twitter users will find you based on your specific location. Do not opt to “protect tweets” if your primary goal is connecting with customers and other people – this keeps your profile private and does not allow Google to crawl your profile for indexing purposes.

Add a background image to your profile. You can use a custom graphic you’ve created to promote your brand or match with your business color scheme or one of the options already available on Twitter. Choose your profile image – your face is a good one to use here, unless you’re trying to establish a corporate account separate from your personal brand. If you’re going to have many people updating it, opt for the logo.

Invite contacts to “follow” your brand on Twitter

Part of the setup process will entail suggesting people to follow. Some of the people may follow you back – but to get the ball rolling, invite everyone you already know to connect with you there. You have the option to import email contacts, so even people you know but haven’t connected with on Twitter yet, can be followed. You can also get followers by:

• Embedding your Twitter widget on your website
• Telling your email subscribers
• Adding the Twitter handle to your email signature
• Linking to your Facebook account
• Adding your Twitter URL to print media such as business cards

Don’t over promote

Today, Twitter seems to be one large advertisement for thousands of businesses. While promotion is okay, the key to this social network is to talk to people. Interact with customers. Create content that helps position you as an expert and trusted source of information in your niche. It’s okay to promote yourself – but you should be sharing content from others that will be helpful for your audience, and communicating directly with your audience more than you’re promoting anything that originates with you. You can include links in your tweets, and use a URL shortener like bit.ly to reduce the amount of characters it takes up in your tweet. Plus, with tools like Bit.ly, you can track how many people click the link, as well.

Advertise on Twitter

Consider running an ad on the Twitter platform to help you gain followers and exposure for your products/services. It works much the same way Facebook ads and Google AdWords work.

Measure and adjust as necessary

Use both the Twitter Analytics tool and Google Analytics to take a closer look at the interactions and see how any ads are performing. Look at the re-tweets and other metrics to see how far your message is reaching, and to determine your influence on the network. If you see a ad is not doing well, re-work it.

If you see a certain type of post, or posting at a certain time of day is working better for you, remember that as you move forward. Make it a point to look at these numbers every week, or every month, and make adjustments. Once you find something that works – don’t assume it will continue to work that way for you forever. Continually make adjustments to fine-tune your Twitter marketing strategy.

Avoid making these mistakes on Twitter and learn the lingo

A “tweet” is a message to everyone who follows you. An @ message/@ reply is a message to a specific person, but everyone can see it. A “direct message” or “DM” is a private message between people on Twitter. People must follow each other to DM. A “retweet” or “RT” is a tweet that’s being passed on. This is a great way to build relationships and connections on Twitter.

Ignoring Twitter etiquette

Don’t use abbreviated language like you see in texting. Thank people for re-tweeting you. Thank people when they recommend you as someone to follow. Stay up on etiquette practices, because they evolve constantly.

Tweeting too much

Tweeting every move you make is annoying. Leverage the power of the network by communicating openly and personally. Respond to comments, both negative and positive, publicly. Tweet often so people know you’re there and listening, but don’t constantly push out tweets just to tweet.

Final note about Twitter Marketing

The key to high traffic volume is getting your name and website address out there. You want it noticed by as many people as possible, in as many places as possible.

Some, but not all of these methods may be right for your business. Some of these methods may have limited use. Do not limit yourself only to what you see in this book. If you have an idea about how to generate traffic to your website, give it a try and see what happens.

You may just strike gold in a place you otherwise would not have expected. Make sure you take a good look at your website. There’s no point in driving traffic to it if you are not completely clear about what you want visitors to once they get there. As you evaluate your website, look at the following:

• Is your design eye-catching, but not to the point where it is distracting?
• Is the website easily navigable?
• Do all links work?
• Is your copy tailored to your target audience? Will it convince them to do what you want them to do?

Excerpted from the book Web Traffic Flood.

This excerpt has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Download this book on Boostlane:

https://boostlane.com/p/boostlane/1076/web-traffic-flood/