6 Insider Secrets For Driving Tons of Free Traffic to Your Website With Twitter

Creating successful social media campaigns can be time-consuming, especially when it’s hard to know what will work and where you should invest your time. In a perfect world, you’d have fully-automated campaigns on each platform that drive traffic to your website and provide you with great returns for the time you spend.

The good news is that when it comes to Twitter, it is a relatively easy social platform to master and can consistently drive traffic to your website once you get the basics down. The key is to know how to tap into the massive traffic and truly become part of the conversation so others will follow and promote you.

There are many factors to consider, but you can get off to a great start with these important steps.

1. Use a Customized Twitter Button

A customized Twitter button gives people a chance to promote your site on social media as they view it. These buttons have a great click-through rate and, what’s even better, all the assets are provided for free by Twitter. All you have to do is take advantage of them.

• Start at Twitter’s button page.
• Choose “Share a Link” and enter your URL.
• Add a message and your own @username so you know when others tweet you.
• Enter the auto-generated code into the HTML of your website.

If you use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, check out the software’s development community to find free plug-ins that can help you promote your site and amplify your voice on Twitter. Not only can these generate custom buttons, but they also provide many other features.

2. Use Hashtags

#Hashtags are like keywords. They make it easy for people to find and share your tweets and not only that, they can increase engagement by up to 200%. Use hashtags in your tweets to highlight words that you want to appear for when people conduct a Twitter search.

To find the top hashtags to help you use them well, here are 3 tools from Jeff Bullas.

• Hashtags.org
• Twubs.com
• Tagdef.com

Once you launch a full-scale social media campaign, hashtags become even more vital. As you build a strong following on Twitter, it’s time to try your own custom hashtag. Any word you set off with the pound symbol will become a hashtag, but your followers will have to retweet and promote it aggressively for it to be “trending” – that is, for it to be recognized as one of the most-used hashtags at any given time.

A custom #hashtag helps people stay engaged with your brand’s conversation and locate your latest content even if they’ve been away from Twitter for a while. Make sure your hashtag is memorable and short: A long tag will be more difficult to fit in around your message. Use your tag consistently so others are more likely to pick it up.

3. Install Twitter’s Search Widget

Brands who already have a vibrant social media following can capitalize on it – getting the kind of “social proof” that attracts new followers who might be on the fence. Luckily, there is a perfect tool: The Twitter Search Widget lets your audience see what others are saying about your @username or your #hashtags in real time.

When people are new to your content and they see others already tweeting about you on your site it makes them more comfortable to promote or buy or take whatever action you want them to take.

To install the widget:

• Start at the Create a Search Widget page
• Enter your desired search term into the “Search Query” box.
• Checking the box “Safe Search Mode” to exclude coarse language and images.
• Select a light or dark-colored theme to match your site.
• Once you’ve chosen your settings, click “Create Widget”
• Copy the new code into your website.

The widget will pull data from Twitter and automatically populate the widget with tweets that contain that search query. This helps your profile appear active and vital to audiences. Be sure to keep an eye on how your search terms are performing, if they grow unpopular, it’ll be reflected in your widget.

4. Use ClickToTweet

People are never in a better mood than just after they’ve made a purchase they’ve been looking forward to. Savvy brands can take advantage of that all-important moment using ClickToTweet. This widget spices up your post-purchase “Thank You” page by adding a contextual Twitter link. That gives your buyers an easy way to share the details on what they just bought with their followers.

To get this done,

• Visit ClickToTweet.com.
• Sign in with your Twitter account.
• Add a message “from” your customer (the one they’ll retweet after their purchase).
• Link to your sales page.
• Add your username to get an alert each time ClickToTweet is used.
• Include your own custom hashtag to drive Twitter traffic to your products or services.
• Click “Create Tweet”.
• Add the code to your Thank you or Checkout page.

Not all buyers will tweet their purchase. ClickToTweet is a powerful way to find out which customers are most enthusiastic about your offerings. To show your appreciation, try offering those who do spread the word a special coupon or discount.

5. Target Influencers

Twitter influencers can catapult your brand by giving you the social proof to build a loyal following.

Influencers are those Twitter users who have thousands of dedicated, engaged followers. Generally, these are figures like authors, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and others whose reputation extends well beyond Twitter. Some social media power users have built their very own brand from within Twitter.

To get started, you first need to find the influencers in your niche. These people have an outsized presence and will usually be followed by a large number of your own followers. An influencer’s time is valuable, so get their attention by tweeting on topics that matter to them … including their own products or services. Use their username and hashtags to get their attention.

Once you are confident an influencer has “seen you around” and interacted with you a few times, you can connect with them through direct message. Send them a selection of 3-5 pre-written tweets promoting whatever your most important offerings are and politely ask whether they’d be willing to share. Since you’ve saved them time, it’s likely they will help. Be prepared to take your time with influencers. The last thing you want to do is invite yourself to their party by moving too fast.

6. Put Your Account on Autopilot

Daily interaction is what Twitter’s all about, and the most powerful results to get free traffic to your website comes from engaging directly with people in real time. This is tricky, since you can’t be on Twitter around the clock and you probably have things to say during those off hours. There are several free programs you can use to automate tweets so you’ll be part of the conversation 24-7.

Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to add any messages, blog posts and curated content you want to Tweet into a calendar that automates your whole campaign. So instead of grabbing a few minutes here and there to find interesting articles, you can schedule your entire week’s worth (or month’s worth) of tweets in just a few hours at the beginning of each week.

Key Takeaway

Making Twitter work for you is easier than you think, and these simple steps will make Twitter a primary source of free traffic to your website. Once you have your Twitter campaign automated, it can really be a powerful marketing asset that allows you to connect with people from all over the world. The more you provide valuable content and authentic interactions with followers, the more you’ll stand out from the pack as a true expert in your field. Over time, this will easily translate into meaningful customer relationships that will have a great impact on your business.