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Archive for June, 2009

How to get people to your blog with Twitter

June 15th, 2009

Twitter is a microblogging platform: it allows you to publish short messages called tweets. The tweets are 140 characters long at the outside, only text. They can contain information, a call to action and possibly a link (URL). The tweeples, which is the name by which you designate the people who are on Twitter, are used to click on the link when they find an interesting tweet. Here are 3 rules you can follow in using this powerful tool to direct people to your blog.

  1. Take short meaningful sentences from your blog post and format them into tweets that people can digest and understand immediately and add a link to that specific post.

  2. Use an URL shortener to keep the link size to a minimum so that you leave as many of 140 characters available for your message. I personally use budurl because it is free, it does an excellent job at shortening any kind og URL and, if you register on the site, you can keep track of any link, looking at how many people clicked on it.

  3. Avoid putting more than one link in a single tweet. You could do it, but it is somewhat confusing and you might look like a spammer.

Twitter is a very powerful environment and it can bring lots of traffic to your blog throughout the day if you manage to engage the people who are online and who are following you.

I suggest to make at least 5 tweets during the day pointing to your blog post, using different words and concepts, although some repetition is allowed. Scatter the tweets evenly during the working hours and you’ll get the best results.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. Go to www.budurl.com and create an account, you can use it to shorten any type of link and it is very convenient also for e-mails and newsletters.

Please read more of my blog posts on my new blog that has been created to host all of my content and that will be kept updated regularly from now on. Commodoreblack.com was my first blog ever and I owe it my beginning in this beautiful blogging world, but with experience I learned that it was better for me ton create a blog that carried my own name. And I advise you to do the same if you ever plan to start a blog.

http://robertomazzoni.com

Please read more of my blog posts on my new blog that has been created to host all of my content and that will be kept updated regularly from now on. Commodoreblack.com was my first blog ever and I owe it my beginning in this beautiful blogging world, but with experience I learned that it was better for me ton create a blog that carried my own name. And I advise you to do the same if you ever plan to start a blog.

http://robertomazzoni.com

Internet Marketing ,

Is Twitter like a radio or more like a plaza?

June 12th, 2009

Recently I have been reading the idea from an online marketer, Peter Drew, that Twitter works like a radio station: you have your own audience, your followers, that listen to your “talk” and that can switch from one “channel” to the next with ease while tracking their favorite music (by the use of keywords). I have expanded on that concept by doing some testing myself and I have noticed seven key elements.

  1. You have only a portion of your followers actually listening to you in any given moment and most of the “listening” happens between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m from Monday through Friday. Ou also have a night crowd but it seems to be different from the people that are listening during the working hours.

  2. When you post a tweet (short message) on your Twitter account, your followers have about 10 to 15 minutes to catch it before it fades out of view. Those who will catch it, because they are tuned on your “channel” will respond to it within a few minutes.

  3. You can successfully repeat the same tweet at different times of the day, finding a different public every time. I would suggest not repeating the same tweet more than 4 or 5 times, well staggered during the day.

  4. The same message can be repeated with different words, so catching a different audience withing a shorter time span (15 minutes, half an hour to one hour).

  5. People will respond much better when you “are on the line” giving some personal and unique content, even if it is somebody else’s content that you are simply retweeting.

  6. If you are saying something interesting they will retweet your content right away giving it more exposure and sometimes marketers invite directly people to retweet their short messages.

  7. You will also have somebody occasionally commenting on what you say few minutes later, joining the conversation with some original content.

So Twitter does have some similarities with radio in that you have different audiences during the day and they tune in on different streams of conversation, depending on the content. Like radio, they shift very fast from one stream to next and respond better to the subjects that entertain them the most.

But overall I find it more similar to a town plaza, where people like to hang together and you have occasional new comers joining in spontaneously. It is like when you go to an Italian small city and sit in front of the cafe in the main plaza, or close to some public garden: you will always find people hanging out together who know each other and spend some time chatting about information of common interest, telling jokes and plainly enjoying each other’s company.

You can join or leave the group when you want and you can follow their conversations making your comments and your stories. And if you are just a stranger passing by and looking for help, you will feel more comfortable turning to this small crowd group rather than just anybody else. And they will always be more willing to help and open to you as compared to the regular guy that is simply walking down the street, minding his own business.

Roberto Mazzoni

Please read more of my blog posts on my new blog that has been created to host all of my content and that will be kept updated regularly from now on. Commodoreblack.com was my first blog ever and I owe it my beginning in this beautiful blogging world, but with experience I learned that it was better for me ton create a blog that carried my own name. And I advise you to do the same if you ever plan to start a blog.

http://robertomazzoni.com

Please read more of my blog posts on my new blog that has been created to host all of my content and that will be kept updated regularly from now on. Commodoreblack.com was my first blog ever and I owe it my beginning in this beautiful blogging world, but with experience I learned that it was better for me ton create a blog that carried my own name. And I advise you to do the same if you ever plan to start a blog.

http://robertomazzoni.com

Internet Marketing , ,

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