While reading through my Twitter stream, I see a lot of posts about news, articles, stories, advice, and more. Sprinkled in there from time to time are questions the people I follow ask. Sometimes these questions are Re-Tweeted if others are unable to answer the question, and therefore amplifying the chance that someone may answer it. I’ve found a simple and quick way for you to engage people, provide answers to their questions or complaints, AND drive traffic to your site all at the same time.
If you provide a service in lets say plumbing, and someone asks a question about how to remove a clogged drain with common household goods because all the stores are closed and its after hours. Surely you could just answer the question within your reply tweet, but where’s the originality in that? Better yet, why not answer the question but also provide a link back to either your blog where you had a post that shows in detail how to unclog a drain with some everyday household items.
What happens is that person visits your site, reads your post, hopefully will comment too, but also is a appreciative of your content. In turn they’ll probably view more about you and your services, forward your site to friends, follow you on Twitter and Facebook, or better yet become a new client. Your blog is valuable content that can be helpful to just about anyone. Though it may be indexed in Google, chances are your blog isn’t ranked for page one, so why wait for someone to find you when you can engage them now.
Twitter has a really good search part to their site. You can test it out by clicking here.
Through Twitter Search you can type some keywords that someone may type in looking for something. For example “I hate Internet Explorer.” You’ll find plenty of tweets among users with their complaints. If you have a simple solution for them and you’ve got a post on what to do, and its free, reply back to them. It won’t be spam if you come across sincere, and if you want to wait for them to reply back to you to provide a link to your post then do it that way.
The point is that you have worthy content that can help someone through a situation. Maybe its academic studies or a simple how-to. Point of the matter is that you’re getting it right to someone who needs it at the time they’re looking for it. If you’ve tried this before or are currently practicing it, I’d like to hear your thoughts and comments below.
