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12 Days Of Traffic -- Day 9: Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking service that enables you to broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers". Twitter's slogan is that it answers the question: “What are you doing now?” Twitter messages--also known as "tweets"-- are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert.
Twitter and similar services (Dodgeball, Pownce) are known as microblogging services. The blog part of the name is appropriate because when a person does an update(tweet), they are broadcasting it to their followers as opposed to IM where there is more of a live, one-to-one conversation going. The "micro" part of course refers to the small size of the "post", which is part of Twitter's utility as well as part of its charm.
I held off talking about Twitter up to this point due to my personal bias, given that my own website picobuzz.com is based on Twitter. Nevertheless, Twitter can add to your traffic strategy and help you gain visibility.
How is Twitter good for generating Web traffic? Well, I'm sure you figured out from my 12 Days of Traffic series so far that a common theme in building traffic on the Web is to get out there and participate and contribute. So why bother to use Twitter in addition to the other social networking services discussed so far?
Well, for one thing Twitter is dead simple to set up and use. The limitation on the post(tweet) size is actually liberating. With only 140 characters to work with, it takes little time to write such a micropost and leaves little reason to fuss over it and spend time editing your thoughts. As such it offers a way to stay active on the Web during those down times when you don't feel motivated to sit down and write a regular blog post. You can even tweet from your mobile phone using SMS or one of several mobile twitter apps out there.
Another great thing about Twitter is that it is pretty much a positive anarchy, where you can follow and interact, or at least attempt to interact, with anyone. You can find politicians (BarackObama, John Edwards), Web celebrities (Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki), and I believe Hollywood celebrities (which I have little interest in looking up). Not that I'm recommending you stalk these people or anyone else. My point is that it is easy to follow someone on Twitter, and chance the occasional reply, without looking or feeling like a stalker.
You can sign up for a Twitter account here.
Twitter is easy to figure out, but if you want, here is a Newbie's Guide to Twitter. There is also TwitDir which is a Twitter directory that can help find if someone you know has a Twitter account.
Finally, there is a Twitter helper app I am using: twitterfeed. What this does is monitor my regular blog's feed and automatically do a tweet for me with a link to my new post.
Ok, really finally: If you haven't yet checked out my Twitter buzz app picobuzz.com, please do so (thanks).
So--“What are you doing now?”
rk
