Today Shelley Binkley from Heal the Woman (follow her at @healthewoman shares how she uses TweetLater to grow blog readership and be more effective on Twitter.
Spending time on Twitter is like mingling through a crowded room, trying to participate in a hundred conversations at once. This can lead two two opposing states of mind, “Twitter High” and “Twitter Dysphoria”: What are these and how do you balance them and your Twittering habit to grow your blog readership?
Tweet with an Eye for Giving Other Tweeps Twitter High
Like any party Twitter is populated by interesting people and not-so-stimulating people who seem compelled to recount mundane details of their day. Fortunately Twitter is inhabited by thousands of Tweeple who like to Think Big and ponder and pose Big Questions. They throw their Big Ideas out into the Twitter Stream and see what kinds of answers bite. This can sometimes prompt a lively discussion and provide fodder for future Big Ideas.
Besides the potential for creating World Peace, the brilliance of Twitter is twofold: Unlike a cocktail party, or the office Christmas party, you can discuss topics you wouldn’t bring up with people you know “in person”. And you wouldn’t dream of going to the office party in your pajamas, but on Twitter the sky is the limit–whether it topics, attire, or lack thereof.
Twitter High is the soaring feeling from connecting with Big Thinking Tweeple. Insightful people who can augment or test your ideas provide an addictive rush unlike no other.
It inspires you to write new blog content or follow up on a previous post with new information or just makes you happy.
Its counterpart, Twitter Dysphoria, is the sinking feeling you get when you realize you’ve lost hours on Twitter and haven’t written the blog post you meant to write, or checked off other items on your “to do” list.
So how do you best harness the energy of Twitter High and minimize Twitter Dysphoria? And what about the holy grail: building your blog readership?
Enter TweetLater
TweetLater is a wonderful tool that allows you to Tweet when you’re off line and schedule those Tweets for any time. You can use TweetLater to not only improve your own experience of Twitter, but enrich your followers’ experience.
Think about what you’d like to “hear” on Twitter and mine your existing blog posts for that type of information. This works especially well for “list style” blog posts, e.g. “Ten Steps To…” Take each point of your list-style post and Tweet it. If you’re culling from a heading, edit it first to makes sure it’s a coherent thought.
In posting via TweetLater, you detach a bit from the Twitter High so you don’t just “react” to your followers’ Tweets while being swept up. It allows you to put some thought into what you’d like to say.
Being a blogging and Twitter newbie, I’ve been feeling my way through different means of attracting readers to my blog. As an experiment I took one of my list-style posts, Ten Free Ways to Engage Responsibly in Your Health and Reduce the Cost of Health Care, and broke the post up into ten separate tweets. I set them loose in the Twitter stream via TweetLater, during a relatively “slow” time on Twitter: a Sunday morning.
From that one exercise I saw my Twitter followers increase by twenty percent, and had a sustained ten percent bump in hits to my blog, healthewoman. I was so impressed with this I plan to do it with more of my blog posts.
Go Deeper With TweetLater
TweetLater is a great way to draw your readers deeper into your site because you can mine your archives and most popular posts for the gold nuggets. If you link to an archived post in your site your Tweet may produce page hits for older posts.
Viewing your blog posts for quality Twitter Matter for TwitterLater has other benefits. You may find in reading through your posts with the “retrospectrosope”, some of them are chock full of good information, while other posts have one idea that pops out among the “window dressing”. You can throw the good idea into the Twitter stream and see if the feedback you receive provides inspiration and material for a new and improved post on that topic.
TwitterLater allows you to modulate Twitter High with thoughtful contemplation and productive work time to enrich your own and other Tweeples’ experiences.
What do you think? Offer your thoughts by commenting here and/or follow me on Twitter @healthewoman.
@mcmilker
Great tips about using Tweet later. I also want to comment on twitter slow times. Besides Sunday, early morning on the US West Coast, seems to be a good time. Part of the trick I think is determining when most users are asleep – then you can have a really great conversation with the few that are up. This helps build RTs and lets you get to know followers a little better.
@Karolis
The first link to TweetLater is broken (missing one W). Cheers!
Great article by the way…
@human3rrror
eh. tweetlater… not a big fan…
@brodydorland
Great explanation Shelley! Even though I’m a twitter newbie, I’ve already wasted several hours waiting for a “high” that didn’t come. In the sales and marketing world, we all know that “timing is everything”. Why would Twitter be any different?
Brody Dorland – Something Creative, Inc.
@mike_stelzner
I am a big fan of TweetLater.
Really helps manage the chaos.
I spend about 1 hour each morning entering in the days tweets and it is an awesome feeling!
@scottfillmer
I tried out tweetlater yesterday for the first time and all I really wanted was to have it do the automatic “thank you” and it seems to be a good way to connect with followers, but, I would not recommend using it to hard sell or even self promote
@virtualimpax
Whew! I thought I was the only one who yawned at the constant stream of the “mundane” that spews from some Twitter users. (I thought – maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m SUPPOSED to be interested in how long she seeps EACH INDIVIDUAL CUP OF TEA before drinking it.)
Seriously though – thanks to the introduction to two useful Twitter apps. (Here’s the working link for Tweet Later)
@jrgriggs
I hear a lot about TweetLater but when I tried it, it was pretty confusing. Maybe I was looking at it wrong but it seemed way too complicated for what it was suppose to do. I’ll have to check out again soon.
@kentsm
Agree that you have to manage the high or the dysphoria as you say will quickly set in. Been using TweetLater and also EasyTweets. Both are good.
@jerols
Your link to TweetLater is broken: it is missing a w in the www. Any way, thanks for the post, I’ll be checking TweetLater out.
@ecomind
After reading your article I realized that have not used Tweetlater for all it’s worth. Was looking around for a good Twitter time management tool. And then I had it right in front of me.
Thanks for this article.
I would also add that it is worth following @tweetlater
Cheers…
@daryapino
Why do you have to use TweetLater to follow this advice? Sounds like you could dig through and post links to old posts without it.
@entreprini
This can be really helpful for small businesses that feel that they don’t have any time to tweet. Tweet in the morning and get it out of the way and still have you brand awareness in the tweeter-sphere.
@axiompr
I love the idea of breaking a “Top 10 list” into individual Tweets! I am going to use this idea. Thanks.
@thebenchs
Than you for the pots
@Orionjoel
Twitter Dysphroia is something that i find myself facing to often. To many missed times to finish something that that i was going to do.
Wasn’t the idea of Twitter to answer the question “What are you doing?” not “How can I spam you today?”
Imagine a world full of people breaking up their blog posts into 140 character chunks and auto-posting them on a schedule. Now imagine being hit in the head with a hammer. Which would YOU choose? I’ll take the hammer.
@ScottWilliams
I dont use all of the features on Tweetlater; however the auto reply welcome is amazing!
@bostonmarketer
In general, I don’t like the idea of Tweetlater, because social media is about creating conversations, and how do you create conversations when you’re not actually there? People are going to write back to you, and you’ll be in the shower and not able to respond!!
BUT, I DO like the idea of breaking up your blog post and tweeting it regularly. I usually tweet about each blog post twice, because I don’t want to seem repetitive. Pointing out different things from your blog is a great way to not be repetitive. Thanks for the idea.
@bradhart
I have been looking at adding both services along with my current use of twitterfeed.com I think the big thing to remember though is if you want your tweeps to read your blog is to have a good landing page for them. Making twitter specific landing page that lets them know a bit more about me and why I might have followed them has really helped get my blog readership up. Linking my other blogs and other social networks they might contact me on has also been quite helpful.
@journalista8
I’m super new to twitter, so I really appreciate the info. Great blog!
@lawton_chiles
HootSuite.com does this same delayed-posting for free i think.
It might not have the same functionality as TweetLater though.