How To Use Twitter For Building Links
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, April 13, 2009 Comments (24)
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Twitter isn’t a link building service. In fact, aside from the one link you get in your 140-character limit bio, there isn’t a whole lot of potential for building links through Twitter. At least, not directly. However, there are some indirect methods for building links.
We’ve written about pinging your Twitter stream before. But what we haven’t talked about is how to use Twitter as link bait.
You want to build links to your website, right? Well, you have to promote it then and Twitter is a great way to promote your website. A GREAT way. Here’s one method you can use to get Twitter’s help in building inbound links to your website.
- Build up a massive Twitter following. There are several online tools available to help you find people with interests like yours. Whichever ones you decide to use, keep in mind that the more followers you have the more likely you are to get people retweeting your blog posts and linking to you from their blogs.
- Tweet your blog posts. Kind of a no-brainer, right? How are you going to build links to a site if no one knows about it? Use a Tweet/Retweet plugin for WordPress if you have a WP blog. Also, use Twitter Tools or another similar plugin so that your blog posts are automatically Twittered when they post. Bottom line, get your blog posts on Twitter where your massive follower list will see it.
- Build relationships with your followers. Tweet their blogs posts and retweet their messages. They will reciprocate. Also, send @replies and get people to talking. Once they realize you are a real human being and you have a personality, they will read your blog posts, tweet them, and link to you from their blogs.
- Use Tweetlater to retweet awesome blog posts a couple of weeks out. Just when the online passion has died down you can resurrect again with a carefully placed tweet when your followers least expect it.
- Bookmark it. Twittley is a social bookmarking service that automatically sends a tweet when you bookmark a page. Also, whenever someone else votes for your submissions, Twittley will send out a retweet. And since it is a fairly new service, you can virtually get in on the ground floor and building your reputation before the competition does.
- Build content worth linking to. Really, this one should be the first item on the list. You can do all of the other stuff here and never get a link back if your content isn’t link worthy. The No. 1 way to ensure you get a link is to make your content worthy of links.
Twitter is a great tool for promotion. It won’t provide the links for you, but you can use Twitter to promote your great content and your followers will link to the really good stuff.
Comments (24) Category: Link Building
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Comment by Niche
Made Monday, 13 of April , 2009 at 5:12 pm
Agree with you that twitter is a great way to get a ton of traffic to our sites.
But I think the key is to get the right TYPE of followers rather than a ton of followers
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Monday, 13 of April , 2009 at 8:40 pm
@Niche – This is very important! Getting the right type of followers is very important!
Comment by Pankaj Sonkusre
Made Wednesday, 15 of April , 2009 at 12:53 am
The right thing need to do is to search for relevant followers rather for searching non relevant one.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Wednesday, 15 of April , 2009 at 5:55 am
@Pankaj Sonkusre – Exactly, relevancy is always very important!
Comment by Affiliate Management
Made Wednesday, 22 of April , 2009 at 3:16 am
It’s good to see a list about how Twitter can be used, so many people say to me “but I still don’t get it”. This article explains nicely how useful it is.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Wednesday, 22 of April , 2009 at 5:19 am
@Affiliate Management – Thanks, it is funny to hear people say
“I don’t get it”
)
Comment by david
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 9:23 am
nick mate great post, will have to get around to using that tweetlater function, currently just using tweet most items once, but is suitable to driving traffic to some of my blog posts.
thank you
Comment by Tara Jacobsen
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 9:38 am
I can’t tell you how many things I “did not get” when they started, like having a blog rather than a website! Some things just need to be experienced to understand AND once someone gets a lead from Twitter, they never question it again..:)
Comment by candry johnson
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 10:19 am
Thanks for you information its really informatics
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 10:21 am
@david – Thanks for the kind words and reading…I hope it works well for you!
@Tara Jacobsen – That is so true, once a client sees the value and benefits of Twitter first hand, they will never question it!
)
Comment by James Allen Pauley-Barker
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 12:50 pm
Hello Nick, Thanx for sharing your list about how Twitter can be used, and I as a young marketer appreciate this useful information, and has already began to implement these tools to progress my getting the right type of followers on twitter. So thanks again for sharing your experience and knowledge on this particular subject.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 12:56 pm
@James Allen Pauley-Barker – Thanks for reading, hopefully things go well for you…best of luck with your online efforts!
Comment by Frank
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 2:03 pm
Great Post Nick. Twitter is definitely a great way to get traffic and keep a group of like-minded people following along. Twittering is definitely fun, and there is benefit once you start gaining friends/following, and begin contributing.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 2:36 pm
@Frank – Thanks, I think Twitter is much like many other social sites, you get out what you put in!
)
Comment by Liz
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 2:09 am
I am still struggling with what to do with Twitter and this article is great for giving ideas, many thanks.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 6:15 am
@Liz – Thanks for reading, best of luck using Twitter!
Comment by Nishadha
Made Thursday, 30 of April , 2009 at 12:18 pm
building a loyal following is much better than having a huge following of people who follow you back automatically. I doubt they even read your tweets. This is more important now since Twitter clients like TweetDeck lets you group your followers.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Thursday, 30 of April , 2009 at 1:52 pm
@Nishadha – Thanks for reading and mentioning TweetDeck!
Comment by Reg D. Lyons
Made Sunday, 3 of May , 2009 at 1:12 pm
I have read your article but I am still a little left in the dark on what kind of content to build on like you say newsworthy is that like the stuff that people want to know like celebrity news?
Or content relating to my website and my Audio book about a Super Ninja that fights terrorism in the USA?
What is the sure fire content that I should be building on on my new blog on Twitter to get Audio book sales online?
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Sunday, 3 of May , 2009 at 1:32 pm
@Reg D. Lyons – Thanks for reading and your comment.
I would recommend that you test building different relevant Twitter content that fits into the audiences of your audio book product…
Comment by Chris McElroy
Made Saturday, 16 of May , 2009 at 11:08 am
Nishadia, I was coming here to say exactly what you just said. Like minds think great or great minds thing alike or something.
It’s like link building. people are still out there telling you that you need thousands of links to rank well. You need quality links not quantity.
With twitter, it’s who follows you and who you follow that count, not how many followers you have.
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Saturday, 16 of May , 2009 at 1:59 pm
@Chris McElroy – Very true, quality really matters with Twitter followers!
Comment by Don Campbell
Made Saturday, 16 of May , 2009 at 11:37 pm
Great, practical tips. I hadn’t heard of Twittely before. Thanks for this writeup Nick!
Comment by Nick Stamoulis
Made Sunday, 17 of May , 2009 at 8:37 am
@Don Campbell – Thanks for reading…it seems there is a new Twitter tool launching almost daily…:)
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