Jill Kurtz, Owner, Kurtz Digital StrategyTwitter has largely settled into a social media platform for news and events. Positioning your posts right there can be an effective way to build your blog readers.

Establish a Presence on Twitter

First you have to establish a presence on Twitter. Make sure your branding makes a solid connection between you, your business and your blog. Don’t create confusion by using different names and imagery. Consistency is important.Don’t forget to put your website URL in your Twitter profile. You can use the URL that goes directly to your blog if that is a focus for your business.Gain followers by following people and businesses that you know. Once you start this process. Twitter will recommend people to follow. Act on any suggestions that make sense.If you have a following (or even if you want to build one), incorporate these tactics into your Twitter use and you are sure to see your blog traffic rise.Now you are ready to use Twitter to gain blog readers.

Pin Your Posts

Twitter has a feature where you can pin a tweet to the top of your profile. When people go to your profile to learn more about you, they will see the tweet that you’ve pinned first. Use this to share your latest blog post or a popular one.

Use Relevant Hashtags

Adding hashtags to your tweets can help them to be seen by more people. Use hashtags that are relevant to the blog post that you are sharing and that are used by your target audience.

Tweet Often

If you don’t tweet often, your tweets will get lost in the stream. Tweeting often and at different times of day maximizes your visibility. Followers will see your tweets no matter what time they check their feed.  A scheduling tool like Buffer, Tweetdeck, and Hootsuite makes scheduling easy.

Set Up Twitter Cards on Your Site

Twitter Cards are a form of SMO – Social Media Optimization. The SMO tags tell Twitter what image and text to show in a preview for your website. This makes your blog posts look much more appealing when they are shared on Twitter.The simplest way to get your Twitter cards set up is to install the Yoast SEO plugin, which many people already have installed on their WordPress site for SEO purposes.

Include an Image in Every Tweet

Images make your tweets more eye-catching. Always use an image with your tweets.

Create Click to Tweet Links

Click to Tweet links are shareable links that allow people to tweet out a pre-populated tweet with just one click.Click to Tweet helps you generate the links and also gives you access to some stats on the links. Once you’ve created them, you can put these links on your blog posts. There are also WordPress plugins that you can use to put these links on your blog.

Promote Older Content

Promote all your content, not just the latest post. Promote all your posts that are still relevant. Scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can do this work for you.