Tweet First, Blog Later

The reason I say so is because they should eliminate the mindset that “you can get a Gazillion traffic off Twitter“. Sure, you can get traffic from Twitter but it requires you to engage with your followers first before you spam the hell out of them with links to your blog or website. I had bloggers sending me links of their blog post to read, then I’ll check to see if I had communication with them in the past and how they engaged with their followers. If they engage with people, I’ll read it and RT it if I like it or find it interesting.

So I came up with 8 reasons to join Twitter before blogging

1. Helps Eliminate That Marketing Mindset

I did mention above that everyone should eliminate the mindset that you can get tons of traffic to your blog or website via Twitter quickly. Sure you can, but it requires you to actually give more than you take. I’ve seen people who post nothing but tweets of their blog post or what they are selling online.

2. Finding your voice

Twitter helps you find the topics or subjects that you would like to talk about in your blog. I’ve met some great people on Twitter whom only just started blogging recently, they started Twitter first before blogging and their blogs are doing very well now. One of my friends, @SuuperG, is a Twitter user as well as a blogger. She had her Twitter account set up last august and recently she started blogging as well. @SuuperG has a passion for traveling and she has guest posts in travel blogs as well as her own.

3. Less Time To Set Up

With Twitter, you can set up an account and start building your network way faster than setting up a blog, especially if you don’t have any basics with blogs. It will take you a while before you can get used to it. So while learning about blogging why don’t you start networking first. You can even meet up with people who can help you with your blog.

4. Build a Brand First

Everyone have a “brand” on Twitter, even the spammers. With a Twitter account, you can easily build a brand even before you start blogging. @omgfacts is one of them. He posts factual tweets that make you go OMG. After building his brand on Twitter, he went on building his blog at omg-facts.com

5. Network with people with Similar Interest

It is easy to find people with similar interests as you. You can easily find them via Twellow (the yellow book for twitter) to look for Twitter users according to categories. You can also use Twitter search. Since they have similar interests with you, they can be your future blog readers. Of course you need to build a relationship with them first.

6. Knowledge

Meeting up or connecting with new people with similar interests helps you to get more knowledge on your niche. You get to visit their blog, look at how it is written, look at their blog designs and get a rough idea on how your blog should look like. This helps to speed up the process of setting up your blog.

7. Get help from experienced bloggers

There are a lot of experienced bloggers out there. I had help from a few experienced blogger like @gloson and @adamsconsulting. They helped me whenever I ask them any questions on blogging. I am grateful to have friends like them.

8. Ask Opinion To Improve

When you build a healthy network on Twitter you can ask them for their opinion about your blog and how you can improve it. I asked @SuuperG, @Vincent_Ang and a few more friends when I first started blogging in January. They were my first few readers. They gave their opinion on how I can improve my blog. Recently @glitterglitzer gave her opinion on how I can improve my writing as well.

So there you go, 8 reasons why you should be on Twitter before you blog. What do you think?

photo credit: by stevegarfield