When I first started using Twitter I didn’t expect it to be an effective social media marketing tool. Imagine my surprise at the almost immediate impact on traffic to my blog. It jumped dramatically. Since I hadn’t changed any other aspect of my blog promotion – and hadn’t won significant attention from a blogging superstar – I have to conclude the new traffic was from Twitter.
Then I started following someone who sent a private message inviting me to sign up for his email newsletter and get some useful free reports. I immediately thought “what a great idea” but thought it seemed like a lot of work to keep up with sending messages to every new follower.
That’s when I discovered TweetLater. This service lets you set up post-dated Tweets, for times when you’re going to be away from your computer but don’t want to have Twitter silence. But more importantly, TweetLater let’s you automatically follow new followers and send them a private message. It’s all automated.
It took me a few tried to get it configured properly – it helps if you read ALL the instructions – but it’s now quietly working away for me. New followers get a message from me thanking them for following and a link to a post I wrote about Twitter.
Since this automated message started going out, I’ve noticed a huge increase in email newsletter subscriptions – almost quadruple. This is very important for me because now I can keep in touch with these new visitors even if they don’t make it back to my blog very frequently.
If you have an email newsletter and are on Twitter, I definitely recommend this method. It only takes an hour or so to implement and the paybacks are huge.
Andrea J. Stenbeg
