We all love a bit of Twitter. My personal fave is when you see celebs like Kym Marsh and Jamie Lomas having a massive bust up and proper going Jeremy Kyle and you are like ‘Oh my god she’s slagged his parenting skills’. I love it. Humans, by nature are nosey. Proper seriously nosey. We are a civilisation of curtain twitchers. I bet even in the Amazon there are tribes gossiping about the other tribes loincloths.

Taking all that into consideration, social media is the new TV advertising. It is the most efficient cost effective marketing you can have. I have still had people say to me ‘oh I don’t get Twitter’, so here’s a little guide on how to use it to help your blog a bit.

1.Dont CONTINUOUSLY tweet links to your blog.

Yes, I know anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I do this ALL the time. I basically want everyone on the planet to hear exactly what I need to say and how I need to say it. I’m not saying I practise what I preach, and it actually doesn’t drive my stats up. I mostly do it to wind people up now who tweet me sarcastic comments. Most blog software has the capability to automatically tweet new posts. Leave it at that unless you want people at your door with pitchforks and such.

Here is a great breakdown of the average Twitter timeline:

Here is the link to the original Washington Post Article which may help:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/01/the-problem-with-twitter/

2. Be polite

I’m sure all of your parents and grandparents drummed this into you from when you were younger, but it can be hard to get up to date with technology and transfer this over to social media. Retweet people, favourite their posts, and participate in ‘Follow Friday’ (#FF and then @username). You may amass thousands of followers and wonder why it will benefit you doing all this for someone with say, 51 follower, but the internet is anonymous. The person you are helping out may be associated with a massive brand willing to return the favour. In keeping with this, try and answer peoples tweets as well. Even if it’s sarcasm or abuse, at least you are not ignoring them.

3. Check spelling of links.

this sounds basic but its so easy to spell incorrectly. Especially if you have excited fingers like mine. I actually type to fast and have to double check EVERYTHING. I spelled ‘spelling’ wrong when I wrote this actually. So if you are going to put the URL to your blog in your bio, PLEASE check the spelling.

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4.Find people in your niche.

It’s all well and good following loads of randoms, but do you feel soulful intellectuals will care about your blog about Eastenders? Try and figure out what ‘niche’ your blog is and stick to following people from that. Find a similar blog/Twitter and try and follow some of their followers.

If you haven’t quite figured out your niche yet, here’s a great article on how to do so:

http://fromhobby2money.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-choose-profitable-blog-niche.html

5. Participate in hashtag debates.

Hashtagging is the mother of all social media networking. If you have a fashion blog for example, find the hash tag #essexfashion and try and get involved. I wouldn’t STRONGLY suggest telling other fashion blogs their ideas are stupid and the clothes are horrid, but rows do get a lot of attention so he, if that’s what angle you are going to go for, make sure you have some witty comebacks from my ebook handy.

http://confessionsofasoberessexgirl.co.uk/2014/01/05/free-ebook-12-witty-comebacks-for-everyday-life/

6. Add your Twitter handle to your ‘About Me’ page.

The blog universe has a mind of it’s own, further fuelling my theory that artificial intelligence or robots will deffo’s do us all in one day. But anyway, less of that. Make sure you put your Twitter handle on your blog. There may be some people out there in WordPress world that despite your 6,000 tweets an hour have found you on this site and not social media. Make sure it’s correct and watch the followers from random countries you have never heard of roll in. also, is Angola, REALLY a country?

7.Try and decide, WHAT all your social media should be pointing to.

There’s no point tweeting your blog, facebook, soundcloud, last fm, then facebooking your twitter, wordpress, last fm, and then putting on wordpress your twitter, facebook and linkedin. You need to sit down, and make sure you have a clear goal on WHICH social media site all your other will point to. For me, it is ultimately this blog, so I use Facebook, Twitter and Google plus to point to my URL. Readers confuse easily, so make sure you are using social media in the correct way. I’m not calling all blog readers lazy thickos, but I’m basically calling all blog readers lazy thicko’s.

8. Be witty.

Try and engage your Twitter audience by tweeting funny things. Watch a trending TV programmes and try and make funny comments including the hashtag, which will bring you to an audience wider than the 7 people you went to school with. If you are not naturally hilarious like me (for evidence to support this please see the entirety of the rest of this blog) why not start a debate and get your followers engaged?

9. Tweet photo’s.

Again, everyone loves a good laugh. If you have any ideas for funny photo’s you should make them and tweet them, and follow up with a link to your blog. The best thing to do if you have the software is have a watermark with your URL, so if it DOES go global everyone will be directed to your site. Here is one of mine which I tweeted during Eastenders using the hashtag.

10. Keep it light.

If you ARE one of those people inclined to share your suicidal thoughts with the entire universe, please keep it to Facebook. Although a good bit of banter can gain you followers (Especially if you abuse a well known celeb) no one wants to hear how terrible your day was, how you didn’t get that job you wanted and how you car insurance is due. Imagine this:

‘Having such a rubbish day today, in a really bad mood’

‘Didn’t get that job, gutted :(‘

‘Just seems to be one thing after another lately 😦 :(‘

‘By the way read my fantastic, interesting blog’

absolutely not going to happen. If you do feel the absolute need to do this, separate your blog and personal twitter. Also, if the nature of your blog is a bit risqué, try and keep it separate so potential employers will not fire you.