One element of promoting my blog that I haven't explored is Twitter. Even though I'm active on Twitter, I keep the blog content and my Twitter content pretty separate. One reason is that originally I was so turned off by Twitter accounts that were just RSS feeds of blogs. Those types of accounts just churn out tweets without any of the interactivity that makes Twitter so great. After seeing other bloggers succesfully utilize Twitter to draw attention to new posts, I've now realized that there is a medium between not mentioning my blog at all and turning my Twitter stream into an RSS feed.
The trick is to do it sparingly, one tweet per blog post is fine, and to make it an element of my Twitter presence and not the only thing that I ever Tweet.
A site like Timely, which I just heard about, is interesting because it looks at your Twitter data and tells you the best time to Tweet in order to reach the biggest audience and receive more retweets. For Tweets regarding my blog, which I want to get in front of the most eyeballs (compared, to, say, a Tweet about what I'm eating for lunch), this could be a useful tool.
Another tool that I'm newly familiar with through using it at work is Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to do alot of things, including manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts from a single dashboard, easily shorten links with the click of a button and, my favorite, schedule Tweets. I've gotten in the habit of writing several days worth of blog posts over the weekend, then scheduling them to post througout the week. With Hootsuite, I could then schedule the accompanying Tweets to go out on Twitter throughout the week at the appropriate times (perhaps after first consulting Timely).
Are you on Twitter? What do you think of bloggers who regularly post tweets notifying readers of their new posts?
