Twitter Strategy – Building Organic Links

I must admit I was one of those people who at first didn’t care less about the social media tool of Twitter and felt it was just one of many social media tools that will come and go. I was wrong. Twitter does have a purpose that supplies the demand from thee mass public, and can be complimentary fit in the overall online strategy to distribute content, and built external organic links.

Twitter is a social media tool to communicate and stay connected to the masses through short, brief updates that answer the question “what are you doing now?”? I like to think of it as an exploitation of Facebooks status feature, that taps into the psyche of human natures thirst for gossip. As a means to quickly stay up-to-date on what people are doing, its a brilliant tool to feed this thirst.

Alternatively – just watch this video on “twitter in plain english”

However, in this post I won’t go into details on how Twitter can be leveraged strategically for the overal mix of your strategy, but simply to give a high level understand how Twitter can support an organic search strategy to spread content and build those oh-so sought after external one-way organic links. Keep in mind, Twitter is not a link building tool, though externally it can be utilized indirectly as link bait.

• Build a following. A massive following of people to follow your Twitter. There are several online tools available to help you locate people with similar interests. Whichever Just remember, however you go about doing this, the more Twitter followers you have the beter opportunity you’ll get people retweeting your content, or blog posts and linking to your website from their blogs and websites.
• Do you have a blog strategy in your marketing mix? Then Tweet your blog posts. This is essential to help you build links to your site. Tap into the blogosphere of your area and get your blog content distributed via Twitter. This is an excellent way to let people know about the new content. Use a Tweet/Retweet plugin for WordPress if you have a WP blog. Also, use Twitter Tools or another similar plugin so that your blog posts are automatically Twittered when they post. Key point – integrate your blog strategy with Twitter where your massive follower list will see it.
• Relationships. Build them with your Twitter followers. Tweet their blogs posts and retweet their messages. They will reciprocate. Send @replies and engage people to talk. Building a personality with them you’ll get the responses and results. They will read your blog posts, tweet them, and link to you from their blogs.
• See good valuable content in your area of speciality? Use Tweetlater to retweet these throughout your regular Tweets. Good timing can be positioned around when the online hoora has dissipated, giving you the opportunity to resurrect it again with a carefully placed tweet when your followers least expect it.
• Bookmark it. Twittley is a social bookmarking service that automatically sends a tweet when you bookmark a page. Whenever someone else votes for your submissions, Twittley will send out a retweet. Its a new service, so get in on the ground floor and building your reputation before the competition does.
• Value – build content worth linking to. This is an integral, fundamental point. All the work put in is fine and all, but to get results, such as the organic link back results, you need to provide value. If the content is not perceived of value, there’s no purpose for people to link back.

Twitter is a great tool for content and communication distribution, and promotion. Tap into peoples eagerness to follow you every day, or when you can. Like most online marketing channels, if used and executed properly, it can produce the results. Just keep in mind, Twitter won’t provide the organic links for you, but is a tool to distribute and promote your content with the link back goal in mind.