Correct me if I'm wrong, but right after you've launched a blog, you'll immediately go and register a few social profiles for it. With Twitter and Facebook being the first ones.
But registering these social profiles alone does not bring you any visitors. You should have a solid SMM strategy if you want to be successful. And most importantly, avoid common mistakes that most bloggers make as they are starting out.
Just recently I asked 50 respected bloggers (including Ms. Ileane) for advice on Twitter Marketing, which made me recall some awfully stupid mistakes that I was making myself early in my blogging career.
And I am gladly sharing them with you today:
1. Tweeting All You Have In One Chunk
For a lot of people, tweeting is an activity that they’d like to get out of the way in one go at the start of the day, preferably when they’re sipping their morning coffee or enjoying breakfast.
However, if you tweet numerous times in the morning and that’s all you do for the entire day, you’re only going to get exposure tailored to people who check Twitter at that specific time.
Tools such as Buffer or HootSuite can schedule your tweets throughout the day so that you can get tasks done in the morning, even as your account remains active through the day.
2. Mentioning People The Wrong Way
If you start a tweet by @-mentioning someone without adding an initial character at the beginning of the tweet, the only people who are going to see your message are you, the person you’re @mentioning, and people who follow both of you.
If you want all your followers to see that mention, learn how to start tweeting like a pro and make sure there's at least one symbol in your tweet before you @-mention that person.
Check out how Gary Vaynerchuk illustrates this Twitter mistake in detail in this cool video!
3. Not Using Images
Pictures are a great way of interacting with your audience with Tweets today, as they provide compelling content. Twitter has recently introduced a feature that allows a portion of picture images to move through the feed naturally, providing a sneak peak to something that is typically more engaging than simply pasting in another URL to your blog.
4. Not Motivating Readers To Tweet
Most bloggers have already settled with the fact that the vast majority of their readers never take action. Out of 100 people that read your article hardly 10 will bother tweeting it.
So we have to leverage all existing strategies and tactics to make our readers spread our content on social networks.
The two most common tactics are simply asking your readers to tweet your article and placing a tweet button right in front of their eyes. But recently lots of bloggers started implementing a new tactic that increases the number of tweets – “Tweetable Quotes”.
Tweetable quotes are catchy sound bites within a blog post that can be sent to Twitter with just a single click. People love sharing smart quotes on Twitter, so just write a few takeaways from your article and make them tweetable.
[tweet_box design=”box_04″]Are You Using Tweetable Quotes on Your Blog? Learn More [/tweet_box]
You can do that by using a free online service called ClickToTweet; or a premium WordPress Plugin – TweetDis.
5. Buying Your Followers
Some people think that they can just buy themselves a couple thousand followers and instantly appear as an influential, incredibly cool guy.
However, if you then tweet an article from one of your blogger-friends who checks his stats hoping for a flood of traffic only to see that nobody turns up, you’re going to end up feeling pretty embarrassed.
Buying followers shows how much you lack social skills and it simply doesn’t yield results. People who think that numbers are the only thing that matters for a presence on Twitter need to think again. Faking a bunch of followers is not going to get you anywhere; you need real, authentic traffic, leads and customers to make a real impact through twitter.
6. Neglecting to Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a fantastic opportunity for bloggers to sneak their way into trending conversations. Some studies even say that use of hashtags can double the engagement of your Twitter followers.
For example, the hashtag #throwbackthursday or #TBT could be utilized to mention one of the conversations that took place on a previous Thursday.
If you use hashtags strategically, then you can target your audience and reach potential followers in large numbers, helping to grow your influence and improve your fan-base.
7. Retweeting Everything that’s About You
If people are mentioning you in their tweets, that’s great, thank them by favoriting their tweets or replying to them, but don’t just retweet everything that mentions you and your company.
All that will do is make it look as though you’re desperately trying to win some kind of popularity contest. Just like constantly posting tweets all about yourself, it’s going to clutter up your followers feed and reduce your Twitter status and popularity pretty quickly.
8. Tweeting Your Own Links Only
If you’ve decided to use social media as a way to build your business – that’s great! However, the worst thing you can do is make your entire Twitter account devoted to promoting yourself.
Yes, push out information about your blog posts and the other things your website is doing, but remember to mention content that isn’t your own too. Link to news articles from your Twitter friends and other blogs that are relevant – if you find a good balance between promotion and appreciation of other information, your twitter presence will improve.
9. Losing Your Focus
So one day you’re tweeting about marketing on social media, and then you’re talking all about the argument you had with your wife last night about who should be the one driving your kid to school.
Never forget that people are following you on Twitter for a reason: they expect you to give them some very specific information. So once you lose your focus and start randomly tweeting about anything that surrounds you – your followers will stop paying attention.
Only Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga can get away tweeting random stuff that surrounds them, because that's what their fans want.
10. Forgetting to Act Human
Just because you need to stay on topic, doesn’t mean you should forget to act like a human. In an age where people are constantly being bombarded with different promotions, deals, and taglines, your personality is crucial if you want to stand out from the crowd.
Using automated replies and corporate jargon is going to send your audience packing pretty quickly. Remember, it’s not all about what you’re selling; you have to make sure that you followers care about what you’re saying too.
So that's it. I bet many of you guys are guilty of making some of these mistakes. But I am hoping that from now on your Twitter presence is going to be real smooth. And let me know if there's some outrageous Twitter mistake that I am missing. See you in comments.
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