Twitter for Writers Tip #1 - Promote Your Blog on Twitter
Posted by Donna on April 21, 2009 under Twitter for Writers | 
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Writers, are you tweeting? In March, I wrote “Tracking the Twitter Trend” for Wilkes-Barre, Pa.’s The Weekender. That article was a general overview of how Twitter works and locally, received some great feedback. But how, specifically, can writers use this wildly popular social networking site? There are many ideas on how writers can use Twitter, which will be covered regularly at SMFW, but let’s get started.
Here is one idea: Use Twitter to promote your blog.
One healthy way writers can keep in the writing habit is to blog. You can blog about writing. You can blog about anything but writing. But, whatever you happen to blog about, use Twitter to promote your latest blog post. Tweet the topic of your blog post and paste the link (use Tiny URL to shorten any long blog post title so you can keep in the 1 40 character limit). This will drive traffic to your blog, where new and repeat visitors to your blog can be captivated by everything you have to offer! If you have a very interesting blog post, it could warrant retweets from readers, thus sending even more traffic to your blog.
Blogs are usually personal, friendly and laid back– and a great way to share your writing (and life) with your readers, associates, students, etc. Blogs can educate and inform and promote. As a writer, you have a great tool in Twitter to engage your readers, and point them to a great place to learn more about you from your blog.
Now that you are in place to get more traffic to you blog with Twitter- make your blog sticky, too! Activate widgets or plug-ins that allow for subscription to your blog. This will keep people coming back for me. (Because after all, we want to be read, right?)
Final tip: If you blog daily or more than once per day, you may not want to tweet every single blog post, perhaps saving these tweets for posts you really want to promote. You definitely want your tweets to be varied and engaging– not all shameless plugs.
