Get More Traffic to Your Website With This Proven Twitter Strategy

Do you use social media to get more people to your website and into your sales funnels? How about Twitter?

In the past, I’ve discussed that Twitter is effective for marketing and why Twitter is so good for your business. When it comes down to it, Twitter is an easy yet powerful tool for personal brands to accomplish a few goals on a budget:

– Drive traffic
– Extend reach
– Increase visibility

While many of you know this, you haven’t been able to use Twitter to achieve more in your business. But I think that’s because you may not understand the platform or know how to spend your time there. All of that changes today!

In this article, I’ll explain:

– How Twitter works as a social media platform and a marketing tool
– The steps to use Twitter to drive traffic without sucking up all of your time

Don’t forget: getting more traffic to your website is important because it’s where the lead generation and sales take place. One huge goal of social media is to send people to your site and into your sales funnels. That’s how sales happen from social media.

Twitter As a Social Media Platform and a Marketing Tool

When I mention Twitter to colleagues, they often respond with one of two reactions:

1) “I don’t get Twitter. It’s so fast moving.”

OR

2) “I post there occasionally but don’t really use it, it doesn’t really work for me.”

Then there’s the media’s response as well as many social media influencers who forecast the death of Twitter.

Such naysayers!

But Twitter is working for business, it’s just that many entrepreneurs are getting it wrong. Twitter is fast-moving, so showing up and tweeting only occasionally will not work. So what does work?

Twitter Explained

Did you know that Twitter was initially an internal messaging service pilot product at a podcasting company? It didn’t begin as a social media platform.

That’s what it helps to think of Twitter as a public, global texting/messaging platform. When you tweet, it’s like a text message—except that anyone can see it.

When you use text messaging to talk to your friends or family, usually it’s fairly fast-paced since it’s a conversation, right?

Well, the same applies to Twitter. Consider your followers more like friends and your tweets more like conversations.

Twitter’s open platform beats Facebook’s algorithms every day. After all, even people you don’t follow you can find your tweets via hashtags and search. Plus, you don’t need an image like you do with Instagram. And it’s much easier to have a public conversation with Twitter’s format versus other platforms.

I’m not knocking Facebook or Instagram; they have value as well.

BUT, you can conduct business indirectly on Twitter without interrupting your followers’ feeds with intrusive, costly, hit-or-miss ads. Plus, people on Twitter often discuss business topics. Therefore, the conversations tend to be more natural, less forced.

Twitter Traffic Is a Real Thing

I know you’re hearing a ton about newer platforms right now. Maybe you’re using Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat with massive success? But hear me out on this one.

Twitter as a traffic driver is the real deal. And with it comes wider reach, increased visibility, and, eventually, greater influence. If you’re looking for these elements in your marketing, then Twitter should be on your radar. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so here’s the pudding!

Influencers

Let’s start with some well-known influencers who are using Twitter for business to drive traffic and sales:

• Kim Garst
• Jeff Bullas
• Mike Kawula
• Rebekah Radice
• Madalyn Sklar
• Buffer

Recently, on a podcast, Buffer discussed the results from their State of Social Media 2016 Report, where respondents answered the question “What are your main social media challenges?”

58% of respondents said driving traffic to their website was their biggest challenge, which is one of the reasons I’m discussing it in this article.

On this same podcast, the team revealed that although traffic from Twitter to Buffer’s site is declining, the platform is still surpassing traffic generation from other social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+. (You can hear it at 22:25 in the podcast.)

Perspective check… When I mention declining traffic, for Buffer the numbers dropped to 40,000-45,000 per month, with Facebook at about 10,000 less. (Previously the numbers were around 100k – 150k /month from Twitter.)

Granted, the traffic numbers may have dropped significantly for Buffer, but those are still amazing stats! What we don’t know about the stats is whether any other factors besides Twitter may have affected traffic numbers.

Smart Bird Social

I’m experiencing the opposite of Buffer in terms of Twitter traffic.

Most of my energy and time are invested in Twitter, with Facebook a distant second. Which is why it’s no surprise that for my small business, Twitter drives most of our social traffic. This traffic has been instrumental in boosting our stats to over 1,000 total visits per month without any ad spend.

Not huge numbers, right? Well, Twitter’s overall effect on my social scoring and Alexa ranking were factors in my blog getting noticed. Feedspot voted Smart Bird Social as one of the top 100 best social media blogs last month!

And using the Twitter Marketing System, which is outlined below, Smart Bird Social’s Twitter traffic significantly increased.

If you have a highly-converting sales funnel or website, what could 1,000 or more additional visitors a month mean to you in sales?

Let’s say you have a funnel that converts at 30%…that’s 300 more sales a month.

Which leads me to ask you, what could Twitter do for you and your business?

Our Clients’ Twitter Results

We used our strategies for three clients, and the results were notable.

For example, let’s talk about Liz Benny, entrepreneur and business coach. Her Facebook presence is big, but she wanted to extend her reach to be able to help more people. We built her a targeted, engaged Twitter community of interested people.

Targeted followers are important! This meant that when she had a webinar at the last minute, we were able to send lots of traffic to her landing page (without ad spend). And, because her followers were targeted and people were engaged with her content, she received nearly 100 clicks (99!) to her webinar sign up page with a SINGLE tweet. Our system generated thousands of clicks to Liz’s sites that she didn’t have previously.

What about for an author and wellness coach? Yep, Twitter done this way worked for him too. In three months, Anthony DiClementi received over 6,000 clicks to his sites! He also felt that the system increased his visibility and inquiries. His popular niche, wellness /health/biohacking, is competitive, but our system helped him with growing an engaged tribe who wanted to consume and share his content.

Let’s not forget about Russell Brunson, CEO of ClickFunnels. Russell is the man behind one of the most popular funnel building apps in addition to other hugely successful business endeavors. We were able to use his massive amount of content to generate more traffic to his sites from Twitter and grow his community as well.

Get More Traffic to Your Website and Sales Funnels

Ok, so now you know that Twitter is still driving traffic and still being used by both businesses and customers. But how do you add Twitter marketing to your already long to-do list?

It’s really not that hard. It’s really not too time-consuming either (after you get things set up). And, it’s really not expensive. We’ve developed a system that works like a charm, especially for personal brands on a DIY budget.

Here’s how you, too, can see results from Twitter marketing.

1) Make Your Twitter Profile Remarkable

Start with a public profile that attracts followers and shows off what’s best about you. Stand out from the crowd. As a personal brand, you’ve got the advantage of talking to your fans directly and promoting your personal awesomeness.

Your profile is the first impression you make when people decide whether to follow you on Twitter. And you know what they say about first impressions…

Give people a reason to follow you and see your tweets. Here’s a quick rundown of how to make your profile work for you:

• Use keywords in your bio
• Always pin a tweet
• Let your personality shine through
• Fill out all of the necessary profile options
• Use eye-catching images
• Be clear about who you help and what you do (the benefit you provide)

If you missed it, here are some of my best tips for creating a kick butt Twitter profile.

2) Followers

There are different strategies for finding targeted followers. In my experience, I consider there being two ways to build your Twitter community: manual and automated.

There are services like ManageFlitter and Commun.it that will help you grow your Twitter community. ManageFlitter’s free plan gives you a taste of what the paid version offers. I use it occasionally to unfollow accounts that aren’t following me back.

I’ve already discussed how to find Twitter followers, so I won’t go over it here. One critical thing to note, without a relevant, targeted following, your time on Twitter (or any social media platform) is wasted. So, take this step seriously!

3) Content Strategy

Like with most things these days, it’s a lot about content. Content is the basis of what you share on social media, your website, your emails, etc. The more quality content you have, the better and easier your impact will be.

When it comes to content, these rules of thumb have served me well:

• Lead with value (aka be generous).
• Don’t tweet anything that you wouldn’t want to read/see.
• Stand out from the crowd.
• Think like a fan.
• Mix it up. (Use different tweet formats.)

You are competing for eyeballs all of the time. Your content differentiates you from your competitors and gets you noticed.

Now that you’ve got relevant followers, give them what they want to see. They don’t want to see your sales tweets. They’re on social media to read the news, have conversations, interact, and have fun. Thus, your content needs to provide a good user experience.

If you’re not sure what to tweet, check out your competitors, industry influencers, and others in your niche. This is a good place to start for inspiration, especially if you’re just starting out in business.

4) Tweeting Schedule

This is the biggest secret that’s been revealed: tweet often!

If you’re not tweeting often enough, then Twitter is a waste of time. Now I see why business owners keep telling me that Twitter isn’t driving traffic or helping them get their message out: they aren’t tweeting enough.

Social listening company Social Quant studied over a billion tweets (that’s not a typo). They found that the accounts that tweeted the most often and had the best quality content saw the best results in their Twitter marketing.

Surprisingly, those Team A accounts—the ones with the most and best tweets—tweeted about 80 times a day and got about 291 clicks a day!

That is over 30 times as many clicks per day and over five times the number of clicks per tweet as the Team B, or those accounts that tweet 14 times or less a day.

Some of the leaders that I mentioned above are tweeting several times an hour as well as Sam Hurley and Guy Kawasaki.

Friends, don’t let friends tweet less than 80 times a day! 🙂

Actually, work your way up to tweeting more frequently. You don’t want to rush quality content! I’m a work in progress too. But at least we know that tweeting quality content often helps our business.

5) Content Automation

Certainly, you’re not going to be manually tweeting 80 times a day. 😉 This is where automation saves the day.

Using a tool like Social Oomph or MeetEdgar, create several evergreen queues. A queue is a sequence of tweets that you batch together and recycle. When the last tweet in the queue is done, the sequence starts all over again. The result? A continuous delivery of content into your Twitter feed, which means consistent traffic to your website/sales funnels and an increase in your authority in your niche.

Other tools do allow retweeting and recycling. However, it helps to be able to have “content buckets” to separate content types. For example, you could use a bucket for your blog posts and another bucket for motivational quotes. Schedule the buckets to run at different times, and waaaa-laaaa! Your Twitter feed is full without being glued to your computer or searching for content 24×7.

Both Social Oomph and MeetEdgar support recycling by content types. I use Social Oomph because it’s inexpensive yet effective, and it was available before MeetEdgar existed so I have my content organized already. MeetEdgar is pricey, but I’ve heard it’s a much nicer user experience.

Add into the mix some retweets and curated content to show that you’re authentic and about providing value.

6) Engagement

Now, you could let your system run by itself and only visit Twitter now and then. However, engagement is CRITICAL to boosting the know, like, and trust factor and to making the system more successful. Remember: social media is about being social, and that means engagement!

This doesn’t mean you have to devote hours a day to responding and reaching out. I spend about an hour throughout a day on Twitter (less on the weekends). Split your time into 15-20 minute chunks to reply, retweet, mention, tweet, and reach out to others a few times a day.

Be yourself and don’t talk about business only. Say you’re out and about, why not snap a pic and post it on Twitter? How about replying to someone’s tweet with an on-the-spot video? Use an animated GIF to mention someone.

It’s only difficult if you believe it is.

Wrapping It Up

There you have it. I’ve given you the basics and the reasons why Twitter is a sweet tool to get more traffic to your site—and boost your business in many other ways at the same time.

By setting up your own Twitter marketing system, you’ll see results over time just like our clients, many influencers, and I have!