Twitter

How To Create A Click-Worthy Tweet

October 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

There are over 500 million tweets being sent out every day, but not all of them are click-worthy. We have all seen our fair share of sensational tweets and big duds. There are some click-worthy tweets that result in a blog getting hundreds of extra visitors while others go unnoticed.

The difference is that some tweets are designed to make people want to click them. There are some tweets that prove to be irresistible, and as a result, people click on the links and view the articles.

There is some preparation that goes into creating the click-worthy tweet. Before writing the tweet, you need to find an article on the web that…

1. Your targeted audience would like

2. Is worth reading

The article has to be both of those things. The last thing you want is for someone to click on the tweet just to be disappointed by the article. That’s like seeing a really good movie trailer, watching the movie, and realizing that the movie was actually horrible.

After you get the article worth reading (preferably from your own blog), the next step is to shorten the link with Bitly. You do not want to have a giant link in your tweet that takes up a lot of space. The ideal amount of characters a tweet should have is anywhere from 70-100, and long URLs make maintaining that character length while coming up with a catchy headline difficult.

What you need to do is come up with a powerful headline. Powerful headlines are headlines that are tempting to click on. These are the types of headlines that get clicked and get more blog traffic. I mentioned a wide variety of ways to create powerful headlines in an earlier article, and there is also a tool that allows you to figure out how valuable a specific headline is.

This tool is called the Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyzer. It shows how powerful your headline is as well as the emotional appeal it will have to your readers.

Now that you have this information, you need to structure your tweet with the headline first followed by the link. After the link, say, “Please Retweet.” Not only does this work in getting more retweets, but if you are asking for a retweet, that implies that the tweet is retweet worthy.

A retweet worthy tweet with a link must lead to a good article. Since they have further assured confidence that the article is good, this will encourage readers to click the link in the tweet.

This is the strategy that you can use to create tweets with links that people want to click on. Getting clicks is important because if you have an optimized blog, some of the blog traffic you get will translate into subscribers and sales.

What is your advice on creating click-worthy tweets?

4 Twitter Marketing Tips

October 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti 24 Comments

When it comes to Twitter marketing, many people think they need to have a big audience in order to get good results. Having a big audience does help, but there is more to marketing than the number of followers you have. Some people who have 500 targeted followers are more successful than people with 1,000 targeted followers.

The difference between people who are getting good results from Twitter marketing and people who are not getting as good results from Twitter marketing may not necessarily be the size of the audience. The difference is how you interact with that audience and build relationships in the process.

The way you interact with your audience is determined by how many conversations you have with the people in your audience and what you tweet. You want to tweet content that benefits you and your followers. What are the benefits of your content spreading (other than you gaining followers)? What are your followers looking for in your content? These are two critical questions that form the core of Twitter marketing. Now, I will share with you the four Twitter marketing tips you can use to get the most out of the audience you have built.

#1: Identify what you are marketing.

You would be amazed with how many Twitter marketers there are but how few know what they are actually marketing. Some people “market” by tweeting other people’s articles and anything on the web that they believe is interesting. That’s not marketing at all.

Sure, it’s great to share someone else’s article once in a while, but most of your tweets need to benefit you. This is the win side for you. What webpages can you take people to that would benefit you? Some of the webpages you can market are your blog posts, your products, or one of your social networks.

Although it always feels great when we win, it is also important for your audience to win as well. The only way you are going to get anywhere with your Twitter marketing strategy is if your followers enjoy what you post. Therefore, out of the multiple options available, the ideal marketing option would be your blog. Here are the advantages of marketing your blog on Twitter.

Your blog provides free, valuable content. The more valuable your content is, the more people will perform actions such subscribing to your blog and buying your product.
Your blog is an easy place to promote all of your social networks and products. Blogs have sidebars which can be used to showcase what you have made, and where people can find you on the web.

Before you start promoting your blog, it is essential to have a blog that your target audience would enjoy. If your target audience is sports fans, a fashion blog won’t work well.

I am against relentlessly promoting products on Twitter because promoting a product right away does not allow the relationship to build. You need a relationship to build between you and the follower before that follower decides to buy one of your products. Since you are bringing people to your blog, you should optimize that blog so it is easy for people to subscribe, follow you on other social networks, and buy your products.

#2: Market it a lot.

One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make is only marketing in real-time. I mentioned in an earlier post why tweeting at the moment is important, but in order to get the best out of your marketing efforts, you need to automate your posts.

Out of all of the options, HootSuite is ideal social media automation tool. It is free to use, and for $9.99 per month, you get access to HootSuite Pro which makes it easier for you to repost the same blog posts.

One of the misconceptions of Twitter is that people do not like it when someone sends out so many tweets in a given day. I initially decided to send out one tweet every hour. Eventually, I went from tweeting once an hour to once every 30 minutes, and now I send out one tweet every 20 minutes.

Each time I increased my tweeting frequency, my blog traffic went up. There was not a single follower who complained about my tweeting too much. In fact, many of my followers love the fact that I send out dozens of tweets every day.

#3: Track your marketing.

Some articles, videos, and products are more popular than others. That is the case now, and it will be the case forever. The reason why tracking your marketing is important is because you will be able to identify which of your articles, videos, and products are the ones getting the most clicks. Knowing this information will allow you to identify what content your followers like and which content they ignore.

My most popular articles amongst my Twitter followers are the ones about Twitter. I know that my Twitter articles are getting the most clicks because I use Bitly to shorten the links and track how many clicks they get. That is why I make it a point to tweet as many Twitter related articles as possible.

When you are implementing a Twitter strategy over a long period of time to see how many followers you gain, TwitterCounter is a great tool for you to see how that strategy is doing. TwitterCounter allows you to see up to six months of your statistics for free, and these statistics allow you to identify how many people you followed, how many people followed you, and how many tweets you sent out day by day.

Tweriod is another useful tool. This Twitter tool allows you to identify when your followers are on Twitter. That means if you want a particular tweet to get more attention, or you know which tweet normally gets the most clicks, you can send it out at the optimal times that Tweriod provides.

Tracking results has become more important than ever because these results allow you to know if you are going in the right direction. Your marketing strategy must have a sense of direction for it to do well.

#4: Learn from the pros.

In 99% of all niches, there is an established expert who is very successful on Twitter. There are numerous people in the digital marketing niche who have over 100,000 followers and get countless retweets on a daily basis.

One of the pros I continue to learn from is Seth Godin. I have mentioned him in numerous blog posts, and I have mentioned him in some of my books as well. Seth offers tons of free content. He writes one thought-provoking blog post every day and has seven lengthy, free, and valuable PDFs. Despite offering all of this valuable information for free, his books are still very successful.

Kim Garst also offers a lot of free information. She writes guidebooks about Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks which she only gives to her subscribers. Offering a free incentive is definitely a great way to build an email list, and she is also very successful. She has multiple training courses and books about different social networks.

There are other pros that I learned from, but it would take me too long to mention them all by name. I looked at their different marketing techniques, mixed some of their techniques with my knowledge, and came up with my own Twitter marketing strategy. The pros know what works. Analyzing what they do is better than trying to reinvent the wheel.

In Conclusion

Tweeting is not enough to make it big. Creating a Twitter marketing strategy has the power to dramatically improve the results you get from Twitter. It may take some time to identify your strategy, but it is well worth the time.

The benefit of having your own Twitter marketing strategy is that it gives you a sense of direction. Not having a Twitter strategy is the equivalent of trying to go from New York to California without a GPS. The Twitter marketing strategy you create will act as the GPS that has the potential to lead you to a large, engaged audience. Just know that it takes time to grow a large, engaged audience, but anyone can do it. If a 16 year old can do it, then so can you.

Which Twitter marketing tips was your favorite? Do you have a 5th Twitter marketing tip?

6 Ways To Make Your Tweets Shorter

October 3, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If you are just like the masses, there have been some days when you thought you were going to send out a tweet but realized it was over 140 characters. Although there are over 500 million tweets being sent out every day, Twitter’s 140 character limitation has resulted in millions of tweets never being sent.

The reason why many of these tweets are not sent out is because shortening tweets is something that proves to be too daunting without the right knowledge. Even if your tweet is 140 characters, you should definitely make your tweets shorter. On average, tweets with 70-100 characters get more retweets than any other tweets of any other character length. That means making your tweets shorter is very important, and here are six ways to get it done.

Use a link shortener. I have seen many people using TinyUrl to shorten their links, and I used to use TinyUrl as well. While they get the job done of shortening the link, there are better options available. Bitly is by far the best link shortener because it saves all of the links you shortened so you can easily tweet the same link, and you get statistics that show you how many times your links got clicked and when they got clicked.
Use text message language. When you are running out of characters or have too many characters, use text messaging language. You becomes “U,” before comes “B4,” and the word and becomes “&.” You will be able to save numerous characters this way, but only use text message language if it’s the only way to get under 140 characters. Do not use text message language just to get to the 70-100 character range.
Drop the punctuation. No one on Twitter is going to accuse you of bad Grammar if you forget the comma in 1,000 or forget the period at the end of the sentence. This may sound like a silly way to save up on characters, but when you have a tweet that is 142 characters, this method is a very useful way to get under 140 characters.
Look for shorter synonyms. It is entirely possible that the reason your tweet is over 140 characters is because you are using big words. If your tweet is 143 characters, and one of the words in your tweet is “awesome,” you can replace the word “awesome” with “cool” to bring the tweet down to 140 characters. All you have to do at that point is send it out.
One sentence rule. You should have a one sentence rule for a majority of your tweets in which you only write one sentence. Granted, there will be some instances when you will have to write more than one sentence for a tweet, but by practicing this rule, you will catch yourself going above 140 characters less often.
Tweet an image with the words. If you find no way to shorten your tweets, put the words in an image and tweet that out in typical meme style. This allows you to send out a tweet with well over 140 characters (in the picture) without worrying about Twitter’s limitation.

Twitter’s 140 character limit is a way to make it easy for people to read a variety of posts. It is easier to read 100 tweets than it is to read 100 Facebook posts that are 500 characters each. One of the unintended consequences of Twitter’s limitations is that some users are prevented from sending out tweets. These five methods to shorten your tweets are designed to reduce the amount of times that problem occurs.

What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have a 7th way to reduce the amount of characters in a tweet? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

20 Awesome Twitter Statistics That You Need To Know

September 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

There are a wide variety of statistics that people are using to make decisions for their brands. Some bloggers look at their traffic statistics to determine what to do next while Twitter users look at their individual statistics on TwitterCounter. Another group of statistics that are at times overlooked are the statistics on entire social networks such as Twitter. Here are the statistics you need to know:

23% of Twitter accounts are in the United States.
Twitter users are three times as likely to follow a brand as Facebook users are.
42% of users learn about products and services via Twitter.
19% of users seek customer support on Twitter.
78% of Twitter users are active on mobile.
49% of Twitter users have an iPod.
Over 500 million tweets are sent out every day.
There are 271 million monthly active users on Twitter.
There are over 100 million users who are active on Twitter daily.
The average user spends 170 minutes on Twitter every month.
29% of millennials (ages 15-34) use Twitter.
29% of Twitter users check the social network multiple times every day.
There are approximately 20 million fake Twitter users
50% of Twitter users are male and 50% of Twitter users are female.
11% of Americans tweet every month.
In Q2 2014, Twitter timelines got 173 billion views.
81% of millennials on Twitter check the social network daily.
50% of UK users have tried a new restaurant based on Twitter recommendations.
The average number of tweets per Twitter user is 307.
There is also a cool website that allows you to see how many tweets are sent out in real time. You can get to this website here.

Those are the 20 Twitter statistics that you can use to make decisions for your business and identify how your target audience uses Twitter. What were your thoughts on the statistics? Did one of these statistics catch your eye? Do you have another Twitter statistic that you know of? Please share your thoughts and statistics below.

How My Blog Got Over 100 Views From Twitter Alone In Less Than An Hour

August 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

For the statistic crunchers out there, that adds up to over 2,400 daily views. At the time, my blog normally got around 32 views every hour which resulted 750 daily views. However, July 21st would be the day that I would call everyone together to help my blog get 1,000 views in one day. This was definitely a nail bitter. It was 11 pm and I had a little over 900 views. At the time, 900 daily views was rare, so I took the opportunity to bring it up to 1,000 views.

I started off by pinning my latest blog posts, but that only got me a few visitors. Most of the visitors I got from Pinterest ended up coming the next day. That helped me have back to back days of over 1,000 views, but for this particular day, Pinterest was not the strong point. When in doubt, I always resort to Twitter where my audience is the biggest.

I started off by increasing my tweeting frequency. From 11 pm to midnight, I sent out one tweet every five minutes. I really wanted this one and was willing to manually schedule tweets to get the job done. Sure enough, I was plugging away with Google’s calculator option, and as the minutes went by, I realized that my goal was less likely to happen. This was not the scenario where I wanted to make the mistake and learn from it. This was a scenario where I put everything on pause, still had work to do after midnight, and wanted to get 1,000 views in one day.

Then at 11:35 pm, I sent out the tweet.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491426440848482305

It got a few favorites, and now the tweets that were getting sent out got more attention. I was able to send out four more tweets with links to my blog posts. Throughout those 25 minutes, I kept everyone updated about my blog’s status.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491428754019717120

After I sent out this tweet, I realized that my goal was going to be realized. I kept on refreshing my blog’s statistics page until the blog passed 1,000 views.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491430155445735425

When my blog got its 1,000th view for the day, I sent out the celebration tweet. It got more attention than any of the other tweets.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491432102101913601

My blog ended up getting 1,030 views that day. That means in 25 minutes, this blog got 77 views. That’s 3 views every minute which adds up to over 4,000 views in one day.

Of course, this rate slowed down after I reached the milestone, but now this same milestone that once seemed impossible happens every day. I can now say that I get over 1,000 daily visitors.

This taught me three valuable lessons. The first lesson reminded me of how important it is to tweet at the moment. The second lesson taught me that the urgency of the matter encouraged myself and my audience to act. The third lesson is that if you build an audience of people who care about what you do, you will be able to go far and spread.