Are you rolling your eyes now thinking, “Great! One more social media platform to deal with!” If you are, don’t worry, I feel your pain. Honestly, it’s the thing I avoid like the plague when it comes to blogging. But you cannot dismiss the importance of social media for the health of your blog. It drives a huge amount of traffic to your blog and what it can do for your branding efforts is huge! And Twitter is one of those things you simply cannot ignore as a food blogger. Sure, it does not drive a huge amount of traffic to the blog, but would you believe me if I said that your monetisation game could completely turn around if you started using Twitter seriously?
Now that I’ve got your attention, here’s more on how to look at Twitter for food blogging.
The issue with Twitter usually is that people seem to think of it in the same way that they do with Facebook or Pinterest. Both are great for driving traffic, but the purpose with Twitter is very different. Think of Twitter as a running conversation. It’s not about just spouting off status updates, it’s one big global chit-chat. People tweet updates, breaking news, helpful info, and converse with one another. This means that the potential for someone discovering you, your blog, and knowing about you through your conversation style, is enormous.
What Bloggers Need to Have On Their Twitter Handle
Now considering the fact that a lot of people are going to discover you through your Twitter handle, as a blogger you need to make sure that there are a few things visible on your Twitter profile.
- Have a link to your blog.
- Make sure you have an image uploaded as a profile picture.
- Include a bio and links to other social profiles.
These are things that you absolutely must have on your Twitter handle. Some people also update the cover image with information about your blog. I would highly recommend this, because people then get to see a little glimpse into the blog straight from the Twitter handle itself.
What to Tweet About?
Do NOT make every single tweet about your blog.
And do NOT make your tweets full of links from your blog.
People use Twitter to discover great new information, besides having conversations. So make the content you put out there interesting. Keep it short, funny and don’t give away too much information on the tweet. Check out this tweet from Ree Drummond about Father’s day. Aren’t you intrigued?
One great way to increase engagement is to ask questions. Rather than just pasting the title and the link, ask a question that gets the curiosity juices flowing.
Use hashtags. But #don’t #make #your #tweets #like #this. People use way too many hashtags. Don’t do that. Always use one when it works naturally. This will help get you a bit more exposure.
Talk about trending things. But don’t force it. Trending topics could get you some attention, but if you have nothing to say about it, don’t force it.
How To Manage Twitter
Unlike Facebook, where you can’t have too many updates, because you will alienate people who have followed your page, with Twitter the more the merrier. The lifespan of a tweet is very, very short. So make sure you are having enough tweets so that you get some chance of getting noticed.
But it’s rather difficult to simply sit and tweet all day. So use a scheduling program like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule all your tweets. This leaves you free to engage if someone likes, favourites or retweets your tweet.
Make sure that you respond to EVERY chance to engage. If someone follows you, follow them back, leave a quick thank you message. This is good Twitter etiquette.
Use Twitter lists. In your profile, click on lists. Then, on the right, click on the button that says create list. You can make as many as you want, but center a list around a topic (like food, writing, social media, etc.) or you can make a list for the people you don’t want to miss. Once the list is created, simply run down through your following and hover over the little man icon, and add them to the list.
And very importantly, remember that you can have images on Twitter. Infographics in particular, work really, really well on Twitter. With the Cucumbertown food blogs, you can choose which image goes on Twitter. And this is actually a pretty cool feature. Look what happened when I got too lazy and tweeted without choosing a twitter appropriate image:
The actual image was this:
So make sure to use images which are apt for Twitter. With Cucumbertown food blogs you can do this easily at the Publish stage.
Why Twitter is So Important For Monetization
Besides what we talked about earlier about Twitter being a great medium for improving visibility there is one reason why you simply cannot afford to ignore Twitter: monetization. Twitter is THE BEST way to reach out to brands or agencies to establish a relationship that could translate to sponsored content opportunities.
And if your Twitter following is large enough you even get paid to simply tweet about things. Some blogger charge upwards of $2000 for a simple 140 character tweet. Such is the power of Twitter.
And the reality is that brands take you seriously when your Twitter following is substantial. So even though it may not drive as much traffic as Pinterest or Fcaebook, Twitter plays a much bigger role in Food Blog Monetization.
So that’s Twitter in a nutshell for you. Don’t forget to tweet these tips out to your friends :)
