Twitter: Rampant self promotion works!

About two weeks ago, I installed the “Twitter Updater” plugin to figure out if pinging Twitter brings traffic. Turns out, it does. Pinging Twitter doesn’t bring a lot yet, primarily because I am totally new to Twitter and the blog about blogging niche. So, it goes without saying I don’t have many Twitter followers. The first week, I got zero Twitter hits, I’m now getting 2-3 hits a day.

I just checked Twitter page and I now have 5 followers — and when you consider that I am entirely incompetent when it comes to Twitter, that’s not too shabby. With luck, more people who like Twitter will enjoy my posts and stop by. (I also need to devote some time to visiting my Twitter followers. After all, if they are following my blog, it’s likely they blog on topics that interest me!)

Can you create link juice at Twitter?

Unfortunately, you can’t. As Andy Beard noted, Twitter Links are nofollow. That holds for the self-promotional ones you create by pinging from your blog, and also editorial links to other blogs that might interest people. So, if you like someone else’s blog, it’s fine to mention them in a Tweet, but link them at your blog too.

Then is it worth the time to ping?

Yes! Traffic is traffic. Traffic from followers is a really good type of traffic. Twitter gives them a way to follow you.

Mind you, if pinging Twitter took any time, it might not be worth the effort. But the fact is, once you install “Twitter Updater” plugin on your Wordpress blog, it pings Twitter automatically when you publish.

I now need to find a plugin that lets me show my tweets here at my blog. I need it to help publicise the fact that I can be followed at Twitter, but the one from Twitter often loaded slowly. Also, since Twitter nofollows my links, I feel that, in fairness, I need to nofollow my links to their site.

I now think of using Twitter the way I use feeds. Some people want track posts on Twitter instead of RSS; so make it easy! (Oh, and by the way, in fairness, I should tell you I got the idea of pinging Twitter by observing Jason Calacanis, who has been pingi