Twitter has definitely revolutionized the way on how people communicate with each other. Previously, most of us are only connected to a certain bunch of friends or contacts through chat application like MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL, ICQ or Google Talk. The downside to these applications is that you need to be in front of your computer and online to communicate. Moreover, most of the communications are in the one-to-one mode. However, with Twitter, all your updates can be viewed and seen by the whole world. Not only you can send updates through the web, you can even send and receive updates on your mobile phones. With so many possibilities, Twitter is definitely a powerful tool that you can leverage to drive traffics to your blog. Here are my 5 simple steps to drive traffics to your blog from Twitter.

Before I go any further, maybe some of you may ask “what is a twitter”?.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates”. Updates are only in text-based posts with limited characters. You are only allowed to send up to 140 characters long per post via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific.

1. Connect to more friends

To reap the benefits from Twitter, you got to build up your contacts. Connect to more friends. Ask your blog readers to be connect to you and add you as their contacts in twitter. (Hint : my twitter id is kuanhoong, you can add me as your friend too ). With more friends, every time when you twit, more people will notice your latest updates.

2. Promote twitter in your blog

Display twitter in your blog is the best way to promote your twitter. With twitter customized badge or widget, you are able to let visitors to your blog or profile page on the web know what you’re up to at the moment. You can choose from three different types of twitter badge. There are the flash-type badge and basic html/javascript badge.

3. Promote your blog in twitter

Twitter is also another way to promote your blog. It is simple. All you need is to provide a good description in the About Me page, and include your blog url. New twitter members that are interested will check out about you from the About Me page.

4. Twit whenever you have a new post

Once you have established a reasonable number of contacts, you can twit whenever you have new blog post. New blog post twit can be used as a new post alert to your contacts, or as an alert to the rest of the twitter community members. You can be creative with your new blog post twit. e.g.,

Checkout my new blog post on “5 simple steps to drive traffics to your blog from Twitter” http://urltea.com/y8i

Or if you are a wordpress user, you can try Twitter Updater plugin (thanks for the tip, kamigoroshi)

5. Spread the love

Spread your twitter to other applications. For example, you can add twitter updates as part of your updates broadcast in MyBlogLog. If you have a Twitter account, just go to your MyBlogLog profile page, click the link under your screen name and you can automatically display your latest Twitter post on your MyBlogLog profile page. Other possibilities are to add twitter updates to your FaceBook, Jaiku, and many more.

As my last note, I would like to remind you that twitter is another social networking application. Use it wisely to stay connected with your friends and family. Don’t spam your twitter with too many self promotions!.

Yay!. Hopefully I have covered almost everything about Twitter. If you have any comments or ideas, please share them with me. Remember to add me as your twitter contact (My twitter id is kuanhoong).