It was extremely interesting and I must say that I have learned a lot. In this article I want to share the things I have learned from twittering actively for 31 days.

Things to Do

At the beginning of the experiment I jotted down what I wanted to do to get more traffic from Twitter and to also get to know more people. So here is what I did:

• follow more people
• retweet other people’s tweets
• ask question and engage other people
• post quotes

So these were the things I planned on doing. One last thing I did was to comment on articles that were retweeted on Twitter.

Twitter stats before the experiment:
Following: around 400
Followers: around 250

From the first day on not only did I start to become more active in Twitter but also on other websites such as Blog Engage or MMO. It was awesome because I did end up reading new articles from blogs I have never visited but it consumed a lot of time.

Nine days after starting my Twitter challenge I had to change my Twitter mail settings because my email inbox was getting flooded with follower mails and direct messages.

Unfollowing Tweeps

What is interesting is that I have gained around 50 followers within one single day. The reason is probably because I started to follow more people these days. But the reason for this many followers is that I hadn’t unfollowed people up to that point.

On the next day I started unfollowing people and almost didn’t get any new followers. Few days later I unfollowed more people and the number of my followers fell again rapidly.

So once you start to unfollow some people that aren’t tweeting interesting things or that are simply spamming you tend to get a lot less followers. That in turn might mean that most people on Twitter are using automated software to follow new people. These new people are the ones who simply don’t unfollow other people.

This kept me from unfollowing too many people. The day after that experience I decided to simply follow the people that are tweeting interesting stuff and to unfollow lots of people once I have finished the experiment.

Twitter Analytics Stats

To be honest I haven’t gotten that much traffic through Twitter while doing the experiment. My theory is simple. The more active you are in any community (or social media site) the more traffic you are going to get from it.

Even though I was active on Twitter I didn’t spend too much time on it. I think that if I had spent more time on it then I would have gotten a lot more traffic.

Anyway below are the stats from the Twitter referral traffic. As you can see there is an increase in traffic but it’s not that high. This can also be of course because some analytics software has trouble measuring traffic from Twitter.

The green line is the traffic from the month before and the blue line is indicating the time frame of my experiment.

As you can see below the traffic increased at 150% according to Google Analytics though the number of visits are still quite low. The interesting thing is that you can see that everything that measures reader interest has increased too.

All stats increasing

The average time on site has increased by 2689% along with the pages/visit. And especially the bounce rate was reduced by 60%. That means that the visitors I gained through Twitter were a lot more interested in my content. I also believe that the people who visited were also more likely to know me because of the 23% decrease in new visits.
Twitter stats at the end of the experiment:
Following: around 620
Followers: 400

The number below show that I have gotten around 5 followers each day which I believe is not too bad. Of course you can take this experiment to a new extreme and get even more followers by simply mass-following people. But I wanted to keep this experiment as natural as possible.

What do you think? Was this helpful to you?

That’s why I want to show you what websites I use on a daily basis.

Creating Better Content

We know that the content of websites is the key to being successful on the Internet. If you don’t offer good content then people will not stay on your blog very long. The websites mentioned below will help you to create better content.

Images

Finding images for blog posts is an important part of blogging. I have two major web sites I use for finding images. The first one is Sxc.hu which offers free images for everyone who signs up there. It’s a great resource and offer lots of good pictures. Be sure to check it out.
The second resource for me is Flickr as it offer some great pictures which you can freely (depending on the license) use on your website. I always use pictures with the Creative Commons Attribution license since all you need to do is to credit the author.

Quotes

If you include quotes in an article then this can make your article so much better. Of course it depends on how you use it but especially for blogs adding a quote to the end of the post can really engage your blog readers. Whenever I am looking for quotes to put in an article I visit Inspirational Quotes. It’s a great website with tons and tons of quotes.

Dictionary

Depending on which country you live in you will need a dictionary. I am German so sometimes I just have to look up some words which I know in German but which I can’t really translate. That’s when a dictionary comes in handy.

Search Engine Optimization

Every blog owners wants to rank well for certain keywords. Search engine optimization will help you just do that. Down below I have listed all the resources I use to rank better on search engines.

Keywords

Whenever I am doing keyword research for any reason I take a look at Google’s Keyword External Tool. It’s the tool I use most often. It’s a great tool for doing any major keyword research. This is simply a must for every Internet marketer.
At the moment I am using Google Adwords on some of my sites to drive traffic to them. Most of the time I end up using the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator. The tool basically shows you how much traffic you are going to get from Google Adwords based on your keywords and on how much you are willing to spend on a daily basis. If you are using Adwords then be sure to check it out.

Article Submission Sites

Article submission sites are a great way to get backlinks and traffic to your website and EzineArticles is my favorite one. There are of course lots of other submission sites but not even one comes close to the quality of EzineArticles.

Alexa

Most of the people know Alexa since it ranks every webpage based on the amount of traffic it gets. But you can also use Alexa to do keyword research and analyze other websites. The most useful tool of Alexa is the SEM tool which you only get access to if you have the Alexa toolbar installed. What this tool gives you is all the keywords that are related to a topic you chose. The keywords are for PPC campaigns and will give you a hint of what low cost keywords there are related to your topic.

Social Life

The Internet is full of social networks nowadays. I don’t necessarily mean sites like Facebook or Digg but also communities as you can often find in forums.

Forum

I have been active on a forum for some time. Bloggeries is the forum I use because it has a big blogging community. Forums are a great way to get some exposure and if done right you can drive highly interested people to your blog.

Twitter

Everyone knows Twitter by now. Twitter is a great place to get ideas or to catch up on the latest news or to simply check on your buddies. Depending on how you use it it also has the potential of driving tons and tons of people to your blog.

Making Money

There are lots of people trying to make money through the Internet. And there are lots of people who have managed to generate a decent income through it. No matter whether you are making money or not there are a few websites that are essential.

PayPal

There are lots of people using PayPal these days. If you are blogging and trying to make money then you need to sign up for a PayPal account. Most of the websites will only send you your money via PayPal that’s why having an account is indeed essential.

Affiliate Networks

There are tons of affiliate networks on the Internet. The one I like best is Clickbank because it offers tons of products and also high payouts for affiliates. If you haven’t heard about it then be sure to check it out.

What do you think? Was this list of websites useful to you? What kind of websites do you use?