Seven Tips to Expand Your Twitter Market and Advertise Your Content

Twitter has quickly grown in popularity over the last few months, and many people have Twitter profiles, regardless of how often they are used. If you are a Content Producer on Associated Content, Twitter can be a valuable marketing tool to increase your number of page views. In this article, I am going to describe seven ways in which a Content Producer can expand his or her Twitter market.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #1 - Vary Your Tweets
I've written a lot of college-oriented articles on Associated Content. If I were to tweet solely about those articles, a very small number of people would follow me. Instead, I try to tweet about articles on a variety of subjects, including book reviews, weight loss, summer, green living, and others. Consider Wal-Mart. A lot of people go there because it has a variety of items and consumers are likely to find what they need for a low price. Make yourself interesting by varying your content and attracting a variety of readers. If people enjoy your writing on a topic that interests them, they may be more likely to read other articles of yours that they normally wouldn't.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #2 - Follow People
To some extent, you can begin to tweet and people will come to you. However, you will probably expand your Twitter market more quickly if you make the first step and begin to follow others first. This is especially true for other Content Producers. Likewise, follow the Associated Content staff and acnews, as retweets from them could be very valuable. A retweet from anyone essentially expands the size of your market to your followers plus the followers of anyone that reposts your tweets.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #3 - Note Trending Topics
At the right of Twitter is the list of Trending Topics. These are topics that are popular and tweeted about with a high frequency. Often these are news items and current events. If you are looking to write an article that will get a lot of page views quickly, consider writing an article about one of these topics. Remember, interest in these topics is often short-lived, so in a week or two your article may receive very few page views. I would recommend submitting articles about these topics for performance views only, or else they will not be published in time. After you write an article about one of these topics, you will probably have to tweet about it with some frequency so that your tweet isn't "buried" under other tweets about the topic. Consider tweeting a link to your article every fifteen to twenty minutes. A quality article written about a trending topic is likely to attract new followers.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #4 - Tweet About Quality Articles
If you are a long-time Content Producer, you probably have a large volume of articles about which you can tweet. When selecting articles to tweet about, choose the articles that you are most proud of. For example, tweet about articles that relate to your interests and your passions. Hopefully your writing in these will be better and may convince a person to follow you on Twitter, as opposed to an article that may have been an assignment that you did for upfront payment.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #5 - Use Search Optimization and Other Twitter Tools
Right now, the Iranian election is a hot topic in the news. For this reason, I will use it as an example of poor, okay, and ideal Twitter marketing. Please pardon the use of this example.

Here are three examples of how a Content Producer could tweet about an op-ed article on the Iranian protests.

Tweet #1

Iranian Protests @ reallylongassociatedcontentlink.com/thoughts_on_iranian_protests/12345

Tweet #1 is not effective for several reasons. The title says nothing about the article, other than its subject matter. The link could lead to photos, an op-ed piece, video, etcetera. It's unlikely that a person looking for substantive information would click on this link other than as a last resort. Likewise, if a person were to want to retweet this article, the link might be prohibitively long and might not fit in the 140 character limit.

Tweet #2

Thoughts on Iranian Protests @ aclink.com/12345

Tweet #2 is slightly more effective. The title is more descriptive, and a potential reader can infer that the link is going to be an op-ed piece of media. This tweet is of the same style as the standard auto-post tweets that Associated Content does. The link is slightly shorter, and the entire tweet could be retweeted fairly easily.

Tweet #3

In Support of Iranian Protests @ bit.ly/12345 #iran #protests #neda #op-ed Please RT! Thanks!

Tweet #3 is by far the most effective of the three tweets. The title is much more descriptive (the reader knows the opinion of the writer before clicking on the link), the link is even shorter, there are hash-tags relating to the topic at hand, and there is a request for retweets.

A person searching for news is much more likely to find Tweet #3 and is therefore more likely to read the article. Tweet #3 is also more likely to be retweeted, so the market for the article is expanded instantly. Remember, you have 140 characters to work with on Twitter. Use as many hash-tags and descriptive words as you can to attract people searching for a topic. You won't win any prizes for the shortness of your tweets.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #6 - Tweet Regularly
Try to market your articles on Twitter actively and on a regular basis. If you can tweet about two or three articles every other day at intervals of every four to six hours, you are much more likely to attract followers than if you market through Twitter irregularly. Tweet at normal waking hours as well. More people are going to see your tweets if they are awake and at a computer.

Expanding Your Twitter Market Tip #7 - Use Auto-Post
Link your Twitter account to your Associated Content account so that your articles are automatically tweeted when published. Even if it is a niche article, your tweet might be seen by two or three people that could become your followers. Likewise, your content is automatically promoted with no effort on your part.

Twitter is relatively new for many people, and it may take time for some to get used to its applications as a marketing tool. By following the above tips, you are likely to expand your Twitter market and increase the number of people following you. If you have any other suggestions for how a Content Producer could expand his or her market on Twitter, please leave your thoughts in the form of a comment. Thank you for reading!