Building an Audience: Trailblazing New Twitter Networks (Part 1)
In this series, we’ll take a look at how you can increase traffic to your website and improve engagement with readers. In particular, Dash is a great way to build an audience for your content. Real time data and simple, information rich graphics make it easy to identify opportunities and take action. Check back every week for more in-depth tips on building an audience:
Building an audience is all about expanding on existing readers by identifying untapped demographics and markets that are receptive to your content. And so, you need to gain access to new niche markets, or groups of specialized content consumers. For example, if you publish an article about Obama cooking French toast and bacon for brunch at the White House, your content might appeal to readers who follow politics and readers who are interested in food. But what if the National Pork Producers Council retweets the article? Although it’s easy to spread your content far and wide using Twitter, it can be difficult to ascertain interest from fans outside your own networks. It’s even harder to locate Twitter users who exert influence in niche markets, but otherwise do not drive high volume traffic to your site. While you can anticipate potential audiences and take preemptive action, sometimes an audience is just too far below your radar. The information gatekeepers for those audiences—like the National Pork Producers Council—may be watching the web for suitable content though, in which case they could potentially drive thousands of page views.
The fastest and simplest way to monitor mid-level tweeting—tweets coming from neither trendsetters nor individual fans—is analytics software. Leveraging analytics instead of conventional social media monitoring can help you eliminate noise—the random, chaotic activity on Twitter that keeps you from seeing big influencers at work. In Dash, you can see who’s talking about your content. With detailed referrer info, it’s easy to see the Twitter users linking to your site. Social media shares are reported for each article, and Twitter activity can be expanded to reveal each tweet pushing traffic to your site. When you see a traffic spike from retweets, thank your new referrers and look to develop more sustained, deeper connections. You might be on the edge of new reader communities without even knowing it. By focusing on the interests, needs, and preferences of your new partners, you can direct them towards related content. As our Director of Sales & Marketing, John Levitt, likes to say, “reward them for being an advocate of your content.” Generating a list of potential audiences and then deploying a shotgun strategy—tweeting at many niche markets—can help you trailblaze paths to those communities.
Yesterday, Twitter announced that content partners like The Wall Street Journal will have expanded interactivity: when you expand a tweet from certain publishers, the tweet will reveal a preview, headline, author, and associated Twitter accounts. This “rich content” will improve opportunities for engaging readers. Instead of blindly clicking on links, readers will be able to screen content ahead of time. Now that the relevancy and related topic areas of your content will be immediately visible, targeting your content to niche markets will be more efficient.
