Twitter Tsunamis

I am still learning how to use Social Media as a tool to drive more readers through Canadian Personal Finance (and thus hopefully create more income from the site) but I am starting to learn a few things about one of the major social media engines Twitter.

Twitter Etiquette

First thing is Twitter rarely creates much of a buzz for my site, so my guess is I am not in any way an expert, but I have learned what does not work (so that is a good start):

• Do not create Twitter Tsunamis where you post 10 things at once on Twitter. Nobody can, or wants to read that much on Twitter, and most of the posts will be ignored. I have created my own rule that anyone whom I follow, if they create a Twitter Tsunami of more than 3 posts, I unfollow them right away. Use Hootsuite or something like that to spread the info out.
• If you are retweeting a post, add something to it, unless it is the SEO Secret of Life say what you think of the link or post, or I won’t click anything.
• Directed posts that attempt to get you to click because they put a link to your userid is done by scumbag phishing dirtbags and I will retweet their userid every time calling them a scumbag. Don’t do this, it might make you money, but you are then a scumbag.
• I don’t welcome new followers in any way shape or form, that is my preference. Others send a nice welcome message, OK, I guess that is fine, but if you send me a Welcome Message, with a Make a Million Dollars link on it, I will unfollow you right away.
• Don’t just post links, post your ideas, try to start conversations or arguments in Twitter, it’s much more interesting that way. Simply posting links will get you unfollowed eventually, especially if they are links to stuff I don’t care about.

Tweet, Tweet

The results of this are, that I don’t have that many followers right now, but I am not worried about it either. I will not follow folks just to follow, and if I feel like someone is trying to manipulate me into clicking on things, they will be gone.

Are other folks like this? I have no idea, but I can’t think that I am the only person that thinks this way.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So I have been doing a bit of experimenting with Canadian Personal Finance a bit more, attempting to drive more traffic, interest and possibly more income using some Social Media Sites.

Readership has been going up slowly, with occasional spikes, like when I was mentioned in the Globe & Mail’s Personal Finance Blog contest, but I still seem to be hitting a glass ceiling for now, on income and on readership, so I am attempting a few new ideas using Twitter as the cornerstone of these ideas.

1. The first thing was the creation of the BigCajunMan twitter account, which I had done a while ago, but had not really done too much with it. This is easy and it is free too! I follow about 50 other folks, have added some folks, but really don’t appreciate overly chatty streams.
2. I added the WordTwit add on to my WordPress site, so that each new post I make is advertised on Twitter. Never hurts to tell folks when there are brand new posts for them to come over and read.
3. Added TweetMeMe to the site as well so that every post now has a ReTweet badge on it, so that other folks can easily add my post to their Twitter Stream. Making it easy for folks means you may get a few quick ReTweets without folks thinking about it.
4. The major tool I use with Twitter is HootSuite which is another cornerstone in this marketing idea. This tool allows for management of your Twitter streams, and also allows for time delayed delivery of your Tweets, which is key, you don’t want to send out Tweet Tsunamis do you? You can spread out your tweets and it makes things look much smoother and makes you look less needy too.

The major part of this enables me to find old articles I have written and post them again, to a new audience, and hopefully make some more readership from that (and thus more money).  Brilliant eh? Not that original, but still a brilliant reuse of Social Media for building readership.

Any ideas I am missing?

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I have been trying out some new ideas, just to see if I can break out of the earning shell I seem to be in. While my readership is up, it still is not as high as I’d like, and my income level seems quite stagnant as well, so with that I have tried a few things and we shall see how it goes:

1. Using Twitter as a way to steer readers to my site. Every new post is associated with a tweet now using Wordtwit, and that seems to help send folks to my site a bit more (for some odd reason I have over 150 followers).
2. I have added a ReTweet badge on all my posts, which is from TweetMeMe, and that is interesting, but has not caused to many retweets as of yet.
3. Found SocialOomph, which allows me to set up timed Tweets, which then allows me to post a lot of my older content, and see if I can drive some traffic to some of those old Dogs as well. Haven’t seen too much reaction here either, but it is early in the game.
4. Turned commenting back on, for these older sites to see if we can start up some discussions there. Just means I have more Spam to watch for, Akismet should catch most of that.
5. Put Amazon back on the web site to see if we can figure out how to make some extra cash there. Seem to have enough traffic now that Amazon gives me some extra money every month.
6. Bought WPTouch Pro, very worthwhile, need to figure out how to drive iPod/iPhone traffic, but I really like that interface.

Finally need to find, build, or buy a new Theme for the site. It really does look dingy.

ShareThis

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.