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Top 5 Do’s and Don’ts to Make Money on Twitter
With recent reports that the number of Facebook visitors has overtaken Google’s, there’s no doubt that fellow social media heavyweight Twitter is close behind.
Twitter is gaining an increasingly dedicated following which presents some interesting opportunities for you to monetise your Twitter activity without paying Twitter to advertise. If you’re ready to start earning from your tweets, here are some important guidelines to follow to stay true to the twitter spirit.
Here are Alicia’s top 5 ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’t’s:
DO – Build Up Your Tweeting Credibility
The better the environment surrounding your tweet, the better response you will get. For anyone starting out, the first step is to grow a loyal following that actually cares about your tweets and wants to listen to what you have to say. You can build a good foundation by tweeting informative, interesting things that your audience will care about, with content that stays true to who you are and message you want to portray. Tweet well, and you gain their trust.
DON’T – Get Involved in Paid Tweets or In-stream Ads
If you really want to, you can get paid for tweeting about certain companies and products, but paid tweets and ads you can’t control can damage your credibility if they’re off topic. When you lose editorial rights, even if it’s just for one tweet, you lose your integrity, and the followers will…well…follow.
DO – Direct People to Your Blog
If you’ve written a great blog post about products with affiliate links, banner advertising or sponsorships, you can shout it out to all your Twitter followers with a link. It’s a great way to increase not only traffic to your blog; but also generate sales for the product, whilst taking your followers into an environment where they can have a longer conversation with you.
DON’T– Use Broken Links
Linking out to specific products with an affiliate link is a great idea, but the 140 character limit on Twitter doesn’t give you much space to include an entire deeplink, especially a lengthy affiliate link. Don’t try and include the whole link – it won’t fit, and most likely get cut, resulting in a broken link. Remember to test the links before you hit enter: if your followers have trouble with your links, they’re less likely to click through again.
DO – Shorten Your affiliate link before you tweet
Always use a URL Shortener to create a shortened deeplink when recommending products on Twitter, or use a tool that monetises and shortens links in one click. These tools are great not only because it leaves you more room to put in text to support your link, but they also come with reporting abilities so you can track the effectives of what you tweet.
You can see Alicia’s tips on YouTube and for more tips on Affiliate Marketing with Twitter, you can also check out ProBlogger’s Tips.
How are you monetising your Twitter stream?
2 Comments to Top 5 Do’s and Don’ts to Make Money on Twitter
May 18, 2010
[...] * Create a Twitter account if you don’t have one already * Tweet out links to your blog so your audience will come to your blog and click on your links * Use the URL shortener (within SkimKit) for product links and tweet those out with a brief description of what you’re promoting (see what I do with @SlutteryPicks) * Check out more Twitter tips on the Skimlinks blog [...]
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May 9, 2010
And tweet often, about 3 times a day I suggest, or more if something interesting and “real” is happening.