Webupon

I’ve seen hundreds of articles and various sites attempting to explain how to use twitter to promote your site.

Most of us know “why” we should, but ultimately the phrase, “ok, how do I do that?” comes to mind.

Here’s the simplicity of it, and all it takes is access to a few free websites.

First, you must have a twitter account. (duh)

Second, you should have a website (or even a blog) that is cross linked with your twitter account.

You can see this in action from two twitter accounts and websites that I manage:

Websites….Brain Fried Network &  Autisable.com  for twitter accounts…edlives & autisable.

ok, there yet?   Good.

If not, come back to this post….

Now…

You’ll need access to a few other sites to make this happen.  For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the following three:  Tweetlater, Twitterfeed, and Yahoo Pipes.

• Tweetlater.com – This one is GREAT for auto-following and scheduling tweets. 
  
  • Let’s face it, using twitter depends heavily on followers.  So, what you do is follow a bunch of people that you really want to follow…then let the auto-follow program run it’s course on Twitter.  Can we say HUGE time saver?
  • Sometimes you want to have a series of special tweets roll out at specific times.  you can do that with this website.
  • The service is free, however there are more bells and wistles if you sign up for them.
• Twitterfeed.com – Ok, you made a post …now what?  you have to spread that post out to the rest of the internet so they know it’s there…right?  Well, Twitterfeed (free, but operated via donations) works off of the rss feed of your site, and updates your twitter account auto-matically.  Now talk about a big time saver…this ensures that your posts are known throughout twitter.  Twitterfeed also uses Openid for access.  If you don’t have Openid, it takes a little time to set it up, but once it’s done – that’s it.

Both of these sites allow for you to operate multiple twitter accounts at the same time, and both are free.

At this stage, your able to auto-follow someone following you, and also have your blog auto-updating your twitter account.  Suggest also following some people on twitter to kick start the process.

(for some, this is just the basics.  But, your site is now being advertised to your followers)

Now, the kicker.  You want to reach new people…one’s that don’t know you.  But how to do that auto-matically.

Enter, the power of re-tweets (RT’s) on twitter:

You’ll still be using Twitterfeed.com for this, but you need to find an RSS feed – and exclude your username from that feed (to keep from retweeting yourself). 

Before going to the next step, you’ll need a few keywords that are appropriate for your site.

Then you’d use your keywords in the appropriate pipe.

I use the Yahoo Pipe: Twitter Retweet removing “self” from Feed.  However,

However, there are many pipes available – and if your talented enough – you can make your own.

Once I have the RSS feed using Pipes, you then input that as a new feed – using twitterfeed.

Now your not only promoting your own blog auto-matically, you’re also re-tweeting posts that others are submitting on Twitter.  This promotion not only benefits you, but also those that you retweet.

Over time, you’ll have more followers on twitter, and more traffic to your site.

I check my twitter accounts about twice a day, to keep up on Direct Messages – and to eliminate spammers.  You can preview who  you want to follow using tweetlater, but I’ve found just letting it run works better – and eliminating spammers is rather easy to do manually.

Hope this information is helpful to you, and look forward to your tweets, retweets, and follows.