This post originally appeared on the Udemy blog.
Managing your Twitter account can be a full-time job. Apps are a great way to use Twitter more efficiently, but, with so many options, choosing the right tool is difficult. Below, I’ve handpicked seven of my favorite under-the-radar tools to take your Tweeting to the next level.
Follower Wonk
What it does: Finds targeted users, sorted by influence.
If you’ve ever used Twitter Search to find accounts, you know how woefully inadequate it is. Follower Wonk finds targeted users by searching Twitter bios for your keywords, then sorting the results by influence or number of followers.
Use Follower Wonk to find accounts to follow and influencers to meet.
For example, Udemy published a great infographic on social media marketing for startups and wanted to share it with that community. By searching Follower Wonk for “social media marketing”, you’ll find over 10,000 results. The top 50 users each have over 40,000 followers.
Congratulations, you just found two million potential readers with one search.
See the rest…
In early August, I ran my first Twitter contest, which increased my company’s Twitter followers by 66%.
The following is a detailed breakdown of how we ran a successful contest from selecting prizes to maximizing new followers and tweets. After reading this case study, you’ll be fully equipped to run your own contest.
[Read more…]
My startup, Tortuga Backpacks, had its first real press when we were featured in the LA edition of Thrillist, a free daily email of local recommendations targeted to guys in their 20s and 30s.
Thrillist’s Wednesday emails (called Playbooks) feature short blurbs on 4-5 local bars, restaurants, stores, or businesses.
We were featured in the July 27th Los Angeles email in the third slot (below two features and an ad). Click the screenshot of the email below to enlarge it.
While Thrillist’s target demographic is similar to ours, we weren’t sure how many sales our feature would generate. Their emails are general-interest, not specific to our niche (travel). Our backpack is also more expensive than many items featured on Thrillist, and we wouldn’t necessarily be reaching consumers at the ideal moment, while they’re planning an international trip.
We were hopeful but uncertain.
Find out how the Thrillist traffic performed…
Amen, Dos Equis guy. I learned this lesson the hard way by posting what I thought was an interesting article but others called “lazy blog spam.”
Harsh.
Here’s what happened:
Jeremy and I co-wrote a guest post for the Where I’ve Been blog about the best cheap eats in San Francisco and Los Angeles. We’ve been doing some guest posting as a means of link building and finding new readers for the Tortuga Backpacks’ Blog.
The post featured four restaurants in each city and clocked in at 1,300 words, far from flimsy spam.
When we guest post, we always make sure to promote the post heavily.
Promoting the post and responding to comments are important follow up tasks for any guest blogger. Let the blog owner know you’re not just in it for the links. You’ll be repaid with future invitations and more guest posting opportunities.
As part of the promotion of this post, I submitted it to the SF and LA subreddits (categories) thinking that it might lead to some great crowdsourced restaurant suggestions from and for redditors.
Previously, I haven’t posted much to reddit but have read a lot of the travel threads. On a few occasions, I’ve responded to users asking backpack-related questions.
When suggesting a Tortuga backpack to anyone, I’ve always indicated in my post that it’s shameless self-promotion. Reddit can appreciate self-deprecating humor, right?
The response to the post in the city-specific reddits was surprising.
[Read more…]
For last month’s launch of Tortuga Backpacks, I tried as many tools as possible to promote and create awareness of the product. This effort included writing my first press release then distributing it through free distribution services and PR Web, a paid service.
Using a ProBlogger guest post and a helpful PR Web rep as my guides, I dove headfirst into the press world.
PR Web’s basic, text-only release typically runs $80, but the account rep pointed me to a $50 off PR Web coupon, which sealed my decision to test the service.
Read the results…
