Twitter is one of those things that just keeps on growing. For how much longer? well that has very mixed opinions. The real question is “why use it?”. I (simonday09) actually love Twitter for discovering new ideas, tips and tricks for web design. I have a targeted group of people I follow so whenever I log in all the posts are relevant to my work. I can’t find that anywhere else.
But what other reasons should people want to use Twitter. Here’s my breakdown of the people and the uses:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Site visit generator (Increasing visitors to your site)
- Famous people (Following posts from the famous)
- Friends and family (Seeing what friends and family are up to)
- Work related top tips (Real nuggets of information and up-to-date techniques)
- Following everyone and everything (For those who just love to Twitter)
So broken down these are the whys and how’s:
1. SEO – Search engines
Search engines are given a lot of importance to links in Twitter. This will not last so make the most of it and promote your site often. Follow as many as possible and make useful posts as well as promoting your own site. You should always combine your site advertising with other posts so anyone following you won’t feel like you’re just business spamming. If other people then start using your link in their posts the importance grows and your rankings will increase. As I’ve already said “This will NOT last” so make the most of the short time that’s probably available.
2. Site visit generating
Twitter is an excellent way of generating extra traffic to your site. Follow everyone and try to post useful posts in amongst links to your site. If 10,000 are following you and only 1% visit your twitter link that’s a lot of extra hits for a one liner! Again good links spread fast and before you know it your 1% can grow exponentially as others start promoting it for you.
Also remember that you have a profile so link to your site and give a good description of what you do in the profile space. People do read these so target your market here as well as via posts.
3. Famous people
A lot of people just follow the famous (TV – Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry etc. CEO’s include Steve Jobs, Richard Branson etc).
4. Friends and Family
Doesn’t really need any explanation apart from it’s useful for those who can Twitter on the move. They may be late arriving, grabbing an unexpected drink somewhere or other things where other friends or family might join them.
5. Work
Do searches for work phrases in your field of work. For example I use SEO, PPC, CSS, XHTML, web design, coding. There are also types of groups which have a hash (#) before the name like #CSS which you can use to target a wider audience. In my example I use #CSS, #Web, #Design etc. What’s important is you don’t mix this up too much with friends or other such distractions. The quality of posts are incredible and I have learnt so much more in the last two months thanks to Twitter!
6. Everything and everyone
These people are the big brother watches 
who just like to watch the world and post to it as well.
What else can you do for hit increases?
Auto reply
Another way to generate hits is to auto reply to those following you with something like “Hey, thanks for following me. Visit my site at http://www.test.com”. I find these annoying so I’m not going to suggest a site but a quick google search will show you.
Backgrounds
Customise your background to really make you stand out. If you’re trying to portray a professional image then having your own custom background really enhances that. You can change it in “SETTINGS >> DESIGN >> CHANGE BACKGROUND IMAGE”
Replying:
Replying to posts can gain you greater coverage and if you’re lucky enough to get someone famous with tens of thousands of followers to reply to you then you suddenly have massive coverage!
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Hello, can you please post some more information on this topic? I would like to read more.