Marc's Blog

I have experimented with Twitter more times than I count. I experiment with my bio, my tweets, the pictures I use, and other things to provide the best possible experience for my audience while achieving incredible results.

One part of Twitter I am always experimenting with is tweeting frequency. Many experts have different advice about tweeting frequency. Some will say that sending more than 10 tweets per day is excessive. Other people will say that you should send one tweet every hour to account for different timezones.

I have utilized different tweeting frequencies ever since I created my Twitter account. In the beginning, I was a very inconsistent tweeter. I tweeted whenever I felt like it. I had great things to say, but I wasn’t committed to Twitter yet. If I didn’t want to write a tweet, I didn’t.

Then, I came across HootSuite and the entire concept of scheduling tweets fascinated me. I started with manually scheduling 10 tweets per day.

Sure enough, my engagement picked up. For the first time, I was consistently sending tweets every day at the same times throughout the day. After seeing engagement pick up, I discovered I had a chance with Twitter.

After getting the initial engagement, I exclusively experimented with scheduling tweets instead of tweeting whenever I felt like doing so. Scheduling tweets build my commitment towards using the platform.

The next major step was schedule 24 tweets per day. While that would mathematically add up to one tweet per hour, I decided to send one tweet every 30 minutes from 9 am to 9 pm eastern.

My engagement spiked within those times. After the last tweet got sent at 9 pm, I would gradually lose engagement and then regain momentum at 9 am.

I went along with this pattern for a while. Then, I decided to tweet every hour. It was at this point—with a little over 10,000 Twitter followers—that I started to get over 100 daily visitors to my blog from Twitter alone.

I then tweeted once every 30 minutes. After getting more traffic that way, I decided to send one tweet every 15 minutes. My traffic increased even more.

Then I hit a plateau. I was also slowly going downhill.

When I got my 100,000th Twitter follower, my blog got a little over 300 daily visitors from Twitter. When I got my 200,000th Twitter follower, my blog got a little under 300 daily visitors from Twitter.

It’s safe to say I was discouraged. I knew the second batch of 100,000 Twitter followers were not rogue people. Many of them engaged with me just like the first 100,000 Twitter followers I got.

How was I getting less traffic even though I doubled my audience? I was using the same tweeting cycle. I was setting the same group of tweets that worked with my first 100,000 Twitter followers.

I discovered the problem in the most unlikely of ways—by submitting an application to be an Inc Magazine columnist. One thing Inc Magazine recommended is that applicants share their content on social networks and engage with Inc Magazine’s social media accounts.

I had read the magazine for a while. I decided to send three tweets promoting Inc Magazine every day. I read more articles and tweeted the ones I liked. For the first time in over a year, I rose above my plateau.

On the day I tweeted three articles from Inc Magazine, my traffic from Twitter exceeded 350 daily visitors. That was my initial peak during the plateau. In a few more days, I was up to 400 daily visitors from Twitter. I had never done that before, and now I was doing it every day.

After I realized I could pass my plateau, I explored other methods to rise farther above my original plateau. I changed up the tweets I sent based on which tweets were getting the most (and least) amount of engagement. I started to tweet more of what worked and less of what didn’t work.

That change resulted in me consistently getting over 450 daily visitors from Twitter. That adds up to 13,500. At my plateau, I ranged anywhere from 8,000 to 9,800 visitors from Twitter every month. I never reached 10,000 in one month.

1,000 Daily Visitors From Twitter?

That’s the next goal I am going after. By making a few small tweaks, I went from a plateau of anywhere from 275-325 daily visitors from Twitter to over 450 daily visitors from Twitter.

Part of the change is more of my followers engaging with my content. Part of it is that my content is now shared more often.

I now manage multiple accounts that I use to promote my blog. By the end of the year, if I can outsource them, I easily imagine myself with seven different Twitter accounts. I already have four.

Now that I broke past my plateau, I am looking at more ways to grow.

Takeaways

Here are some takeaways to get from my Twitter story:

1. Tweet more often. I send one tweet every 15 minutes. That doesn’t include when I actually engage with my followers. If you look at my statistics on TwitterCounter, don’t be shocked if you see days when I sent over 150 tweets.
2. Plateaus don’t exist in business. Plateaus in business are simply illusions. For a long time, I thought I would keep on getting 275-325 daily visitors from Twitter—regardless of how large my audience became. Making some small changes allowed me to get a 33% increase in traffic overnight. In three weeks after making this change, my weekly blog traffic increased by over 30%.
3. Always experiment. One reason I hit my plateau is because I didn’t experiment as much. I had little time to experiment during my junior year, so I made the experimentation (and discovery) in the summer. To find more time to experiment during school, I have outsourced many of my activities to my assistants.

In Conclusion

Twitter is my favorite social network. It presents great opportunities for building connections and getting a massive amount of traffic. The moment you see yourself plateauing on Twitter, it’s not because Twitter is broken or that you can actually plateau.

The reason people plateau on Twitter is usually because they stop experimenting and trying new things. Look at your Twitter strategy and see what small tweaks you can make to get better results. Sometimes—like in my case—the smallest tweak can be the difference between an extra 5,000 monthly visitors.

What are your thoughts about using Twitter? Do you get blog traffic from Twitter? Have you hit a plateau? Sound off in the comments section below!

Want to attract a large audience to your Twitter handle? If you do, then you aren’t alone. Many people aspire to get thousands of Twitter followers, and with each milestone, the possibilities expand.

I have analyzed many Twitter accounts, and I analyze my own account every day of the week. I don’t want to go as far to say that I live and breathe Twitter—the founders get to say that—but I am highly active on the social network.

During my analysis, I saw which tweets picked up engagement and which ones were left behind. I saw what other people did differently from me that either resulted in an increase or decrease in engagement. I implemented what worked for other people and experimented along the way to grow my Twitter audience.

One important lesson I learned from my entrepreneurial journey is that you must prepare yourself for success. Success won’t just come, no matter what you pursue. To prepare yourself for success on Twitter, you need to know what tweets you will send to your followers.

I know exactly what tweets I publish and when because all of my tweets are in a CSV file that I upload to HootSuite. Eliminating the problem of searching for content makes it easier to interact with your audience and promote yourself. So how do you create successful tweets that give you followers and results? You must utilize all seven of these types of tweets in a given day:

#1: Blog Promotion Tweet

Since you are taking the time to grow your audience, you should get some of the people in that audience to see your content. If that audience also happens to be a targeted audience, then the people in your audience will more than likely appreciate your blog’s content.

Many of the tweets I send out promote my blog posts. I have no problem with self-promotion because if you don’t self-promote, then how will people know about you beyond Twitter? Tweets about my blog posts garner hundreds of daily retweets, favorites, and conversations. This translates to hundreds of people visiting my blog from Twitter every day.

However, getting blog traffic from Twitter doesn’t just mean more traffic from Twitter. One of the secrets that makes Twitter so special is that Twitter helps out with SEO. Search engines will rank your content higher if they see you engaging with your audience and getting your audience to engage with your blog posts via Twitter.

Each time my Twitter traffic picks up, my SEO traffic picks up. Each time my Twitter traffic goes down, my SEO traffic goes down. They are both connected.

#2: Landing Page Tweet

Your email list is your most important asset. I have stated this truth in many of my blog posts, and if you come across another digital marketing blog that talks about the email list, you’ll probably read something like “The money is in the email list.”

I under utilized my email list for a long time and didn’t care about growing it. The end result was that 150,000 blog visitors and over 100,000 Twitter followers later, my income barely changed. I wondered if I grew my Twitter audience for no reason, but then I learned about the importance of an email list, and equally as important, the landing page.

Now I send out numerous tweets about my landing pages. In fact, I send one tweet about one of my landing pages every hour. Whether it’s 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter or my Productivity Rubric, you’ll occasionally see some tweets about them if you follow me on Twitter. It’s my way of providing my audience with free value while taking the relationship between me and my audience one step further.

#3: Guest Post Tweet

You don’t want to exclusively tweet about your landing page and content from your blog. You also want to blend some of your guest posts into the mix. Why? Guest posts build authority.

Just think of it this way. A blogger can exclusively tweet his own blog posts or occasionally send some tweets of his articles on Inc Magazine. While this is an extreme example, any guest post you have builds credibility. Having a guest post is a way of saying that your content is good enough to appear on other people’s blogs.

I send anywhere from 1-3 tweets containing my guest posts every day. Although my Twitter followers are not on my blog at this time, they still get to see my content at the bottom along with my bio. If you don’t have much experience with writing guest posts, here’s how to start.

#4: Funny Tweet

I watch hundreds of people speak every year at live events and on YouTube. The people who keep my attention for the longest amount of time are the informative storytellers who utilize humor.

Humor is one of the unsung heroes of many successful business strategies. Saying something funny makes it easier for us to remember who you are. We’ll come back to your Twitter handle again and again to see if you posted new, funny pictures or articles.

Funny tweets are directly related to your niche and are primarily tweets that your targeted audience would understand. Depending on your targeted audience, you may need to geek out during a funny tweet, but there is no problem with geeking out. In fact, geeking out is actually a good thing since geeking out exposes some of your personality. Geeking out allows your followers to feel a deeper personal connection with you and your message.

My goal before the end of 2015 is to get better at sending funny tweets. While most people should send 1-5 funny tweets per day, you may find yourself sending more or less depending on your niche.

#5: Inspirational Tweet

One thing I always got right with Twitter was the inspirational tweet. I send anywhere from 5-10 of these tweets out to my audience every day. I even decided to create a motivational quotes account that sends one motivational tweet every hour.

Inspirational tweets give your followers the motivation to do the work that they were previously scared of. Inspirational tweets challenge people to think outside of limits and explore the possibilities.

If you send these types of tweets every day, some of your followers will primarily visit your Twitter handle to read through some of your inspirational quotes. As the relationship continues to build, your followers will like what you do and decide to visit your blog.

#6: Value In A Pic Tweet

Not all of your Twitter followers will want to leave Twitter to visit your blog—no matter how good your blog posts’ headlines are. However, you still want to provide these followers with value so they remember you and continue reading your tweets.

The ideal solution for this problem is the Value In A Pic Tweet. In this type of tweet, you tweet out a picture with text that explains how to do something or states a tip. I use Canva to create my pictures, and the text you use should be 1-2 sentences. The key is to make the text concise so your followers can get quick value and then look through other tweets.

Some people who see your Value In A Pic tweet may suddenly get intrigued and want to take a look at what you do. Putting your website URL and a picture of you or your logo at the bottom of the picture builds brand recognition and boosts the likelihood of those people coming back for more tweets (or visiting your blog). If you want to do a product campaign, you can also include a picture of your product at the bottom to give it more visibility.

#7: SEC Tweet

The SEC (Someone Else’s Content) Tweet is the tweet that most people either skip over or use too often. Most of the accounts I analyzed were on one end of the totem pole or on the other end—either 100% self-promotional or 100% promoting other people’s content.

Don’t make the mistake of under utilizing this tweet, but also avoid the mistake of overusing it. To keep a happy medium, anywhere from 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC tweets. The actual percentage depends on the number of valuable blog posts and guest posts you have.

The less content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 40%. The more content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 20%.

SEC Tweets let your followers know the following:

• You pay attention to other people in your niche
• You learn from other people in your niche
• You aren’t overly self-promotional

You don’t have to send out a massive amount of SEC Tweets every day, but 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC Tweets so you provide your followers with greater variety.

In Conclusion

Knowing what types of tweets to send out will allow you to prepare for success on Twitter. Once you know what tweets you will send to your followers, you can spend your time doing other things such as marketing your blog posts and growing your Twitter audience.

Which of these types of tweets do you use most often? Do you achieve a happy balance of all seven? Do you think any other type of tweet should be added? Sound off in the comments section below!