3 Twitter Marketing Tips That Really Matter (Unlike 100s Of Others)

Social media experts love to overcomplicate things, for the more complex it sounds – the more money they can ask for doing it.

This is how you end up reading another list of ?100 Twitter Marketing Tips? and you have absolutely no clue about which of them you should try first and if it?s worth your time.

Today I only have three tips for you. And I think that is enough to supercharge your Twitter Marketing and make you focus on the things that matter the most.

Let?s see what we have here?

1. Never Follow Anyone On Twitter!

…unless you really want to read his tweets.

[tweet_box]NEVER FOLLOW ANYONE ON TWITTER (unless you really want to read their tweets)[/tweet_box]

Social Media Experts preach that you should regularly find new relevant people to follow. They also promote different online tools that can automate this process for you.

But where does it take you?

Out of 10 people you follow only 1 or 2 might follow you back in return. And there are only three reasons why people act this way:

1. Because they want to return the favour (or just be polite);
2. Because they think this will make you more attentive to what they tweet (cough*bullshit*cough);
3. Because some Social Media Expert told them to do so.

They are not following you back, because they want to read your tweets.

And do you really believe that when you follow someone, he will instantly feel an overwhelming desire to check you out, follow you back, go read your blog and buy from you? Yes?

No!

Mass following can help you grow the number of your followers, but this number will not correlate with your real influence on Twitter.

If you still think you should be “mass following” people on Twitter from time to time, I guess you should just stop reading this and go read another ?100 Twitter Marketing Tips? article by some Social Media Comedian.

2. Learn How To Network With People On Twitter

This is not a personal growth blog, so I won?t try to persuade you that your network is crucial for your success in life and business. ?You are who your friends are? – everybody knows that saying.

If you had a chance to check my ?Twitter Marketing for Dummies? guide you should already know that…

[tweet_box]Successful Twitter Marketing is when influencers tweet your stuff[/tweet_box]

…and not when you grow your Twitter account to 10k “dead” followers (or something along these lines).

I mean connecting with influencers on Twitter is much more effective than growing your own Twitter following.

But don’t try to reach out to the top people in your field. I can guarantee they will ignore you (no matter how many ?powerful Twitter Marketing tips? you?ll use on them).

In the early days you should connect with the guys who are at your level (or slightly higher) and move on from there.

Throughout my blogging career I was able to connect with quite a few big guys and I think I?ve learned the secret formula to making solid connections:

[tweet_box]If you want to connect with someone worthy, you should become worthy to connect with.[/tweet_box]

This is it! It’s so simple it’s not even funny.

I’d love to give you some advice on how to actually become worthy to connect with, but like I said, this is not a personal growth, productivity or psychology blog.

So grab a few awesome articles from other cool blogs:

1. Marc Ecko?s 10 Rules for Getting ?Influencer? Attention @ fourhourworkweek.com
2. How A Few Tweets Led to a 370% Increase In My Traffic @ problogger.net
3. How I Got The Attention of One of the Top SEO Bloggers With Diet Coke @ moz.com

And obviously your networking shouldn?t be solely focused on influential people. See who?s tweeting your articles already and who’s mentioning you on Twitter and never leave them without a personal reply.

In case you need some specific action steps to building relationships on Twitter and benefitting from it, I invite you to read this article: “3 Best Twitter Tools And 1 Powerful Way To Use Them“.

3. Motivate Your Readers To Tweet Your Stuff

There?s one tiny content marketing principle that I wish I?ve learned earlier in my blogging career.

[tweet_box]You should spend 20% of your time writing your content and 80% of time promoting it.[/tweet_box]

What?s the point of writing new articles when the world is full of people who didn?t yet read the articles you already have?

So after you publish your next article you should work hard to bring as much people as possible to check it out.

But promotion doesn?t end at this point.

After bringing readers to your blog it?s time to take an extra step and have those people share your article with their own following. This is called The Viral Loop.

How are you going to do that?

Just follow these simple principles and you’ll create a neat Viral Loop on your blog:

1. The content should be worthy of a tweet

Do you know what drives a person to post a tweet on Twitter? Here’s the simplified explanation:

[tweet_box]People want others to perceive them based on what they tweet[/tweet_box]

I mean most of us will not tweet any racist things, because we don?t want to be associated with racism, right?

And yet many of us will gladly tweet productivity advice, because we want to be perceived as productive and smart.

If your article is dull and non-unique, no one would agree to be associated with it (and you won?t get any tweets).

But if your article is well written and smart – everyone would love to be among the first people to share it with others.

This point is probably the most important of all.

If your content is lame, nothing will help.

2. It should be super easy for visitors to make a tweet

You can?t even imagine how many of your readers won?t bother tweeting your article if they don?t see a tweet button available. And it doesn?t even matter how great your article is – internet users are very lazy when it comes to taking action.

So your job is to make sure the tweet button is always there, reminding your readers that they can share your article with just one click.

As you can see, I have my social buttons floating right next to the content of the article, but there are many more social plugins that can help you arrange your social buttons in many different ways.

Another powerful trick is to actually ASK your readers to share your content with their following. It was proven numerous times that a lot of people will immediately take action if you ask them to do it.

By the way, Kristi Hines has an awesome writeup about the best way to treat tweet buttons on your blog. Make sure you read it.

3. Have some good copy for your readers to tweet

What happens when people click the tweet button on your article? A tweet is automatically generated and oftentimes it consists of the two things:

“The title of the article” + “The link”

If your title sounds boring, people will be very reluctant tweeting it even if the article itself is great.

So it seems like you only have one chance to appeal to your readers. But is that really so?

If you?ve been regularly checking the blogosphere in the past few months you should?ve noticed a new trend emerge.

Many bloggers advocate filling your article with short tweetable statements that people can tweet in addition to tweeting the actual headline of the post.

This was proven to generate up to 200% more tweets!

Quotes, takeaways, statistics or any other catchy phrases can serve as awesome tweets. This way your readers are not limited to sharing the title of your article with their followers, but can also tweet a few takeaways from it.

Like I said earlier in this article, internet people are very lazy, so 99% of your readers won?t bother copy/pasting your quotes to their Twitter account.

And it is your job to make tweeting quotes from your article effortless.

It’s about time I recommend you TweetDis – a WordPress plugin that you can use to fill your articles with fancy-looking pre-populated tweets. Like this one:

[tweet_box]Use Tweetable Quotes in your articles if you want to get more tweets[/tweet_box]

Looks good? You can easily create such “tweetable quotes” on your blog by using TweetDis.

There?s also a similar free online service, called ClickToTweet. But it can’t create those good-looking tweet boxes that grab attention. You can only create text links with it, which leads to a lower CTR.

In case you need some guidance on writing “tweetable quotes” that your readers would love to share with their following – I suggest you to study this article on ?writing engaging tweets? or simply dig for some relevant quotes by famous people (which people absolutely enjoy tweeting).

[fancy_box id=5]FREE BONUS:?[content_upgrade id=5356]15 Smart Tools To Get More Traffic & Sales From Twitter[/content_upgrade][/fancy_box]

What Are You Going To Do Now?

I sincerely believe that the above three tips are the only ones you should focus on.

There?s absolutely no point of getting new followers in any way other than natural (I guess you don?t need an explanation of how ?natural following? happens). Those followers will not listen to you anyways.

Connecting with influencers is a super effective way to get tons of traffic from Twitter, even if your own following is below 500.

And creating a viral loop in your articles will noticeably increase the amount of visitors you get daily.

So just concentrate your efforts on these two things:

1. Write something meaningful and make sure people will want to tweet that;
2. Connect with influencers in your niche and ask them to tweet your stuff.

Other than that just be yourself and communicate to other people on Twitter just like you do in real life.

And if my ideas resonate with you – I would really appreciate if you could tweet this article. Thanks!