Tips to Use Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

If you use Twitter well, it can drive tons of traffic back to your blog. But simply tweeting the title of your blog post with a link back to your site will not work.

You need to be pro-active. You need to be creative. You need to use great marketing when you are tweeting about your blog posts.

Here are 12  simple, actionable tweet formulas to market your blog. Try these out to drive more traffic to your site.

1. Use Short, Provocative Tweets

A tweet is pretty short in and of itself. Generating compelling content in 140 characters or less can present a good little writing challenge. Short tweets, under 100 characters get a 21% higher interaction rate.

2. Include an Intriguing Quote from Post

Give your followers a taste of your blog post. Include an intriguing quote from your article. Try to find a quote that’s concise and gives a flavour of the contents of your post.

Quotes in general do really well on Twitter. Studies have shown that a tweet with a quote is 54%more likely to get retweeted. If your followers like your quote, and retweet it, they are also likely to click through to your website.

3. Include Statistics

People love statistics. 

If you have any interesting statistical information in your article, tweet about it. And to have even more of an impact, use numbers and characters - not just letters. The numbers and characters will make your tweet stand out in the river of tweets your followers get in their timelines.  

4. Use #Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to spread your tweets to various topics. For those who still don’t know what a hashtag is - basically, it’s a word or two behind a # that makes a common discussion subject.

There a few methods to use hashtags when you are tweeting to drive traffic back to your blog. Here are two examples.

Use theme-specific hashtags. If you want to promote a particular blog, landing page, contest, or ebook, you can create your own hashtag for it.

Use general post related hashtags. Include hashtags with the topics about your blog. This gets your tweet seen by other Twitter users searching for the topics you’ve written about.

5. Use @mentions

A mention is how you include Twitter users’ @usernames. They are a way you can send a tweet directly to followers, customers, or anyone on Twitter.

You can use @mentions in a number of ways.

If your blog post comments on prominent bloggers, companies or customers - mention them in a tweet that links back to your post. Not only will they appreciate the mention, but it might just get your tweet retweeted to their followers too.

Mention people who’ve made good comments on your blog post, too. This is a great way to thank your loyal blog readers.

You can also mention the author of the blog post. Whether they are a guest blogger, a new blogger, or even a regular blogger on your site, mention them in a tweet that links back to their post. It’s a nice gesture, and will likely result in a retweet to their followers.

6. Retweet Mentioned Blog Content

If someone mentions your blog content on Twitter, retweet their tweet.

7. Ask for a Retweet (or RT)

This is a great way to get your blog related tweets retweeted. Simply ask your followers to retweet, or RT your update. Tweets that ask for a “RT” or “retweet” get 12 to 23 timesas many shares as those that don’t.

8. Use Visually Appealing Images

The more appealing and enticing your blog post tweets are, the more they will be interacted with, and the more they will drive traffic back to your site.

Attach a really cool image in your blog post tweet. Make sure that it relates to your post. Try to find an image that will intrigue your followers, and make them want to find out more by clicking through to your blog post.

You could even include a visual Call-to-Action, such as an image which includes the words “click the link to read more…”

9. Ask a Question Related to Your Topic

A question in your tweet can generate lots of engagement. If the question generates enough connection and curiosity with your followers, it will get more clicks to your blog.

10. Tweet about Your Blog-Hosted Contest

Running a contest, sweepstakes or group offer on your blog is a brilliant way to drive traffic to your site. It creates engagement with your readers, and gives great incentive for new readers to visit your blog.

11. Promote Your Tweets

Promoted Tweets are a pretty inexpensive advertising option provided by Twitter. They can help spread your content to your target market. Instead of just showing up in your followers feeds, the tweet will show up in other users’ feeds too. You can set up your Promoted Tweets to target by geography, interests, device used, and even by keywords.

12. Include a Blog Link in Your Bio

Your Twitter bio is what your followers (and others) see when they visit you on Twitter. It doesn’t change unless you make changes to it. This lends itself to being a perfect opportunity to drive more traffic to your blog.

Include a link to your blog, or even a particular blog post, in your about and/ or contact sections of your bio. Both sections have clickable link capabilities. You can include CTA’s to entice your followers to click through to your blog too.

Cross-promoting your blog posts through Twitter can be greatly beneficial in driving more traffic to your blog. It also gives you a lot of engaging content to tweet about!

What do you think? Have you tried any of these Twitter marketing methods? What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked so well for you?