Want to gain premium followers from your blogging niche? Today food blogger Mark Macdonald from foodnetworkblog.com (follow him at @foodnetworkblog) shows you how.
Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful tools for bringing eyeballs to your blog. On top of that, it’s also becoming one of the best tools for bringing high-quality niche eyeballs to your blog.
If you’re a niche blogger, Twitter currently presents a fantastic opportunity to cultivate a highly targeted audience of followers who are interested in not only what you’re tweeting about, but also what you’re blogging about.
By targeting and acquiring followers in your niche, you will be bringing users to your Twitter profile who are far more likely to check out your blog.
So what is a high-quality, niche Twitter follower? Well for our definition we will say it is someone in your niche with a large “Twitter footprint” and who is an established authority that people trust.
This can be an industry leader, an author, a popular company, a famous chef, or just somebody with a ton of followers – you get the idea. Typically these folks have a large following on Twitter and wield a lot of influence.
By targeting these users from your niche, you have the potential to get your @username exposed to thousands of people interested in the topic you’re tweeting and blogging about.
The ultimate goal is to get them to follow you back. (Because you are following them already right?) This can potentially send a wave of niche followers your way immediately but also in the future.
I say the future because new users usually search famous or well known people in their area of interest and look to see who they follow. If you’re on that list, then you’re in a great position to cash in on that person’s authority and trust factor for a long time.
Also keep in mind that an estimated 5-10 thousand Twitter accounts are opened every day. That’s a lot of new people looking for guidance on who to follow.
Short of getting a premium user like this to follow you, getting them to send you an @reply should be your second goal. However, these people generally get a lot of messages so what you say to them must be useful and interesting.
So, how do you generate high quality Twitter followers from your niche? These strategies will certainly help put you on their radars.
Follow Your Niche’s Trusted Authorities
Duh. Find out who the big players are in your niche and follow them. How? Using Twitter’s search feature is one way but you can also use a service like Twellow to search your blogging niche and display results sorted by number of followers. This shows you who has the most followers from your topic of interest.
Turn on Your Radar
Not only do I follow high profile users from my niche, but I also subscribe to their blogs via RSS. Pretty basic stuff but important nonetheless because this allows me to stay informed on what’s important to them. If you tweet and/or send them @replies on a subject you know they care about or promotes them, then they will be more likely to follow you or @reply back.
Strike Up @ Conversation
When you read on someone’s blog that they have just launched a new website, book, show ect. that your followers might find interesting, tweet it to your followers with a link to the new product and an @reply to the high profile user you are targeting so they see it on their Twitter stream.
They may appreciate the buzz you are creating and send you an @reply back thanking you.
Blog It
Why not take things a step further and mention the user you are targeting and/or what’s important to them in a blog post. Using a service like Twitterfeed, this post can be automatically sent to your Twitter account with a link back to your blog. You can then retweet your post to the user you are targeting and send them a message telling them about your post.
Implementing these strategies will help put you on a premium Twitter user’s radar and could lead to them following you back.
If you have a presence on Twitter that usually focuses on a certain niche, then gaining high-quality Twitter followers from that niche will help propel your @username deeper into your niche’s Twitter community.
And don’t forget that helping someone else promote what’s important to them because you have a genuine interest can often result in them returning the favour, sending followers your way.
@Pliggs
As a new Tweeter, this will definitely help with building my network and sharing valuable Tweets.
@stanleytang
Awesome article Mark!
Agree Twellow is an aweomse twitter directory for finding people in your niche
@toddlucier
The last sentence is the one that caught my attention.
It’s always about serving your followers…. your ideal followers.
Know what they are looking for and serve it up in big dollups!
It’ll bring your content the attention it deserves only as much as it fits the needs of your audience.
@foodnetworkblog
@toddlucier – your absolutley right. Its one thing to attract followers but you have to be add value to their Twitter experience as well.
@inetengineers
This is a cracking article and especially useful for a newbie Tweeter like myself. The point under “Strike Up @ Conversation” is a good one to take on board.
@webdiva33
Great information, with step by step instructions. Perfect guide for people who are new to Twitter, but want to quickly get the most out the service for networking.
Great advice. Twitter can be a powerful tool for attracting high profile visitors which can lend to your receiving high volumes of traffic. Twitter is not to be underestimated.
@makeandtakes
Great article. Thanks for the introduction to Twellow.
@smartboydesigns
Thank you for the excellent thoughts. I definately feel it’s important to be following the leaders in your niche, and striking up conversations with other Twitter folk. Very sound advice. Also, thank you for sharing the Twellow link. Excellent Twitter resource.
@steveborgman
I appreciate the referral to twellow! I have been wondering how I might connect with more authorities in my niche, and there you went and answered my question. I’m grateful to this blog and it’s writers!
@HostingImpact
Great advice as always … The old adage “You have to give to get” has never been more true than with Twitter.
@wabbitoid
My bit – make sure you have some kind of content with most of your tweets – a good quote, a really useful observation. I try to advertise my blog no more than about 1/8 tweets. By doing this, I find that after a while people naturally find you even faster than you can find them.
@foodnetworkbog
Thanks for the kind comments everyone! I’m glad everyone is finding Twellow to be a useful resource suggestion.
@djhornsby
I am new to twitter but catching on quickly. While DJHornsby was my intro ID, I’m looking to expand and grow my cdwmag ID. You can have two IDs can’t you? I enjoyed reading your twitip… kinda confirmed what I was already figuring out. Thanks!
Mark thanks for a great starting point for someone like me.
I keep meaning to get my twitter tweeting.
Now I have a good starting point
Thanks Again
Gary McElwain
@tweetconvo
Darren,
I followed most of your tips and to tell you the truth, although I’m not getting a crazy number of followers, but I do get followers from the niche I wanted…
Cheers for the tips!
@joegelb
good points social media cannot be leveraged untill it goes both ways because if we do not blog about twitter, twitter will not be magically amazing
@JustinGillespie
Wow. This is really great! I’m a new user to Twitter and wondering how I could draw more quality people to my new music blog. This will definitely help me out.
@jfouts
Great advice but it’s also important to look outside your specific niche or your conversations can be very limited. Invite Tweeps from your other interests too to keep the conversation going. You never know where the crossover may occur.
@foodnetworkblog
@Janet – Great point Janet. Following other niches than your own can be great for getting ideas and tips for blog posts and its just plain old more interesting to have some variety on twitter.
@ModernPainter
Thanks again for the great advice. I’ve seen such a boost to my blog on oil painting secrets from Twitter it’s amazing, I keep rereading your posts.
Communicating with people with a wide range of interests keeps it fresh.
Gabriel
@redpepper
Thanks for the useful tools. I’m especially excited about Twello. Probably my biggest hurdles and frustrations about Twitter and using it to grow a faithful following is the lack of options when trying to find people. If they don’t have it listed in their bio or username, you can’t find them, unlike a website search.
Very informative, thank you for sharing and helping to crack the code
David
@andrewakuffo
Great article, with useful tools included. The great thing about twitter is that people do actually get back to you! When a reply only has to be 140 characters, the likelihood of a reply soars. It really is the blueprint for new marketing!!
@DoYouEve
Great blog(s)! I love the tweet chick too. I see lots of valuable tips here and will be a frequent visitor. I am a fresh tweeter addict.
Happy tweeting!
@Doubledown_InSL
Is this article saying anything more than “kiss up to famous people”?
@hasmat34
Your suggestions may be very helpful for me. I already got almost 800 followers but cannot understand how can i drive them to my blogs. Thanks a lot. It will be gone easier to me.
Absolutely great post… I don’t know where I have been before!
I’ll be puting all this on moving tomorrow’s morning.
Thanks!
Best.
@impactlearning
Well written and useful post! Your recommendations are absolutely on-point.
I’ve also found that using search.twitter.com (Twitter’s native search) is a great way to discover users that tweet frequently about certain keywords. Plus, one can have those search results published as a RSS feed.
Best,
Glenn
@FerreeMoney
I use Tweet Seeker to find quality Tweeple to follow and the Tweet Seeker script to get their friends and followers to follow me,
@FascinatingTrav
Hi… thanks for a great article and suggestions. I have been using twitter for a while and found that with their new policy of only 2 free keywords at Twollo my targeted followers were drying up. This will help me get going again . Also hopefully I can expect better targeted traffic than I was getting.