Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic With Twitter

Here are some ways you can promote your blog using Twitter.

Twitter is an amazing way of using social media to increase interest in your blog and widen your audience.

This post is one of a series I am writing about blogging tips. There is also one about How to write an amazing blog post, and one about how to promote your blog using Facebook.

• Twitter is your best friend when it comes to promoting your blog. Most of my blog traffic these days comes from Twitter.

• Don't only tweet links to your blog - nobody wants to read or interact with that. Try to tweet interesting, useful content, to ask questions and to engage with others.

• Follow other people who post about similar things. You can find them by searching for key words. For example, my blog is about being a single mother, so I searched "single mother" and found people to follow.

• Follow Brit Mums, Tots100, Bloggers Bunch and any other accounts which are relevant to the content of your blog. You're not following them just to get them to RT (re-tweet) your stuff to their followers; you want to interact with them, and read the posts they tweet; a great way of meeting like-minded people.

• Follow, follow, follow; interact, interact, interact. On Twitter, you can follow anyone whose account isn't private, and you can reply to their tweets. It doesn't matter if you don't know them, or you've never spoken to them before. If they tweet a question about something, and you have information/advice/an opinion that is relevant, then respond. This is the beauty of Twitter.

• Use hashtags. Not just random ones like #IDontKnowWhyIBother or something, but key words that are relevant to what you're posting. Just recently I wrote a post about Clare's Law, and used hashtags such as #domesticabuse and #dv in my tweets. This meant that anyone with an interest in those topics would be more likely to see my post. That week, my blog got twice as many hits as the rest of the month.

• Don't be afraid to tweet your links to relevant people or organisations - but only if it's relevant! With my Clare's Law post, I sent it to domestic violence charities and asked them to RT it if they felt it was useful. 

• If you don't have the time or inclination to be on Twitter all day (apparently those people do exist), you can set up scheduled tweets using something like Future Tweets to promote your posts while you're out having a life - or watching box sets. 

• It's all very well following celebrities and seeing their photos of their cats, but don't expect much interaction with them. They get hundreds, perhaps thousands of replies to each tweet they send, so yours is likely to be lost in the crowd. You're better off following people who have similar interests to you, have a blog you read, or you know personally.

• Join in Twitter parties. If you're a parent blogger, there's #pbloggers on a Sunday evening. I live in Salisbury, so I often join in #SalisburyHour on a Wednesday evening. There's also #babyhour, #buybritishbrands and hundreds more. Tots100 and Brit Mums often have their own, one-off Twitter parties. Tots 100 have #WillyNilly on a Friday, where you tweet them any post you've done this week using that hashtag, and they'll RT it to their followers. I also set up #ArchiveDay on a Saturday, where bloggers tweet a link to an old post from their blog with the tag, and then RT others. This can be a great way of getting your content seen by others, but also of finding new blogs to read.

• Don't be afraid to ask your followers to RT your links. Not every single link you post; that's just rude. But every now and then, if you have a link you think might be helpful to a wider audience, ask them. It can't hurt! Do always thank people for RTing your tweets though - be polite!

• Twitter is a great way to get blog traffic, and  great way to boost your Klout score, but don't use it just for that. If you're only using Twitter for those reasons, it will be obvious and people won't want to interact with you. It's much better to use Twitter as a place to meet like-minded people, and post your links there etc as a secondary use.

Do you have any other tips for using Twitter to promote your blog? Are there any on this list that you've used that did or didn't work? Do you prefer to use a different social media to promote your blog? Let me know in the comments!