How to Expand Your Blog with Twitter

Want to expand your blog's reach with social media, but just don't know how? Here are some of the things that you can do to increase your blog readership and engagement with twitter.

Twitter Chats: 

For those of you who don't know what twitter chats are they're basically a twitter based forum that is held usually once weekly under a specific hashtag. A company or person will tweet questions to the audience and then they would engage in conversation while replying all under the same hashtag. Some examples are ; #blisschat #altchat #blogtrends and #bloghour. They can be valuable in a number of ways.

• Joining in on Twitter Chats
• Helps you gain valuable information from people in the same fields as you - i.e. bloggers, small business owners.
• Gives you the opportunity to network with others with similar interests to you and build friendships over time
• When you actively participate a lot of bloggers in the chat end up checking out your twitter page and corresponding links, therefore increasing the traffic to your blog.
• Hosting Your Own Twitter Chats
• Allows you to distribute your own valuable advice to a large group of people at once.
• Helps you to build a reputation as an expert in the field that you are in.
• Is a great opportunity for interaction with your followers.
• Opens you up to sponsorship opportunities who want to take advantage of the impressions and engagement that you generate in an hour!

• Having a single business/personal twitter account :Not only is it exhausting running multiple twitter accounts along with the other forms of social media that you are on, but it can be detrimental to your blog/business to have separate accounts. For web based businesses and blogs; you are your brand. It's important that people are able to get to know who you are, especially if you want them to choose YOUR service over one that they can get elsewhere.

• Tweeting links to your posts can drive traffic to your blog, and you reach a wider audience which includes those that may not be subscribed to your email list or following you on bloglovin'. I personally read about 50% of the posts that I do because of twitter.

• Interacting with your Readership: After you've tweeted post links and people have read them, they often respond via twitter. It's important to acknowledge your readers and engage them.

• Tweeting quotes from your posts: can be a way to encourage more people to read. I for one usually don't click boring looking auto-updated links, and most of your readership won't either,

• Tweeting helpful tips, pictures, infographics and other bloggers content can also help give you a boost. People love it when you share their content! Wouldn't you?

• Your personal life matters too! We like to read what you write already, that's why we're following you, so getting an insight into your personal day to day life is cool too. I don't just want to follow for scheduled updates!

• Reaching out to one person a day: If you're not getting the results that you want from twitter, try asking for them. I've noticed since I've been reaching out to people the positive responses have just been flooding in! Whether it's co-ordinating a guest post or sponsorship or simply asking for help you should never be afraid to ask someone else for a helping hand - even if you're intimidated.

Ideally you should be spending at least an hour a day on twitter just interacting, how long do you spend on twitter for your blog/business?