Wednesday Wing – #TwitterTips Part 2 Expanding Your Reach by @TerryTyler4 #wwwblogs

Here on Wednesday Wing we bring you all sorts of post and tips to do with blogging, marketing, and writing.

Today we’re looking at Expanding you Twitter Reach

Thanks To @TerryTyler4 for this post.

Twitter Tips

 Part 2: Expanding your ‘reach’

Last week we looked at how to get more followers, http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-90C  and today I’d like to offer some ideas about how to expand the ‘reach’ of your tweets, and thus your blog, if you have one, too (my personal blog has had 336,778 views since I started it 4 years ago, and my book review blog 82,392 views since I started it 16 months ago; I daresay some get tons more than that but they’re quite respectable numbers, so I hope these tips help!). Please note that this post is orientated towards writers/bloggers, but the same principles apply whatever your area of the Twittersphere.

 

Say at the moment you’ve got about 3500 followers, and have built up a great community of writers, bloggers, book reviewers and some faithful readers. You’re all sharing and reading each others’ blog posts, taking up book recommendations, etc; it’s good. What may be happening, though, is that you all have a similar active following (bearing in mind that all followers are not active), so you all tend to see much the same posts going round and round, staying more or less in the same tiny corner of Twitter. If you’re happy with that, fine; many people are content to stay within the community they’ve made on social networking sites. But if you want to break out of that corner and step out into the wider world, how do you do it?

 

Try some of these ideas

1. If you’re a blogger or writer, you probably know about the blog sharing hashtag days, such as #MondayBlogs, #TuesdayBookBlog, #wwwblogs, #SundayBlogShare, #ArchiveDay, #FolkloreThursday, etc. You’ll already know that if you just click on the hashtag, you see posts from people you know, and a few from other familiar names; Twitter’s algorithms work to make you see the posts from the people with whom you have interaction. However, if you click on the hashtag and then on ‘Latest’, you will see all the other posts on the hashtag, from accounts with whom you’ve not yet had any connection. If you retweet/follow some of them, there is a good chance that they will retweet and follow you back, thus putting your posts in front of all their followers, too.
2. Use high traffic hashtags on your tweets:#NewRelease #BookReview, @UKBlog_RT (a profile that RTs for you), #bookbloggers, #bookworm, #writers, #writerslife, #selfpub, #amreading, #amwriting, #FridayReads. You can find more relevant hashtags for your particular area of Twitter simply by having a browse around. Don’t use more than a couple per tweet, though; tweets that are too hashtag-heavy get overlooked.
3. There’s a whole world out there! As well as using those high traffic hashtags, click on them, too, and retweet others who use them—yes, people you’ve never seen before! When you’re doing your following back (I click on my followers list every couple of days and follow back any new ones that interest me), make a note of any people whose bios particularly appeal to you. Go to their page, RT something by them, or just say hello.
4. Go onto the general feed now and again, and RT any random stuff that you think looks interesting—or comment. Everyone likes confirmation that their tweets have been read/enjoyed/laughed at for the right reasons (!), and there’s nothing like the personal touch on Twitter; it shows that not everyone just thumps out tweets via Hootsuite.
5. If you’re an author, don’t only tweet about books and writing. Share posts relevant to the rest of your world, too; you might want to make a general comment about a TV show you’re watching, or something in the news that interests you. If it’s a topic of current interest, hashtag any likely looking words. If the main purpose of your Twitter account is to promote your books, it’s worth remembering that if you only follow, talk to and retweet other writers, your posts will only be seen by writers – lovely for networking, but only a few will be the target market for your books.I hope that’s given you some ideas; next week I’ll be talking about RETWEETING ~ because the power of Twitter lies not just in the tweet, but in the retweet!

Terry blogs at http://www.terrytyler59.blogspot.co.uk/ and reviews books at http://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.co.uk/

Last Week – #TwitterTips Part 1 getting more followers http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-90C