I (Roger) have been involved with social media for awhile now in various forms (MySpace, Facebook, blogging, LinkedIn, etc.), but I didn’t get consistently involved with Twitter until a month ago or so. Now I’d consider myself a Twitter-holic.

Rough Beginnings

At first, I just didn’t get Twitter. 140 characters to tell people “what I’m doing right now?” My first reaction was “who cares?” which gave way to “stalkers ought to love this thing!” that finally gave way to “open your mind Roger, and give it a legitimate try; there has to be a way to leverage this thing as a business tool.” So that became my self imposed initiative.

Opening My Mind

I attended my first Louisville Social Media Club event and noticed how everybody referenced their Twitter ID on the sign-in sheet. So, armed with that information I set out on my second Twitter voyage (the first one failed because I had no followers, and I wasn’t following anyone) by adding a lot of the SMC Louisville attendees to my “following.” I also added some of the people they were following to my list (the social networking aspect in play here), and a lot of those folks reciprocated which began to open my eyes on how powerful the service could be. I have since grown my list to over 100 followers and am following 175 or so on there now. Anyway, the point of this post is to show how Twitter is generating quite a bit of traffic to our blog, and that would have been impossible without sharing my “following” so the background info is relevant.

Expanding Reach

Earlier this week, I attended the Cincinnati Social Media Breakfast and met more wonderful people to add to my Twitter list. I reviewed the event and have been amazed at how much traffic that one post has generated. Other sites have referenced the review, and that was all made possible through Twitter. Nobody would have even known who I was if it weren’t for the service, and nobody would have known I wrote a review of the social media events I have attended if it weren’t for Twitter. In the “old days,” I would have had to send each attendee an e-mail with a link to the blog post then hoped they visited the site and took it upon themselves to link to it somewhere.

Traffic Results

Roughly 30% of our blog traffic has been Twitter based. In looking at the web analytics just now, the other sites that have directed traffic to our blog are a direct result of “tweets” on Twitter letting others know about the various blog posts that they now reference on their blogs. They took the “tweet” to the next level, and it’s possible to trace 75% of our existing blog traffic back to Twitter. It’s the real-time information share that makes Twitter so powerful, and it makes it so much easier for those connected to cross promote one another in multiple media. The service provides tremendous benefit if viewed from that perspective.

Bottom Line

Twitter is something to seriously consider if your business is looking for additional web traffic sources. It can provide a tremendous benefit to your business if the people you put in place to utilize Twitter handle it properly. It’s like anything else in the social media or SEO universe–time and consistency are keys to success. It’s not a light switch technology that will pay immediate dividends so keep that in mind before embarking on a Twitter journey.

Share Your Story

Got a Twitter business success story of your own? Please share it with us.

Want More Information?

Here are some interesting posts to read that touch upon the concept of Twitter as a traffic generation tool:

• Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal Blog
• Twitter’s Traffic Numbers from HitWise
• Why Twitter is Such a Useful Tool by Chris Simpson
• Twitter Guide on The Lost Art of Blogging blog
• How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger

 

 Twitter as a Traffic Generation Tool? [5:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lately, I’ve been hearing more chatter about optimizing image tags as part of SEO.  Many are suggesting renaming your image files to match some of your targeted keyword phrases as long as they relate to the image and the alt-image attribute matches the filename as well.

Listen in for my thoughts on this tactic during a quick 50 second podcast.

 

 Image Tag Optimization [0:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m in the process of working out an outline for an Internet Marketing Teleseminar Series that I’d appreciate getting some feedback.  Included with this particular entry today is a 3 minute podcast that goes over the program.  If you don’t have three minutes to listen in on the podcast, here’s an overview of some of the topics we’re kicking around:

1. Article writing / content generation
2. PPC advertising
3. Affiliate programs
4. Blogging / Podcasting
5. Search Engine Optimization
6. Social Media Optimization
7. E-mail marketing
8. Direct / personalized marketing
9. List building
10. Live event marketing
11. Co-registration techniques
12. Researching and segmenting your market

If you can, listen in on the podcast as it goes into a little more.  It’s quicker to speak than to type.

I’d really appreciate your feedback and input on this - is it a good idea?  What would you pay for something like this?  Have any guests you’d recommend to include in the mix?  Let me hear from you.

 

 Internet-Marketing-Teleseminar-Idea [2:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

David at Business Pundit has created a great overview resource about Social Media and how to go about using it for entrepreneurs. Visit “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Social Media” to learn more.

He also references “The Basics of Social Media,” a topic that has been on my radar of white paper creation for a couple of weeks.  Hopefully I can knock that out soon, but these basics are great for getting your feet wet.

If you’ve read much about Zing and some of the work we do, it goes without saying that we’re a marketing firm.  What we’re going to touch upon today is three of the better ways to increase website visitors.  Two of them are ways that you can begin immediately, and the other takes a little time to reap the benefits.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and an e-mail signature can be implemented within the next five minutes whereas organic search engine optimization takes a little while and is more of a drawn out process.   Let’s talk about each briefly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Organic search engine optimization is a process of elevating a website within the search rankings of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN by determining which keywords are searched for most then “optimizing” sections of a website for those keywords to attract more qualified visitors.  Part of the optimization process includes link building (external sites that link to your site), content generation and improvements (mixing in targeted keywords in an intelligent fashion within online content), developing a sitemap for your site, and focusing meta tag data on a solid mixture of profitable keywords.  A reputable search optimization firm will openly share their practices with you so be leery of those that refuse to do that along with those that guarantee top rankings—search engines are dynamic by nature so it’s nearly impossible for an external source to promise a certain ranking unless that source is the search engine itself (no search engine provides SEO).   

Online Advertising (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) is frequently referred to as pay-per-click (PPC), and many organizations utilize paid ads on search engines to attract the type of traffic to their websites to fuel business growth.  Pay-per-click ads are generally the ads (sponsored listings) you see on the right side and sometimes at the very top of search results pages (SERPs).

E-mail Signature

An e-mail signature at the bottom of every piece of e-mail you generate or reply to can boost traffic to your site with little to no management on your behalf.  People are naturally curious, and you never know which piece of e-mail generated may become “viral” and spread through people forwarding it and having their friends forward it.  It’s a simple addition to your marketing efforts that can pay tremendous dividends.  Try not to abuse it by being long winded—keep your e-mail signature short and sweet for easy consumption. 

There you have three ways to draw more visitors to your website.  Do you utilize each in your current marketing mix?