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9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers

Twitter-Benefits
I was a little slow getting onto Twitter last year (when so many other bloggers embraced it). To be honest I didn’t think it had much to offer me – I’m beginning to see how wrong I was.

In this post I want to explore how I’m using Twitter to:

  • improve the quality of my blogs
  • network with other bloggers
  • widen my readership
  • grow my profile
  • drive traffic to my blogs

Before I get into some of the benefits of Twitter – let me say that I’m still new to it as a medium. I’m in a phase of experimenting and finding my voice. So please treat this as a progress report rather than a complete and definitive one.

Also note that tomorrow I’ll share some of the more practical tips of how I’m finding Twitter to be most useful. Today is more the ‘benefits’ and tomorrow I’ll make some suggestions about how to use the tool more effectively. Subscribe to my feed to ensure you don’t miss that post.

The Benefits of Twitter (to me)

One of the main things that I’ve discovered about Twitter is that no two Twitter users are using it in the same way. Almost every Twitter user that I come across tells me that they have a different objective when it comes to using it and are benefiting from it differently.

As a result I won’t attempt to write a definitive list of the benefits of Twitter – but will share how I’ve found it to benefit me (feel free to add your own comments).

1. Research Tool

One of the things that I’ve come to enjoy about Twitter the most is the way that it can be used when you’re researching a post.

  • Stuck for inspiration? Twitter and idea and see what others add to it.
  • Need an example for a point you’re making? Twitter it and you might get some good ones.
  • Got a question that you’re stuck on? Ask it to your followers to see what they think.
  • Need to test a hypothesis? Do a straw poll on your followers.

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s quick, is used by a wide variety of types of people and because of the 140 character limit to messages it keeps interactions concise, manageable and productive (usually).

Example – Let me illustrate this with a ‘live’ example. Lets just say that I’m writing a post on RSS feed subscriptions and wanted to find out how many feeds people were following. I’d post a Tweet like this:

twitter-research.png

Now I actually posted that Tweet a few minutes ago and in the time that it took me to grab a screen shot of the tweet and made myself a coffee I’ve had the following responses:

twitter-research-2.png

What other medium can you gather that kind of data in 5 minutes? (actually by now – 10 minutes later there have been 30 responses and it’s the middle of the night for most of my followers).

2. Reinforce (and expand) Your Personal Brand

twitter-branding.pngI’ve written previously about how I’ve found interacting on multiple mediums can be important in building your personal brand. Whether it be social networking, blogging, bookmarking, real life interactions etc – all of these ‘straws’ when added together can go a long way to building your own brand. Twitter is another ‘straw’ in my personal brand (and that of my blogs).

What I’ve found is that I’m getting emails and messages from people saying things like:

  • ‘I used to read you at ProBlogger but had lost track until I found you on Twitter’
  • ‘I subscribe to your RSS feed on the blog but seeing your posts on Twitter reminds me to read them more’
  • ‘I was scanning through someone else’s Twitters yesterday and saw your face. I recognized it from your Facebook account so thought I’d check out you.’
  • ‘I saw your name mentioned the other day on Scott Karp’s Twitter feed. I hadn’t seen your blog for a while and it reminded me to resubscribe.’

This type of comment to me illustrates that Twitter is another useful tool in putting you as a blogger in front of readers and potential readers.

The other thing that I’ll say about branding and Twitter is that it can be used to expand your brand or to show a different side of you. Some of the people that I enjoy following the most on Twitter inject humor into their Twittering that I don’t see on their blogs. There’s also something a little more personal about many of the people I follow on Twitter (even if they Tweet on a ‘professional’ topic – their voice is often more personal than on their blogs).

Example – the wonderful thing about Twitter is that it’s actually others who brand you and not just you who does all the work. Look at the example above and you see that 30 people (it’s now up to 40) answered my question and each time they did they publicly used my blog’s name and linked to my Twitter account. Those 30 or 40 people are collectively being followed by thousands of others and by responding to my question they ‘sneezed’ the ProBlogger virus out to them (incidentally I’ve had 15 new followers join up since posting that question just minutes ago).

3. Promote Content

The first thing that people usually ask me when I say that I’m on Twitter is ‘how much traffic does it drive back to your blogs?’ I’ve purposely held off on writing about Twitter as a means to drive traffic until this point in this post because I don’t see it as the main benefit of the tool. Having said that – it can potentially promote content and drive traffic.

I’ve been using a tool called TwitterFeed for the last four weeks (31 days to be exact) to take the headlines and URLs from my blog’s feeds and to publish them in my Twitter account. In that time I’ve seen just over 1350 visitors come from Twitter to Problogger after something like this appears in my Twitter feed each time I post:

twitter-promote.png

That is not a massive amount considering I have over 1000 followers at the moment and considering that it’s .38% of the total traffic that the site has had in that time – however it’s not insignificant because I suspect that Twitter users are a fairly influential bunch of people and could potentially be spreading my URLs wider than just on Twitter (on their blogs etc).

Here’s how my traffic has grown since starting to use Twitter more seriously a month ago.

twitter-traffic.png

One surprising thing that I found when I started publishing my stories on Twitter was that some Twitter readers told me that they now read ProBlogger exclusively through Twitter – to the point that they didn’t check the feed any more. At first I was a little concerned by this – but then i realized that it was a good thing because those readers had found a way that fitted more with their own rhythm to read my content.

Twitter had become an alternative subscription method for them. Plus it actually caused these readers to read the blog on the blog rather just in their feed reader – creating increase page views/unique visitor counts.

4. Extend Audience – Find NEW Readers

One challenge that bloggers who’ve been around for a while in their niche can face is that they reach a saturation point. They sometimes feel like everyone who will hear about them has already heard about them and they can see a plateau in their stats. This often happens 6-12 months into a blog.

My encouragement to this type of blogger is to think about where potential readers might be gathering that they’re yet to tap into. I’ve found that this has happened for me with Twitter.

I’ve already touched on how this happens above in the ‘branding’ section – however a number of Twitter users have told me that they’ve just discovered my blogs through my Tweets (and the Tweets of others). There hasn’t been a flood of new readers from this – but my Google analytics says that 27% of of the visitors who have come to ProBlogger from Twitter are ‘new’ to my blogs. For me that’s about 15-20 new readers per day through Twitter – over a year that could definitely add up and those 5000 – 7000 new readers could have a significant impact upon a community.

5. Networking

twitter-network.pngAnother obvious benefit of Twitter is the ability that it gives you to network on a different level with other bloggers, readers and ‘others’. I’ve lost count of the direct messages and group conversations that I’ve had with people that I’d never have ‘met’ any other way.

Already this has opened up some fascinating opportunities to work together on promoting each other’s content, sharing advice etc. It’s also opened up 3-4 opportunities for me to find new guest bloggers for my blogs.

One more thing on a networking front – I find it difficult to put this one into words, but there’s a certain camaraderie that develops when you read what someone’s written every hour or so throughout a day (and know that they’re doing the same with you). For me it’s something like that feeling that you get after spending a couple of days with someone at a conference – you know each other on a whole other level. Difficult to explain and I’m not sure I’ve quite put my finger on what this is (anyone able to say it better?).

6. Previews

Last week on a couple of occasions I released exclusive little previews to Twitter followers of information that I hadn’t yet posted on my blogs. I did this in two ways.

1. Once I posted news that I was yet to break on ProBlogger (I think it was about AdSense retiring their AdSense referral program). I did this because it was important news and I hadn’t yet had time to write up a post. I included in the Tweet that I’d post about it shortly – this created a little anticipation among followers (to the point where a few started direct messaging me asking when my post would go up).

2. The other time I shared a link to a post on ProBlogger that was yet to go live (ie I’d published it as an advance post at a time that was yet to happen – this created a page but no one would have known it was there). I did this as an experiment to see what would happen. The result was that when the post did go live on the blog on the front page it already had comments and a good discussion. I also found that three people had already linked to it. It also helped some readers to feel a little special to get a Twitter exclusive (in fact I’m publishing the link to this post on Twitter 3 hours before it actually goes live on the the blog).

There’s one more thing that I’d like to try in terms of combining this idea of ‘preview’ and the ‘research’ point mentioned above – and that’s to create a private post on my blog that I reveal only to Twitter followers and to then post a draft there of a post I’m working on to get feedback on before publishing it publicly. This would be an interesting exercise and explore the idea of a more communal writing of a post.

7.Speedlinking

twitter-speedlinking.png
One of the things that I’ve been doing lately instead of posting so many ‘Speedlinks’ here on ProBlogger is to share these links on Twitter. I’m doing this largely from Google Reader using a Firefox add-on created by Bob Lee. While Speedlinking is something that has worked reasonably well here on ProBlogger (in posts like this for example) I’m actually finding the medium of Twitter to be well suited to it also.

Note: – if you’re not into Twitter but still want to follow my speedlinks I’m posting alot of them in my Shared Items feed via Google Reader.

8. Story Gathering

A number of times this past week I’ve heard of breaking news in my niches via the Tweets of others. I would have heard of these stories via my news aggregator and the RSS feeds of others eventually – but due to the immediacy of Twitter I heard them just minutes after they broke.

This can be the difference between breaking a story to readers and being second or third at it.

9. Find Out What People REALLY Think

Another observation that I’ve made in the last couple of weeks while on Twitter is that people have a certain level of honesty and rawness on Twitter that they sometimes mask or hide on their blogs. I’m not sure why this is – but perhaps when confronted with saying something in 140 characters they have to strip away some of the disclaimers and politically correct language and just say what they mean.

The good thing about this is that it gives you a sense of what people are really thinking on a topic. This helps you to get to know them on a new level but also helps you keep your finger on the needs and feelings of your potential readers.

So they are some of the benefits that I’ve found of using Twitter. I’d be fascinated to hear how others have found it to be useful. Don’t forget to look out for tomorrow’s post with suggestions on how to improve your blogging with Twitter.

PS: I wrote this post over a number of days. Since starting it Maki at DoshDosh put together his 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter post which has some good suggestions too.

Update – Read my next post with tips on How to Use Twitter and also read some of my Twitter Follower’s tips on using Twitter.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Hehe, no comments, yet? Must be a Twitter preview :-)

    Thanks for this post, Darren.

    Incidently I just posted about controlling Twitter via commands sent from your favourite Twitter client, yesterday. Must be some twittering in the air ;-).

  2. I always thought that Twitter was more of a mobile phone thing. Guess I’ll have to do a little more research on it.

    Thanks for the tips.

  3. ///‘I used to read you at ProBlogger but had lost track until I found you on Twitter’

    Well DUH! couldn’t he just Google your name or the blog name?!

    Twitter is a good way of keeping in contact with established contacts – but for getting the attention of strangers, one still needs successful Search engine placement and Social bookmarking sites

    How much success has being on the Technorati top 100 brought for introducing this blog to new prospects?

  4. Darren I really enjoyed reading this post, I have been debating wether or not to use Twitter and although I think it is a good idea, I am wondering if you will spend more time twittering than blogging.
    What I am trying to say is, do you find it a distraction and that it takes up a lot of your time?
    Regards.

  5. Insteresting as usual. One more thing to explore, but it sounds as though such exploration will be worthwhile.

    Thanks for the writeup Darren.

    Alex

  6. Cheers, I’ll check it out. Never thought of twitter in this light

  7. Darren, I enjoyed reading this. I’ve also been getting much more ‘into’ Twitter over the last couple of months and have found it enjoyable and rewarding.

    I’m interested in the idea of ‘finding your voice’ on twitter because it can seem daunting at first… on the other hand I think it’s also a good way of warming up or flexing our writing muscles (and honing the art of brevity!)

    Joanna

  8. I think Networking on Twitter is different to other socnets (mine excluded) I liken twitter (and mine) to a global 24 hour pub (or cafe). You can discuss anything with anyone at anytime. Discussions are live, no comment moderation to wait for. Also, there are no moderators, people can speak their minds but somehow, do not spam, if they do, simply un-follow. Where else can I talk to Darren, Loic, Scobel etc along with my wife, mates and my community users, throw in the CTO of Microsoft at the same time it is incredible. Looking forward to talking on Skype soon ;-)

  9. Ben – me too, I didn’t get into it because when it first came out i had issues using it from my phone. But now I do it mainly via a Twitter client (like IM)

    Miss Universe – actually that one was from a ‘she’. Yes they could have Googled my name but they didn’t because I’d dropped off their radar. Twitter brought me back onto it.

    In terms of getting the attention of strangers I disagree with you. I have many followers on Twitter that came across me for the first time there throughs eeing someone else Twitter a msg to me.

    jsanderz – it could be a real distraction – in fact some bloggers have almost killed their blogs by getting into twitter. However I think in moderation it’s a useful tool to have in the toolbelt and to run along side a blog.

  10. I’m not a big social networker, and I’ve found twitter to be an easier and more fun way of just blurting out a thought vs. making a special post for it. It’s like a private IM, only with the whole blogosphere, sortof.

  11. I will have to disagree on this one. I won’t say that I wont change opinion in the future, but right now I just can’t see much value on micro blogging tools.

    I think that the vast majority of your twitter followers are also blog readers (at least 90%), and this mere fact undermines many of the described points.

    Sure it has its specific uses, for example the mobility factor can be important to some people.

    Other than these very specific applications, though, I find that time spent on twitter is time subtracted from your blog, which is the core business for most of us.

  12. Been only really using twitter the last week with Google Talk. I signed up on Jan 5th to see what all the hype was about. I’ve been working on moving more towards seeing if I can make a career out of blogging. I had you a few days ago and when I saw the oppurtunity to send my feed count last night I thought it was pretty cool. Here today I am featured in one of your posts. How cool is that. I’m the omacdon in the picture above. :)

  13. Very intersting post.

    Looking forward to your next twitter post.

    Will have to take a much closer look at twitter to see if I can benefit from it. The only downside I can see is that I would not be able to twitter full time (due to full time job and only blogging when time permits).

    But I do like the idea of using twitter to display new post titles. This seems like a very good use of twitter

    Thanks

  14. Finally someone that can tell me what twitter is good for!!

    Now… What is going on? Do they have an affiliate program in Twitter? Because I’ve seen lots of twitter posts everywhere for the last few days…!

    Any thoughts?

  15. Hey, another FREE networking tool.
    I don’t think you could have too many.

    I joined StumpleUpon 2 days ago and by yesterday it amounted to 50% of my traffic, for yesterday.

    Twitter seems really useful. Good avice, as usual.
    http://necrofiles.blogspot.com

  16. Networking on Twitter is very important, I personally have met a few people through Twitter that I would now consider to be a good friend that I’m sure would help me out with things if I needed it.

    I also really love Twitter for getting a feel for what others think about a news item. This helps me tremendously while blogging.

  17. I read a similar post on Twitter by Maki earlier this week, together the two posts make a definitive source on Twitter. I am gonna follow all advice by the book.THx for the post

  18. Now I am glad to be one of the earliest commenters. Anyways, I never got interested on Twitter because I thought it was just like other social networking sites with useless talks. But now, I think I am going to check it. However, the above commenters are quite right, this will have a lesser time for our own blog. So, how about Squidoo or 9 Rules? I recently join them and still waiting for the effect. Thanks!

  19. Very insightful – I’ve been wondering what you meant by “twittering” when referencing in your posts. Now I know the rest of the story.

  20. It’s so wonderful that you wrote this article today. I just downloaded Twitter yesterday because I kept hearing what it would do for my blog. However, once I signed up and got going with GoogleTalk I was completely lost.

    Thanks so much for guiding me in the right direction!

  21. let me tell you: all these things have nothing to do with the twitter question “what are you doing?”

    so you use twitter, but not for that reason, it is made for

    I also use twitter sometimes – in your way – but this is completely different from the founders goal, to tell your friend what exactly you are doing (:

  22. I’ve been resisting Twitter for a while (I didn’t like the idea of even more digital interruptions) but so many people I know have been raving about it I’ve started to change my mind – very interesting to hear you give a blogging perspective on it – thanks!

  23. Darren – One additional point worth mentioning about Twitter is that since it’s heavily crawled by Google, your Twitter page can help with page rank.

  24. I love twitter so much. I think its a great tool to help to network with people. I think it has really made an impact on helping me grow my blog.

    Always thanks for posting that screen shot I am the 2nd from the bottom on the list I semi made it on problogger lol.

    Bud

  25. Good points about Twitter. I used to log into Problogger on a regular basis along with a couple of other blogging for money blogs but I lost touch over the last month. It was only when I heard that Problogger was on Twitter a couple of days ago that I started reading it again.

  26. I think I should start subscribing to more feeds :)

  27. Hey Darren,

    I’m glad to see you’ve finally caught on…

    There’s another great use that very few people comprehend right now but “find out what people really think” approached it… it’s DATA MINING – and I wrote an article on it a while back.

    The link above goes to my Twitter articles label so you can have a look-see. It’s called,

    “A Quick Jaunt Into Data Mining on Twitter”

    Hope you enjoy it…

    Good article..
    Sam

  28. Great article Darren! (Nice to see my tweet to you in second place, hehe)

    I only joined Twitter a few weeks ago. And it’s awesome, there’s a really great community around it. I only wish I had joined earlier. :)

  29. Thanks for mentioning my article, Darren.

    Great post on Twitter as well. The Treader greasemonkey script is fantastic! I wasn’t aware of it until today. :)

    @ Daniel… the benefits of Twitter can be explained only in so many ways. I was an early adopter but a real cynic and left my account dormant for a long time.

    Once you start using Twitter intelligently and actively for some time, you’ll come to see how useful it is as a tool. It’s one of the platforms you’ll only appreciate after active engagement. Darren’s upcoming post on how to use Twitter will be helpful. :)

  30. After much resistance to the whole concept of microblogging, I finally joined twitter a couple of days ago. I’m not regretting it so far, and am actually really enthused about the possibilities it could yield. Yet another example of a service which has the potential to change the way we interact. Exciting times ahead, I think!

  31. Twitter is amazing. It has a lot of great features. I don’t use it every hour of the day like others do, but I find it a great way to just read a one liner of someone’s opinion or latest news event. Also, it is the best way, quicker than an RSS feed to know that someone just posted a blog post.

    I use mobile sometimes, very simple to sent a twitter on sms. I don’t follow people on my mobile because I follow too many people and I don’t want to keep up with it and get an SMS every second.

    So I have windows vista, and I have two screens. On my second screen I have my widgets, and one of those is my Twadget widget for twitter. It is there live for me to look at. I can easily click a link that someone posted in an instance. I find such tools great. There is also a Facebook applications that updates your status message instantly. However, I removed it because I found that it doesn’t update as often. It has a lot of bugs. Twitter still has a lot of bugs and uptime problems, but the creators should have realized that there are far too many people using it now all over the world, and it will suck up a lot of bandwith.

    I also had twitter tools wordpress plugin on my blog for the longest time, but I removed it a few days ago. I might put it back up when I do my spring cleaning and new website design.

    Anyways, for your amusement Darren, and if you have not seen this yet, check out http://www.twittervision.com :D

    It is quite amusing I swear!

    Salut! :)

  32. “I find it difficult to put this one into words, but there’s a certain camaraderie that develops when you read what someone’s written every hour or so throughout a day”

    that is so true.

    twitter is also perfect for networking in a small niche and getting to know all these other people. for example here in germany the blogosphere is pretty small, and it get’s even smaller then you’re writing only in a certain niche, and funnily almost all bigger bloggers are on twitter. it’s so easy to get to know each other there. easier than just with blogs, that’s for sure.

    oh and my very own definition of twitter: it’s the watercooler of the web. for better and worse.

  33. Bansi Patel says: 01/24/2008 at 2:14 am

    Great post! Found it through Dosh Dosh’s tweet a few minutes ago :)

  34. Hi Darren,
    I really enjoyed reading this post. Like you, and so many others so to see, I’m still exploring Twitter and your informal way of listing options was of great value.
    As was Maki’s 17 points list.
    Thanks,
    Case

  35. This sounds quite interesting… I think I will also try out twitter as well.

    Cheers.

  36. In addition I find Twitter is like a river of consciousness flowing past my window. Occasionally I’ll ‘look out’ and find inspiration in something that someone has said. If you’re following interesting people, it’s amazing what you see.

  37. Twitter is one of those ideas that I wish I had had. Such a simple concept, and yet I’m sure they’ll see Facebook sized traffic very soon.

  38. gamermk says: 01/24/2008 at 3:16 am

    Beyond the obvious SEO and “Make Money Online” Blogs have any other Niches widely adopted the use of twitter?

  39. Useful posts. Have been using Twitter for quite sometime now. Just signed up with Twitterfeed. Thanks for the info.

  40. What is the best way to meet people and get followers on twitter?

  41. I found Twitter to be very useful when I attended Blog Orlando. Josh Hallett, the coordinator of Blog Orlando, set up a “Blog Orlando” group on Twitter.

    During the “un-conference” as Josh calls it, we could Twitter back and forth to each other. If we had a question about a session or couldn’t find something, we could send out a Tweed and get an answer.

    During the opening session, Josh sent out a Tweed saying the first person to show him the Tweed wins a free ipod.

    It was a good was to utilize Twitter that just about everyone could access either by phone or laptop at the un-conference.

  42. Thanks to Darren’s article I have signed up with Twitter and have placed a Twitter flash widget thingy on my blog!

    I shall be interested to see what happens….

  43. As a counterpoint to #3, I don’t follow people who use twitterfeed. For example, I don’t follow @laughingsquid, who I would otherwise follow. The reason is that I receive tweets on my phone, but I read feeds in my feed reader. I don’t want an sms for the exact same thing I’ll get in my feed reader. It’s also more likely that the sms will come at a time when it’s inconvenient for me to read the feed.

    I think the users that like to follow twitter instead of using the rss feed are those who are using twitter via the webpage. For those of us who don’t want these tweets we have no choice but to not follow people who use twitterfeed.

  44. That’s it, I’m going to Twitter a lot more from now on. :D

  45. I placed a link to my Twitter page on my blog. Right now I only have Twitter and Facebook, but I expect to add more social media under the heading “Connect with Cathy.”

    I figure my fans can never get too much of me. ;o)

  46. nice review for tools,btw “5. Networking” is that mean, I Can boosting my traffic :-)

  47. Nice post Problogger…I dont kind of agree with the first point though…I guess those answers came because your involvement in that community was already high even before you joined Twitter or you have spent some time on Twitter already and have created visibility for yourself….For a newbie looking at instant answers it could come as a disappointment if he doesnt get the answers instantly

  48. Who has time to read blog feeds? Twitter is my human-edited feed. Who has time to comment at blogs? I just comment @ them at Twitter! Microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce are the end of blogging as we know it today.

  49. Who has time to read blog feeds? Twitter is my human-edited feed. Who has time to comment at blogs? I just comment by @name (just like Darren shows here) at Twitter! Microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce are the end of blogging as we know it today. These sites are changing blogging for the good. Now, audio and video… that’s what’s new and exciting for the every day consumer. And it should be for serious bloggers.

  50. I always thought Twitter was something iJustine made up for fun. I’ll have to look closer at it. ;)

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