How to Tweet the Life Back into Old Posts

Alex — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:00:42 +0000

How effective are your Twitter marketing campaigns? How often do you retweet your blog posts? Do you just retweet current articles, or do you ever dig deep back into your archives to find posts to tweet to your followers?

A great method I can’t recommend enough to bring back life into old articles is to simply retweet them to your followers on Twitter. This opens your blog up to a lot of new discussions and keeps old posts alive by keeping traffic flowing to them.

It’s something I recommend, but it’s not something that everyone likes to do. After blogging consistently for a few months, you will have a lot of posts to look through. It can become pretty difficult to find a good, retweet worthy post. There are over 300 posts on this blog, and there are so many I want to share with my Twitter audiences.

Why make this decision yourself?

This weekend, I want you to look into the plugin I am going to describe below. In brief, it will select a random post from your blog archives and retweet it to the Twitter account you connect it to. There are more details as to what this plugin can do and how it benefits your blog even more below.

Introducing: Tweet Old Post plugin for WordPress

The plugin I am talking about (big thanks to my friend Rob for sharing) that has done wonders for this blog is called Tweet old posts. I use it here, and without even touching it after changing a few settings initially, it has brought some discussion back to old posts on this blog.

All that’s required from you to set it up is your Twitter username and password, which is all configurable through your own domain. So you don’t have to worry about anybody getting your account details.

After installation, you are given many options to configure how you want your tweets to look. Now, a few of the most notable and useful features this plugin has to offer are:

URL Shortening - All URL’s are shortened by default, to minimize the amount of space used in the tweets the plugin sends out.
Add hashtags - In any tweet this plugin sends out, you can add specific hashtags to each one. So, I chose to add #blogging and #wordpress to each tweet this plugin sends out. Read more about hashtags and their importance here →
Set time to tweet - This plugin tweets posts at random times, so all of your followers in different times zones can get a heads up of an older blog post. The plugin gives you the ability to control how often a tweet it sent out.

You also have the ability to filter what categories the plugin grabs posts from, and you can set a minimum age requirement for any posts to be tweeted. The plugin offers great filtering, so it only tweets the posts that are probably buried deep into your blog.

Again, if you want to use this plugin on your blog (you would be absolutely out of your mind not to), you can download it here. It’s absolutely free of course.

Will you be tweeting over the weekend?

Have I convinced you to take a look at this plugin? It is hugely beneficial, and your readers will really enjoy the content. Let me know if you do end up using this plugin, and how it alters the traffic to your blog.

Enjoy your weekend!

7 Simple Tips for Effectively Marketing Your Blog on Twitter

Alex — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:50:12 +0000

Twitter is amazing for generating viral traffic, and will even help you increase comments on your blog. However, you have to know how to use twitter effectively to reap the rewards.

Contrary to popular belief, simply setting up a feed for your blog and letting your account run itself will not create a noticeable effect. Instead, you should strive to use twitter in a way that gives value to your followers and increases the authority of your blog.

I just wanted to let you guys know that I will be away on vacation for a week tomorrow. I will return July 4th. As far as posting goes, I can only hope Janith will come around and cover while I am gone. But I think a few days of posting will be missed as he is nowhere to be found.

Register Your Blog’s Name as Your Username

If this one isn’t obvious, you can increase your blog branding by using the blog name as your twitter username. This will increase the exposure and branding of your blog online.

Use a Memorable Avatar

Instead of a random anime character or a generic character illustration, invest in using a brandable avatar. Perhaps part of your logo, or a picture relevant to your blog’s name and/or design. Having an outstanding avatar is a huge part of marketing on twitter, as it is how people recognize you easily.

It is even helpful to have a picture of your own self on their too. A picture of yourself will help with the connection/interaction you have with your readers.

Create a Custom Background

Although often overlooked, creating a custom twitter background increases the branding for twitter users who actually go to twitter.com to use the application. You should design a twitter background that includes your blog’s name, logo, and URL.

You don’t have to have anything fancy, just take the Twitter background I made for Blogussion. Nothing special, it’s just an image with an info panel to the left. I made it match our blog colors to make it match more with our site. Try to make your background so it matches with the theme of your blog, that was your Twitter will be a lot more recognizable.

Retweet tweets from users in your niche

Interact and share value from important people in your niche by retweeting valuable niche links, quotes, offers, and questions. This will have people looking at your profile more, and it will make you seem more interactive to the twitter community. Then people who visit your profile will follow the link back to your blog to learn more about you.

Tweet interesting articles and resources in your niche

This has the same principle as retweeting from experts. Build your authority by sharing useful links and generating responses. Interested Twitter users will follow your tweets all the way back to your blog, looking for more useful information.

Auto-update with Your Blog’s Feed

Wiring your blog’s RSS feed through your twitter account will alert readers to new posts on your blog. Make sure your headlines are interesting enough to draw people in, and ask your friends to retweet links from your blog. This will increase your blog’s visitors.

I use the tool Tweetburner to auto update the Blogussion Twitter account with the feed here, and even some other blog feeds as well.

Reply to questions from users

If someone addresses you with a question or comment, @reply them and build a relationship with your followers. The friendlier you are, the more they will be willing to look into who you are, and more importantly, where you blog.

What About A Twitter Ebook?

A little bonus here, I bought a fantastic Ebook all about Twitter that has really helped me grow the Blogussion Twitter account. In a short summary, after I bought this Ebook (last week), the followers for the Blogussion Twitter account have doubled. The Ebook is full of simple tricks to getting more followers and creating authority on Twitter.

More details on this Ebook can be found here.

Blogussion » twitter marketing