Sunday 19 June 2011

Getting Blog Traffic Through Twitter... The Sexy Way


"The people drawn to Twitter are people on the cutting edge, the real nerds who are resentful of the fact that the general population have found and taken over Facebook"
-Steve Dotto, host of Dotto Tech


Well- I won the race. Some time around the early hours of Wednesday morning, I passed the 15,000 hit mark on this blog. Look- you can see my stats now, on the right. My competitor site- Skeletor's Armpit- was not far behind, at way above 14k. SA is a much younger site, so to reign in all those hits in a smaller space of time is no small feat. Hats off to Skeletor's Armpit. If you like bizarre musings on life and celebrity behaviour- which you probably do if you're on this site- you'll love SA.


During the race, I tried a few new techniques that allowed me to draw in more page views than usual. First, I wrote loads and updated as frequently as I could. Second, I jumped on Twitter, I dug through my archives and I posted links to old entries that might be of interest to people. Using Twitter always brings in a good chunk of traffic. If you have a blog, you need to get on this social networking site as well. Don't worry if you're more a Facebook person. You'll get your head around it. I did, and I can't even upload pictures from my HTC to my computer. So it can't be that complicated. (Facebook is also another great traffic source. People you know will check out your writing just out of curiosity.)


After Google, Twitter is my biggest referring website to Power is a State of Mind. Twitter is popular with celebrities, who have huge numbers of followers. Twitter is used for linking to other sites. Twitter is used for passing on these links to other tweeters (Twitter users) using “retweets”. Links inside tweets get passed on too. So, after months of mithering celebs just to see whether or not they would respond, I decided to make my tweets a bit more purposeful.


After hearing back from the likes of:


Kelly Divine


Dom Joly


Jelena Jensen


Natasha Nice


Trina Michaels


Bridgette B


Katie K


Isis Love


by sending the odd random message, I asked a few big names if they would kindly retweet me to their (much longer) follower list. In return, I'd give them a good mention here.


Hence, thanks go to the following lovely ladies for their re tweets:


Kerry Louise


Claire Dames


Angel Long


The stats leaped a little after their link-ups.


Side note 1: Dylan Ryder retweeted my invitation to a local pub. So that's a yes, right Dylan? Cool. Text me when you're nearly there, yeah?


Side note 2: Amy Reid called me cute after I invited her to my housewarming. My head went through the ceiling.


Side note 3: Someone went ballistic at me over Twitter. Someone you might have heard of. I'll post details of this debacle later.


So: people with lots of followers can get you lots of hits. Here's how. Be nice. Say please and thank you. Give them an honest compliment. This can work whether they're adult entertainment stars or business executives. Tailor your message, obviously. Sending a mention to Alexis Texas complimenting her lips may get you the response you want (perhaps). Sending Lord Alan Sugar the same message may not yield the same results.


It's all well and good using retweets to build up exposure. Getting hits this way will make your stats leap temporarily. But will the same individuals come back to read the blog again? Will you develop a following? Will these tweeters have followers who are interested in a city in northern England, or in mini fiction exercises? Probably not. Celeb retweets are great stat-builders, but nothing works better than solid, tailored content. The people retweeting the blog should ideally have something to do with the content of the blog.


Well. I guess they do now.

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