Repetition is the Key - Using Twitter as an example

One of the key methods of public speaking that I learned early is the idea of repetition - you have to repeat yourself a lot when speaking because there is a good chance that people either didn't hear you the first time or they weren't paying attention. When speaking, you have to repeat yourself to ensure that the key ideas you want to get across are remembered.

This can apply to Twitter as well. In fact, I am going to use twitter in two ways to describe what I am talking about. First off, lets look at how to use Twitter to promote certain sites or posts of your own and then using Twitter enough times to emphasize how repetition is used to increase web traffic.

First off, lets look at how people use Twitter to promote their sites. If you have ever followed people on Twitter you notice a couple of things. First off, there are those who tweet waaaay too much. I really don't need 40 of your posts on Twitter clogging up my feed. What this has taught me though is that your posts can get lost in the mix on Twitter. Let's say I post something on Twitter early in the morning - if someone isn't on twitter or checking their tweetdeck or other device, they are going to miss that tweet if they are following several people or just a couple of people using Twitter who post 200 tweets a day. Instead of having it get lost there are a couple of things you can do. If you post something on Twitter that people like they will RT it so others can read about it. However, if you know how Twitter works, you know that when someone RT's it, that doesn't mean your followers on Twitter will see it. What you can do is go in and post onto Twitter three or four times that day. You don't want to post the same exact thing though. You want to change things up. Phrase it differently or ask a different compelling question that might trigger some thought. Repetition - that way people will be able to see your post throughout the day and will hopefully click on your links.

The second way to look at repetition and Twitter is SEO and repetition. In doing some looking around the web and getting involved in things like Alltop and Speaking Pro Central, I was interested to see some blogs getting a pretty high ranking for a certain word like Twitter. When checking out their blog, I noticed that they used the word Twitter a lot! This helped with their search engine optimization because they used that word (in this case Twitter) more in their post, so it increased their SEO. If you have noticed, I am using this post as a bit of an experiement. I usually don't use a single word that much, but thought it would be an interesting experiement to see if using the word Twitter that often really would help - my guess is that it will be okay.

Remember some of those web ideas when you are speaking. Most people are passive listeners and will not catch everything that you throw at them. Most of the time you will need to emphasize things a few times for them to latch onto it.

Travis

Comments

[Tony Karrer]

While having Twitter a lot in your post helps a little, SEO really is more a function of your title/URL and the number of links you get (and what people say in those links).

You may get a few tweets by doing this kind of post that may get you a brief bit of traffic. But for sustained search traffic you would be better served to have a more specific Title/URL and content that attracts links.

[Travis Dahle]

I agree with you Tony, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek about how some people have used a single word in their post a lot just to try to increase their SEO.

I agree that content that attracts links is the key - thanks for the comments.