Twitter (or Identi.ca, or any other microblogging service) is a great way to engage in informal social conversations with others (including friends, clients, business acquaintances, and the rest of the general public). Twitter can be a great way to drive traffic to your blog, but only if that’s not the focus of your Twitter presence.
How do you bring your blog and Twitter together? Here are a few options:
- when you make a blog post, send a link to Twitter
- ask your Twitter followers for input when writing a post
- point out on Twitter when someone leaves a particularly great comment on one of your entries
Talking about your blog on Twitter should be part of your personal Twitter stream, but that shouldn’t be the only reason you’re on Twitter. If most of your tweets are links to your blog, you’ll come across as being too focused on self-promotion. If you’d like an easy way for folks to absorb just your blog posts, one option is to set up a Twitter account solely for that purpose (which is pretty much how the @socialphototalk account works). That’ll get your work onto Twitter, but won’t be as effective as integrating your blogging amongst the rest of your life’s tweets.
Want a real life example? Check out my personal Twitter account at @ahockley; if you look you’ll find links to my blog posts, but that certainly isn’t the focus of the stream.
Photo by freezelight, used under Creative Commons licensing
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