Bringing traffic to your blog with Tweetbait

June 12th, 2008 · 14 Comments

Thank you @mattgierhart for pointing me toward Chris Brogan’s blog. I love what Chris has to say, his Twitterbaiting-1 posting is consistent and each post is surprisingly valuable. One of his recent posts: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics talks about how he uses Twitter to bring readers to his blog. This is just one of the many tips he shares in this post.

For instance, when I’m done with this post, I will send to Twitter something like this: “I shared my thoughts on growing your audience. What are YOUR ideas?” and then the link to this post.

And that is precisely how I came to Chris’s blog. I was following him on Twitter first and when I saw one of these very genuine tweets about his blog I went and within a few minutes had subscribed to his feed.

This is the Twitter equivalent of Linkbaiting, so I guess we could call it Tweetbaiting. And we all know that the only way any kind of Social Network baiting is going to achieve longterm success is if it is directing traffic to something of value, and doing it in a way that is not misleading. And at this point, Twitter is a fairly closeknit community. The last thing you want to do is alienate your Followers.

Here’s a great example of a tweet that I had to click on immediately. @amuse wrote:

I hate it when people threaten to sue me over my blog posts:
http://tinyurl.com/65k7mo 08:39 PM June 10, 2008

All about a guy named Dan Sklaire who Alexander Muse wrote about (in a less than flattering way) and the legal threats that ensued. It’s pretty funny, fairly angering, and definitely worth a read.

So Twitter, if used properly, can add value and readership to your blog. So here goes, this is the Tweetbait I’ll use to steer folks to this post:

I just wrote about #tweetbait here: http://tinyurl.com/5s6jn3 What are your favorite examples of Tweetbaiting?

So throw that Tweetbait down in the comments.

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14 responses so far ↓

1 Matt Gierhart // Jun 12, 2008 at 10:04 am

I think the mask of tinyurl is a powerful one on this topic. I hope it is used for good and not evil, otherwise everyone is going to stop clicking. I think a good rule of thumb is to give a nice short keyword or idea tag to the link you are giving. Exactly what you already do tracksuit.
2 Alexander Muse // Jun 12, 2008 at 11:02 am

If you don’t like tinyurl, you can always use http://elfurl.com
3 TrackSuit CEO // Jun 12, 2008 at 12:23 pm

Good point about the evil possibilities of TinyURL. Being taken to a URL that you don’t know the name of until it’s been uploaded can be dangerous. I just saw that TinyURL offers preview.tinyurl for just this purpose.
4 TrackSuit CEO // Jun 12, 2008 at 2:46 pm

@Alexander Thanks for the link, I’m checking out the other Big in Japan tools right now. ElfURL is definitely safer than http://zombieurl.com/
5 Chris Brogan... // Jun 12, 2008 at 8:18 pm

I love it. I think you’ve hit on some neat stuff here, including whether tweetbait is bad or good. Very interesting. And glad you’re part of the community. I like your ideas.
6 Laura Powers (@hgmktg) // Jun 12, 2008 at 8:27 pm

For all of us new to Twitter, thanks for posting!
7 Lissa // Jun 12, 2008 at 8:46 pm

Hi Tracksuit,

I’m here because Chris Brogan Tweetbaited and I bit – so sure looks like it works to be.

BTW – love the handle so much I think I’ll subscribe!

Lissa
8 What is with all this Buzz about Twitter then??? | The Chief Brand Officer... // Jun 12, 2008 at 9:13 pm

[...] My personal favourite right now. Addictive little sucker – a microblogging platform so that you can keep your friends and followers up to date..in 140 characters or less (sort of like sms – only much more viral!). You can even post updates from anywhere on your mobile phone, whic is way sweet (I just don’t know how mcuh this costs?) Follow me if you dare! Want to learn more – check out what the Tracksuit CEO has to say about Tweetbait! [...]
9 Jim Kukral // Jun 12, 2008 at 9:58 pm

Yeah, this is good headline writing really when you think about it. The copyblogger taught me a lot about this. I wonder if he has a twitter headline writing article? He should.
10 Tracksuit Daily Diigo Post 06/13/2008 « TrackSuit CEO (version 2.0) // Jun 13, 2008 at 7:34 am

[...] Bringing traffic to your blog with Tweetbait [...]
11 Tracksuit CEO // Jun 13, 2008 at 8:02 am

@Chris Brogan Thanks for the feedback! It means a lot coming from a master Tweeter. And thanks for the inspiration for the post.
12 Tracksuit CEO // Jun 13, 2008 at 8:06 am

@Laura – Thanks for visiting and welcome to the Twitterverse
13 Tracksuit CEO // Jun 13, 2008 at 8:10 am

@Lissa – Chris Brogan’s Tweetbait is irresistible, you really didn’t have a choice.
Thanks for coming/subscribing, hope to hear more of you soon.
14 Tracksuit CEO // Jun 13, 2008 at 8:19 am

@Jim Kukral – Good idea about the twitter headline article, Brian are you reading this?