Twitter is one of those social media platforms that just blew out of nowhere. Facebook was ruling the planet then Twitter came to claim the throne - talk of Game of Thrones, right? Anyway, social media platforms are really good when it comes to business or website promotion. It is one of the best ways to let people know what is happening around you. Unlike the broadcast media options, social media gives real-time news. Information can spread to every corner of the planet with such tremendous ease. This includes information concerning your website and business activities.
Live links and Twitter
Before talking about how live links and Twitter associate with each other, it is probably smart to explain what live links are. A live link is basically an active text or graphic link that is found on a web page. When you click on the link it redirects you to another web page, document or even an image. Live links are often placed in emails. It allows the recipients of the mail to immediately access the website. It is different from a URL because these ones you must copy and paste into the web browser for them to function as a link.
It is important to note that people on social media do not have the time to check out links that are wasting their time. This is particularly the case with Twitter. No one has the time to copy an address and paste it on their web browser. They will only do this if they really know that you have content that is worth them reading. This is why live links are very beneficial. All you need to do is click on them and you are there on the page. It is as simple as that - no copy and paste activities.
Posting live links on Twitter is one of the easiest tasks that you will ever have to engage in. You simply add the link to the Tweets. There is also technology available to help you out with the posting. Most people do not have the time to be so active on Twitter therefore posting is often a challenge. There is technology available for you to schedule your posts.
Rules for using Twitter with live links
- Use a short description
What is the link about? No one wants to just check out a link they see on a tweet unless they know what is really happening there. Always create a catchy description for the link. The fewer the words on the description, the better it will be for you. Be creative with your description by getting into the mind of your target audience. What exactly do they want to look at?
For example, you have beautiful sunset pictures on your photography blog and you want people to check them out. You can go something like, check out these stunning sunset photos from [insert city here]. This is just a simple way to capture people who have a thing for sunsets.
- Post at the right time
Unless you are posting to fill your Twitter timeline, you should know the right times to post these items. The best time for posting is when people are online. They are usually online just before they settle down in their offices or classrooms, during lunch time and in the afternoon while seated in traffic on the way home. When you post at 10pm, it will not receive so much attention because people are just too tired or dead asleep. Over the weekend, they are probably out and about with friends. Few are checking their Twitter handles at such a time. The general rule of thumb is that if you post anytime between 6am and 8am, 12noon and 2pm or 5pm and 8pm, then you are assured that you will get a lot of attention directed to your post than posting at midnight.
- Mobile compatibility
It is also worth remembering that most people who are checking social media sites are doing so from their mobile devices, phones or tablets. As such make sure that the website you are linking to is compatible for mobile access. Usually, sites that are not compatible for mobile use take too long. With the limited time that people have on social media (check point 2 above), they want to get as many things completed as fast as possible.
Therefore, you should ensure that your site is enabled for mobile use as well. This will translate well to great performance on the search engines too. It will improve the engagements on Twitter and your site will be a topic of discussion.
- Uniqueness
Do not post the same tweet over and over. Recycling tweets is not healthy for your site at all. There are people who will visit your timeline to check the content that they might have missed out on. Therefore, each time you are posting something, no matter how similar it is, try to add some uniqueness to it. This is easily done on the description. Make a few alterations and use the same link and it will be better than posting the same thing every few hours.
- Avoid click-baiting
In as much as you want people to click on your live link, please do avoid click-baiting. This is a really sneaky way of getting people to click on a link. Take for instance, a Tweet that is written Twitter Follower [use one of your followers names here] you will not imagine what I saw posted about you. People will click on it for the first time, but ignore you all the other times because they are disappointed.
Another example of click-baiting strategies used particularly by gossip blogs will always be scandalous. People love scandals! For instance: Rihanna gets an abortion. Of course you will want to know why she is having an abortion, so you click on the link. Rude shock, the content you find tells of how Rihanna is acting in a movie where she has an abortion.
Conclusion
There are many ways that you can use Twitter to promote your live links, but it is important to always ensure that the link you are tweeting is viably of interest to the reader. It is also important to know the right times to tweet your live links so that people can see them. Being active on Twitter is important because it encourages people to trust you as a reliable source of information. This is especially the case when you are posting high quality content.
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