Twitter is a powerful and popular platform to promote your blog, and when done well, it can bring you followers who never would have found you otherwise.
But like anything, Twitter is a numbers game. The more you tweet the more visibility you get. So what are you going to tweet about?
- Blog posts are the best since you are sharing information while promoting yourself.
- Retweeting is a way of curating information with followers and is a crazy great way to get followers.
- Promotional tweets are ok, but must be done in moderation, since the Twittersphere is sensitive to over commercialization.
- Followers love personal observations and witticisms, but those take time and energy to post.
What else is there?
Try tweeting quotes
People love to be inspired by the quotations of famous or infamous people. Quotes can inform, inspire and entertain all in one line, and tweeple eat them up. And, they follow the quote source to get more.
Neil Patel of quicksprout.com studied the types of tweets that grow followings and he asserts,
Users who tweeted quotes had 43% more followers.
So how can you, a blogger and possibly an ebook author, take advantage of Twitter quote mania without having to load each quote manually?
Use a Twitter quote service
I’ve been working with a new company, Nimble Quotes to automatically tweet quotes of my ebooks, as well as other tech-related quotes, and I’ve seen my following increase by 40%!
Nimble Quotes is the father-daughter collaboration of Bryan and Jennifer Kelly.
I first met Bryan in my WordPress Workshop, when he was working on his site, WhiteTopInvester.com. I told him to get started on Twitter.
Since 2012, Bryan has amassed over 39,000 followers after plugging quotes into his Twitter stream.
I caught up with Jen Kelly and she told me how they created Nimble Quotes.
Nimble Quotes is Born
How did you develop Nimble Quotes ?
It began after I introduced Bryan to social media and set up his first social media accounts in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. He started tweeting about his personal finance and investing blog, White Top Investor. As he tweeted about and shared each new blog post, his audience quickly grew. He began to see the possibilities.
That was when Bryan noticed people posting inspirational quotes. He also noticed that quotes got responses from more people. He found quotes inspiring, entertaining and engaging and opened many interesting conversations.
As Bryan blogged about teaching investing, he also began tweeting quotes about investing and learning investing. When he shared a quote, he started each tweet with a comment. That started more conversations and followers loved it. As followers responded, the growing collection of quotes also changed. More and more inspirational quotes from wise or famous authors were added. He saw that those quotes always seemed to get the greatest response.
His comment before each quote became the engaging or conversation hook we now use with Nimble Quotes. Those conversation starters do get more engagement. Bryan also tried using hashtags with quotes to test the responses, with success! Tweets with hashtags did attract more followers and engagement!
Then I asked him to share the quote collection with my business and marketing clients. We began sharing and cycling this timeless or evergreen content and thinking a delivery service for collected quality content could be very useful.
Running a marketing company, I was well aware of the amount of time clients use searching for appropriate, applicable and valuable content. It was a time consuming chore.
We talked about creating a service that offered quotes and other quality content to business users of social media. The idea was to offer a service that removed social media chores while attracting and engaging followers.
What is the value of automated quotes on twitter?
Inspirational quotes seem to reach us emotionally and let us connect over something other than work, product or business information. Inspirational is by far the singular most popular category. Business and Entrepreneur quotes follow. We’re currently at 70+ categories of quotes.
Automated quotes on Twitter allows users to manage and enliven their social media account while investing little time, and to brand or personalize it as they wish. With Nimble, they have full control of the number and time the quotes are sent, and can pause the service whenever.
This tool frees up your time to do more valuable things with your time, like building your business.
What makes Nimble different from other quote services?
There are numerous quote websites offer subscriptions by email or RSS feeds and all distribute a daily quote labeled with their brand. That branding makes the source clear to followers of any subscriber that tweets or shares the quote.
Our service provides a white label, or unbranded clean product. Paid subscribers never get a branded message, unless they put their own brand on it, which they can.
Nimble Quotes is a service that provides users with inspirational quotes in THEIR Twitter feed, as if they tweeted it themselves. Subscribers get ad-free quotes at their desired time, frequency, topic and can add their own hashtags.
The quotes we have in the system are well-researched. We only select positive, non-religious, non-political non-cultural and non-racial secular messages with a general uplifting appeal. We know users are trusting us with their reputation and brand and we take that trust very seriously.
To show our users we really have their back, we have the Content Watch feature. If a quote author runs into some negative controversy in the media, says or does something offensive, we immediately suspend their quotes from the system. Or, users can choose to not have certain people’s quotes show up in their feed.
Many of our users have many followers in another time zone. Our system allows you to choose the time zone you want the quotes to go out, so no more doing the time zone math!
Subscribers can send up to 8 unbranded tweets a day, more than any other service. The tweets appear in user’s accounts as if they tweeted it themselves.
Each Nimble Quote category uses a set of default hashtags to broaden the distribution and reach of users’ tweets. Users of the custom hashtag feature can focus, brand or personalize the tweet as they wish.
What kind of results have your clients seen?
The average account growth we’ve seen is a 93% increase in followers. Other results include users saying they noticed an increase in retweets, more conversations being started, and more mentions of them by their followers.
Our qualitative results include a reduction in feeling anxious about finding something appropriate to tweet or wondering if their content was engaging enough to get a reaction from their followers.
On a practical level, users report feeling thankful Nimble Quotes keeps their account active and alive on days when they are not able to share any content. One called it “Twitter Insurance.” Some have called it “Twitter on training wheels.”
That was one of the most interesting benefits our users have reported. Removing their social media anxiety!
Inspirational quotes are by far the singular most popular category. Business and Entrepreneur quotes follow. We’re currently at 70+ categories of quotes.
How do author quotes work?
Writers who have written a book can use the custom subscription to promote their book by turning their writing into quotes. Each quote then gets matched with an appropriate comment or conversation starter and hashtag. Each book gets its own category as does the author.
That lets authors tweet their content to followers and allows any subscriber to follow a book or author of their choice. Additionally, when relevant, the author’s quotes are included in the other classifications which adds them to the tweet feed of all subscribers that select the category. This can be a helpful tactic to increase awareness of their writing.
As far as we know, no other service offers white label, conversation starters, customized author quotes, music lyric quotes, custom or branded/personalized hashtags or color and image branding or custom links.
Is there a photo or graphics option?
Images have just been released and are in beta trials. As with every other aspect of Nimble Quotes, users have full control over image options. Images gives them the ability to tweet quotes on a color field or a photo. The color choices and photo inventory will continue to be refined and built over time.
Tests show quotes on a color background or a photo dramatically increase the response to a tweet. More retweets, favorites and engagement happens with both color and photo backgrounds. Nimble Quotes gives users the ability to specify any color set that they may want.
Why should people sign up for Nimble Quotes?
At about a $1/wk for the basic service or $1/day for branded or customized tweets, the time saving and quality content cannot be matched.
What do you think about inspirational quotes on Twitter? Do you enjoy them? Do you get inspired?
Sign up for a 30-day free trial of advanced features with Nimble Quotes and receive a 10% discount when you subscribe to any level of service during the free trial using the code: “MariKane.”
Mari, you’ve been a pleasure to work with and we’re thrilled your following has increased 40%.
Too, we’re also thrilled how much engagement you’re getting from your audience. Inspirational quotes certainly connect at an emotional level with people and are a great addition to your blog/website specific tips. Best thing is you don’t have to search the web each day to find them, we’ve done that for you!
The image/coloured background feature is in full swing with the Nimble Quotes beta trial. Currently new users get this feature with their free 30-day trial. It just keeps getting better thanks to the user feedback.
Thanks for being such an enthusiastic support of our product.
Jen Kelly.
Thanks Jen – And you are welcome. When someone has a great product, like yours, the words just write themselves.
Glad to hear the images are happening on Nimble and I’m looking forward to seeing more of them.
Cheers!