How Twitter can help your blog

Social media plays a big part in the blogging world and Twitter is right up there with the best social media format. It can be a bit daunting though when you first create an account. Here I will try and explain how I use twitter and how I got 2900 followers in 7 months.

In this #BlogLife series, I have already written a post on social media and apps/websites I use to help with blogging. One of the apps that helps me with Twitter is Crowdfire. You can read about that in the apps I use post.

I never thought I would ever have 2900 followers, well maybe in 10 years time but not after 7 months. I am very happy with that number. As I mentioned, Crowdfire was a big help as this gives you ideas on who to follow etc but how do you use Twitter to help your blog?

Searching:

You can search for people you know or famous people you may want to follow. Chances are famous people won't follow you back and most of the time won't interact with you in any way, but why would they. There to busy throwing their money in the air and shouting yessss! That's what I would do anyway. You can search for certain terms for example, "Dad blogger" and this will bring up all the people that have this phrase in their bio. You can then choose to follow them.

Hashtags:

When you tweet, it has disappeared from most people's feed in about 25 minutes due to the sheer amount of tweets going out there. To keep it visible to people you should add some hashtags. To do this you can simply put a # before a word. The more common the word or phrase the more chances there are of people seeing it. When I tweet my blog post I sometimes use #pbloggers which means parent bloggers. Then, if anyone uses the search term "pbloggers" my tweet will come up. Giving me more opportunity to get likes or Retweets on that tweet. The more people Retweet your tweet the more people will see it.

Lists:

Lists are great for sorting your followers out. You will follow all sorts of people and your main feed can become clogged with lots of things you might not be that interested in. I have a few lists, one of them is simply called "Twitter pals" and these are people that I tend to interact with in some way on a daily basis. These guys and gals are great and always up for a laugh. I don't want to miss any tweets of theirs hence why they are in a list. 

Engaging:

Engagement in blogging and on Twitter is the key. Don't be afraid to jump into a conversation if you feel you have something worthy to say, I haven't come across anyone who isn't friendly yet. Another way to engage is to simply ask questions. The more you tweet the more followers you will get and the more people will interact with you. Don't forget to like and Retweet other people's tweets that you enjoy. This is also a good way to get yourself more followers.

Sharing:

When you share your blog posts you can @ certain people in them or certain blogging groups who will then RT your post, gaining you more exposure and potentially more followers. When I first started on Twitter I just simply searched for Bloggers, it was a loose term as there are so many but, it gave me a long list of people and groups I could follow. I came across a few Twitter accounts that state they will share your posts if you tag them in your tweet, great stuff. So, that's what I do on every post. I aim to tweet a new post twice withing the first few hours then maybe once or twice a day for 2-3 days after it goes live. Along with sharing on other social media accounts, this should give you some good views. 

Twitter chats:

twitter chats are good to get into if you're new to it all. There will be host and they will ask questions and you answer them and use the # of whatever the chat is called. through doing this, others will interact with you and you will gain followers and hopefully some twitter buddies. 

If you follow the above things then you will gain more followers and this, in-turn will give you more blog views. To me, engaging with people and good hashtags will be what gets you more followers and views to your blog. Keep at it!

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