Today, Twitter is vastly different. Most people come to Twitter to absorb information about their favorite topics. The other majority is looking for information curated by the people they consider experts or knowledgeable about a specific topic.

The landscape of the Twitter world has changed dramatically due to technical changes and shifts in internet culture. That's not to say that you can't make personal connections and grow your business using Twitter.

One of the notable things that has changed for businesses is the fact that it's almost required for a business to have a Twitter account.

Having an account isn't enough though. It's like a muscle, you have to use it and exercise it if you want it to grow and give you results.

You, as a spokesperson for the business, must nurture and work on the account regularly. It's great to talk to your prospects, existing customers and anyone that might be friendly to you or your cause.

But if you have that covered, what else can you do to leverage Twitter?

If you want more Twitter traffic, share your content on Twitter

Sharing your own content on social media must be a part of your plan to grow your business and influence. This sentiment is shared by most of the top online business people and influencers. Even if they don't tell you that they're doing this, their actions usually reflect this.

But some of the helpful social media and online marketing experts, like Neil Patel, actually teach these techniques. Neil suggests that we share 10+ articles which go back to our content, each day.

He also talks about how to grow your audience on Twitter fast on this video:

But Twitter can be exhausting, after you talk to people, and respond to conversations pertinent to your interests and objectives, you may feel too tired or overwhelmed to share your own content. And didn't Neil say to share your posts 10 times each day IF you already have a lot of followers?

What if you don't have 200,000 followers or more like Neil does?

The actual number of times you should share your own articles each day may vary by a number of factors, like how many articles you have and how many followers you have.

If you have a few hundred followers, you may annoy them really fast if you share 10 or more articles about your own stuff every day; this could hinder your growth and hurt existing or budding relationships.

But you can determine the right number of articles for yourself by experimenting. Maybe you share 10 articles total, four that are yours, and six about the industry by other influencers or media outlets. Maybe you can switch that ratio.

Play with those numbers, but remember that if you want more Twitter traffic, share more stuff on Twitter. BTW, if you agree with that by now, do me a favor and hit the following Tweetable quote just by clicking on it.

If you are skeptical or hesitant to share a lot of your own stuff, I totally understand, in fact, I had a question about sharing other articles instead of mine and how I should split that ratio. I didn't expect it, but Neil actually answered my question right away:

By the way, my traffic did go up, significantly.

But even if you could magically determine the exact number of times you should share your own content, the problem remains the same for you. If you don't schedule all these articles at once, you have to consciously share the articles every day at random times throughout the day.

This is exhausting, and time-consuming. Add to that the fact that you are also trying to respond to people on Twitter or initiate conversations, and run a business, you may feel like giving up quickly.

I get it, it's a lot of work.

But technology and tools are here to make our lives easier, don't overcomplicate things.

Use the right techniques and tools, as Neil suggests and as I show you in the video below, you can schedule all your own content to be shared in advance, on a set schedule. You can set this up once a week, or once a month and schedule all of your content.

On a future blog post, I'll show you how to weave your own content with niche content by other influencers in your industry so that you can keep a healthy and interesting balance of content. Make sure you subscribe, or follow me so you don't miss it if you want to see that.

But here's the video I made explaining how to use Buffer's power scheduler feature to accomplish what we've been talking about.

This is one of the strategies that has helped me triple my Twitter followers. By the way, if you aren't following me, you can right here: @Notagrouch.

TL;DR

In conclusion, you should have a Twitter account to help you grow your business. One of the strategies to grow on Twitter and get more traffic from Twitter to feed your business is to share relevant content that you've created on top of the regular, one-to-one interactions with your followers.

The easiest way to do this is to schedule all your own content in advance using a tool like Buffer coupled with the technique I demonstrated in the video.

I'm in the draft mode for another post that will simplify this process even further, and will make you a Twitter powerhouse without breaking the bank. Make sure you stick around or subscribe to my list to get notified when that comes out. Of course, you can also get notified if you follow me on Twitter.

Have you tried this before? Are you hesitant? I love teaching and sharing my expertise, but I also want to hear back from you about this and would love to know if you've done this, or not. If yes, what kind of results have you seen and if you haven't done this, why not?

The post How To Schedule Your Content on Twitter Once a Month appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But I see a resurge on Twitter and I see some good things that are going on. But I'm also deeply concerned about its apparent censorship and favoritism displayed over the past year and more so in the past few weeks.

If you haven't kept up with these developments, apparently, Twitter has been revoking the verified status from many accounts. It appears that Twitter is reviewing its verification program and will probably be removing the verification status from many more accounts.

It seems that some accounts claim that they've been unfairly targeted and singled out for suspensions and even permanent bans as a result of this "review", because of opposing viewpoints or what they call "wrong-think" like in  George Orwell's 1984 novel.

Twitter never comments on specific cases, but usually points questions and requests for comments to their Terms of Service document which like most T.O.S. documents is vague and even ambiguous; this allows for conspiracy theories, and alternate possibilities to be considered plausible by some.

Many argue, in contrast, that other accounts that are more in line with Twitter's political bias are allowed to remain active and verified despite exhibiting similar behavior as that displayed by the accounts that have been reprimanded arguably because of holding the wrong set of ideas or opinion.

You can't really change any of that... but this is what you can do.

And at the end of the day, you can't do much about Twitter's decisions anyway. But you know what you can do, is be a good person, be a decent individual and stop doing these three things on Twitter.

Trust me, they make you look like an amateur and it's time somebody tells it to you straight. I'm going to make this blog post mandatory reading for all my would-be customers and existing customers.

So without further ado, stop doing these things that make you a jerk on Twitter:

#1 Sending Automatic DMs

This is one of the worse things to have ever been turned into a thing on Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you surely have seen my top-most pinned tweet.

I've had it on for most of the year and it gets a good reaction.

https://twitter.com/notagrouch/status/828005553519472640

Nobody cares about your life's story in your auto dm. Nobody clicks on the links you send in there. Essentially, if you use Auto DMs when someone follows you, you're a jerk. You're forcing us to look at some crappy message and usually, you haven't even taken the time to  look at our account let alone follow us for a while so we can actually get to know each other.

I'll take that back. I'm sorry, I give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you didn't know prior to reading this blog post. Ok, but now you know so if you're still using Auto DMs, now, you're a jerk. Ok, I'll grant you a grace period, you can take a few minutes and then go turn off those automatic DMs.

Sending auto dms on Twitter is like throwing garbage out the window as you drive down the street, or like that crappy junk mail you still get delivered to your home address. Do the senders don't know that those pieces of mail survive only the walk to the nearest trash bin?

In Twitter, it's digital littering, you're doing nothing but creating digital garbage.

Please, don't. Just don't.

If you don't know how you're sending automatic direct messages because you set them up a long time ago and don't remember how, just click here to go to your Twitter apps permission page and click on "revoke access" next to all the apps listed there that you don't recognize.

This will reset your Twitter account's permissions and prevent 3rd party apps from sending those automatic junk messages.

#2 Sending Thank you for nothing messages.

Yes, it is absolutely true that you should acknowledge your new followers and engage with them. You should also engage with your existing followers and build connections with them. This is the reason we call Twitter a social network.

But don't confuse digital garbage for gratitude.

When it comes to Twitter, stop the automatic @ mentions messages with generic, repetitive and boring messages. Just like auto DMs, they're digital garbage.

If auto DMs are like mailbox flyers that are sent to you via postal service, then thanks-for-nothing tweets are the maybe-more-annoying door and car flyers you find after you come home or back to your car in the parking lot. More garbage and you're forced to look at it. And if you're sending these automatically, yep, you're a jerk.

These noise maker tweets sound a bit like this:

Thanks to my top #twitterfam followers (or some hashtag that sounds like a community exists): @mention1 @mention2 @mention3 @mention4 #famlov https://somefreejunk.net.

You don't need to thank everyone that follows you as if they just did you a favor. That's what people do on Twitter they follow each other. Instead, take it a step further and learn something about the person and comment on that. "Thank you for following me" messages are so 2008, and digital junk.

Generally, Twitter users fall prey to become these apps' advertising parrot-heads and use them with the promise of gaining a following or getting more "social mentions" which can be valued by some social influence measuring tools --also useless, but I digress.

At the end of the day, these tools primary purpose seems to be to generate digital garbage.

Instead, spend 15 - 20 minutes each day doing what I do to remain personal, and engaged with people on Twitter. It makes Twitter relevant again, believe it or not, there is a growing active user base on Twitter.

I explain how I engage with new users next.

What should you do instead?

From personal experience, thanks to Rewst.com and a dedicated 15 to 30-minute planned daily activity on Twitter, I've been averaging about 40 new followers each day. Thank you and welcome, all of you!

But to show gratitude, I take the time to check out each new follower and either like a few of their latest interesting tweets or maybe I'll follow them back. By the way, you don't have to use Rewst.com, it just makes things easier.

Another thing I do to show appreciation and acknowledgment to new followers is to retweet one or two of their most recent interesting tweets. I use Buffer to spread the tweets over a few hours or a few days.

Even doing an @ mention responding to a specific tweet they posted recently, or a compliment or positive feedback about their profile may go a long way.

These actions show you are there, and you're active and not just a twitter-bot pushing a message out. Taking the time to acknowledge your new followers shows gratitude.

Seriously, the other automatic, canned junk is bad. Forget it. Be real, be genuine and be there, even if it's just a couple times each day. Automatic "thank you @mentions" Just like I advise you for Twitter auto DMs... Just don't.

#3 Tweet Only your products

I'm a big proponent of automation. But you should work on intelligent automation. Once you get a work-flow going where you can read and share interesting articles on Twitter easily and timely, you can start sharing content that your followers may be interested in without any additional effort.

This video shows you how you can schedule all your tweets easily.

You can use something like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule tons of tweets in advance. But just be careful with this convenience.

Don't fall for the temptation to tween only for your products or services. You should have a mix of content.

How much is too much self-promotion?

Advice tends to suggest that we should be following a rough 80/20 split where you share industry news, relevant events information, quotes by captains of industry, interesting reports, case studies and news for about 80 percent of the time, and you share your own content the remaining 20 percent of the time.

If you are on Twitter and spend 15 to 30 minutes each day tweeting and engaging, then you'll find that you can be tweeting around 20 times organically.

Add to that count, 10 or so tweets you can pre-schedule as you read the type of content I suggest you share above. You could easily be tweeting anywhere from 30 - 40 tweets each day effortlessly. And that still doesn't count your own content.

Some people claim that if you were to just tweet your own content, you would lose followers and they'd feel like enough is enough.

But, I think if you're tweeting 40 or more times each day like I describe above, it's a fair ratio if you want to insert your own tweets 10 times a day. Mix them around in Buffer and continue to engage.

If you're trying to keep track of growth, you can also use Rewst.com to keep track of your growth. You could also tabulate the data yourself using Google Sheets, and I think Twittercounter.com will also help you track following and followers.

The big asterisk disclaimer on there is that my opinion is you should be engaging and sharing other content too to balance out your own content and to understand what others are sharing around your own topics of interest.

This means you could schedule around 8 to 10 tweets every day to your top 100 blog posts and go through them every 10 days or so. This will help you get a good amount of exposure and keep your followers looking at your content.

Neil Patel suggests you share at least 10 of your articles each day and look at the results based on the data --see video below: How to Get More Twitter Traffic (fast).

I tend to follow his advice and I usually share about 8 or 10 tweets of my own content and the rest are curated tweets.

I follow a ratio of roughly 50/50, and I think as long as the content is interesting, useful and valuable, even following Neil Patel's advice and only sharing 10 articles for your own blog may be fine.

After all if your own blog post isn't worth sharing, why did you write it at all right? And if it's worth sharing, why not share it?

Conclusion

These three things you need to stop doing on Twitter may seem a bit like rants, but based on my personal experience and in that experience of most of my clients, these are some of the biggest things that annoy other Twitter users and generally just contributes to a bad overall experience.

I'm not a big fan of telling you how to use any of the social networks. You should do what works for you. But if you insist on doing these things I listed, you have to wonder if annoying a large part of potential new followers is something that works for you.

Full automated Twitter accounts exist, and some of them have tons of followers, but they tend to be single-purpose announcement type of accounts. You can assume that all the unsolicited advice I provided here is meant for accounts that represent a person or a brand and want to actively grow and generate more engagement and traffic to their blogs.

The post 3 Things You’re Doing on Twitter That Make You a Jerk appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The answer is the same for all.

You have to provide valuable content for the readers and you have to promote the forum to the people that will benefit from that content.

Just because you build it, doesn't mean they will come.

If you have loads of cash, you can do what Neil Patel did with his forum when he launched it. Send $5000 cash to each of your friends and ask them to join and participate.

But chances are that paying would not work.

Neil has built some heavy duty social capital by providing huge value. He's built trust and a brand so when it came time to promote his new endeavor it was easy.

That's why he was able to pay for this. He basically paid for his friend's time to help him launch and multiply the trust and recognition on the forum.

But you don't have $50,000 or $100,000 to spend

So you have to go to the basics. The basics will always help you. Provide value. After you think you have provided good valuable content, then do it some more.

Then again. You do this by answering questions and letting the people that asked the questions know you've answered them.

Pay attention!

This isn't rocket science nor is my prescription something that involves a lot of research. It's almost common sense. Look at how people are doing it, do some googling. Ask questions and then follow a guide or tutorial or the steps of someone that has done what you want to do.

Another friend, Matthew Woodward built his reputation this way and now he's got one of the most popular internet marketing blogs and forums.

Matthew simply looked for the people that would be his audience. He found what questions they had by understanding what problems they were facing. Then he would go to his website and answer the question in excruciating detail.

Of course, there are technical steps to doing things correctly, but these are technical, they're methodical and almost trivial. You can just follow best practices, but you have to have value. You have to provide content, solutions, entertainment.

Matthew's answers have been some of the best and people recognize this so they always go back for more. Matthew reportedly spends over 20 hours writing one of his legendary blogposts, sometimes twice that.

He once told me that he simply needs to outwork everyone else and the rest just happens, in other words...

Get off your ass and start working

It doesn't take rocket science, but it takes a lot of effort and consistency to achieve the trust you need to make a website property stand out. You have to do the legwork, you have to put in the time.

If you don't, you simply become like one more website or forum from the billions out there.

Get great content online and then show it to the people that need to see it. Do this and you will be ahead of the curve.

Installing a forum is trivial, starting a blog takes 5 minutes, running updates and changing settings can be done without any real thought.

Creating valuable content is the art and science that will help your forum succeed. As the saying goes content is king.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to promote what you write. Share it in social media, use your email list, tell people about it. You do have an email list right?

[last-modified]

The post How Do I Get Visitors and Traction to my New Forum? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

SEJSummit is a conference featuring some of the top experts in enterprise level SEO. Hosted by Searchmetrics and organized by SEJ, this conference was extremely valuable in terms of networking and learning. The thing that makes it different than other similar industry events is that it is geared towards enterprise level SEO.

Big numbers, big traffic, multinational companies, multi-platform online presence management and things that are generally out of the reach of most SEOs. When it comes to analyzing data, big is awesome.

Usually enterprise level SEO means lots, and lots, and lots of traffic and really fun budgets. You get to try things and test things and you get results quickly. You can run A/B tests like Neil Patel suggests and get almost instant results.

By the way, Neil was one of the speakers. If you are a digital marketer of any kind, you should know who Neil Patel is. Another notable name was Jordan Koene. The presentations by Neil and Jordan were probably the most insightful and useful out of the event, but the other speakers were great too.

Mindy Weinstein taught us about making stories relevant and personal when you need to write content for "boring" industries. What I really liked about her talk is that she taught us how to do it at the same time she presented. She used a personal story to draw us in to her presentation and it worked beautifully.

I went to the Santa Monica event because it is close to me, but the SEJSummit is coming to Dallas, San Francisco and even London to name a few of the upcoming locations, visit the official invite page (click on the image above).

Sometimes when you go to an industry event like this one, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with information. You feel like you just put your mouth to a firehose and if you take in one more drop you will explode. This feeling generally leads to analysis paralysis and you end up going home with nothing but a spaghetti of new ideas; pages and pages of notes about cutting edge tricks and tips and possibilities that never materialize.

Not at SEJSummit, the format was terrific. One track was all that was needed. Speakers come up quickly without a whole lot of hoopla in between. The key element that makes this a must-attend event for 2015 is the focus on delivering three takeaways.

We have limited time; we need deep knowledge but also actionable steps. This is why the summit was outstanding.

See all the photos here.

Each speaker is required to present their talk in a 20 minute time slot (strict) and they open up by explaining what they will share with us and at the end there are 3 takeaways.  The three takeaways are easy to remember and note down, and then, expand when you get back to the office and really put things to action.

SEJ made sure that these three takeaways are actionable, impactful and memorable. Each speaker did a great job and kept the audience engaged. I wasn't the only one that felt this way because the room stayed full until the very last presentation.

If you want to learn about SEO from an enteprise point of view, you should make your way to one of the SEJSummit events. It doesn't matter if you are in-house SEO for a large company or an Agency managing enterprise clients, you have to make it to one of these. Oh yeah, and did I mention the event is free? What?

The post SEJSummit 2015 at Santa Monica by Searchmetrics and SEJ appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.