Getting Started with Twitter

Thought enough about blogging and looking for a break through in this Internet world. Fishing for new audience or trying to get new people who share you own interest? If you are not sure how to move yourself beyond friends and relatives? Twitter is good micro blogging website! For Twitter it will swift and quick to bring common minded people together. If you are one blogging about Social Media in Twitter, then you find people who are in Social Media will have the high probability of checking  your tweets. Thus start engagement with them. Blogging does not mean just writing 4000+ words to your visitors. It also imply engaging users with few words. This is what Twitter does!

Getting started with Twitter is not just about how to login and post your first tweet. It is not at all any other social media campaign where they teach you again and again what been doing for your whole life. So it different! To get started with Twitter is different experience. It will take your blogging to next level. I mean, micro-blogging to next level.

What to tweet?
First and foremost problem with Twitter users is knowing what to tweet and why to tweet? Basically this problem haunt not just new users even after several months of Twitter use some might have assessment on the strategy questioning the righteousness of Twitter strategy! To make it clear, we not running a blog with Twitter so you just tweet what do you want. It is not necessary to have links to any blog or websites. All you need to keep tweeting on whatever you find interesting and wish to write about. Some well famed authors have took up writing stories on Twitter handle for the followers. But make sure what your followers can expect from you as a Twitter user.

So writing is not a bar! Yet, if you wish to have concentrated, filtered followers of your niche then tweet more on your niche. You gain more followers via tweeting your niche often.

Tools for Twitter:
Feeling you need tools for twitter? Really, you need tools for twitter if you are planning to kick start your Twitter experience. Tools make the job easier. With day by day, with your social media campaign getting bigger and bigger even tools would be inadequate to manage your Twitter handle.

If are a newbie into Twitter then I would personally recommend TweetDeck. These tools is good for beginners and for those who will be posting few reference and blogs in tweets, goo.gl is place to shorten links. Though goo.gl has its own advantage, at this stage is enough to know about using it. Goo.gl is google URL shortening service which will reduce complex URL of website or blog post into few words that are easy to share on social media.

These above mentioned tools are enough to basically kick start your social media experience. The reason I recommended TweetDeck is it is integrated with Twitter and interface is easy to settle with unlike other interface which take time for someone to understand! Moreover, TweetDeck won't charge you a penny so it is worth to mess with that tool.

Best Time to Tweet:
The most important aspect with Twitter is time to tweet. All we love is awful lot of followers! To get followers, you need to tweet at the right, right topic. For these metrics, tweets which are posted at 11.00 PM to 2.00 AM get lions share of interaction. So if you are posting something make sure you post them during those hours as mentioned earlier. But make sure the local times. 11.00 PM to 2.00 AM applies only to your local time. If are worried about international time. You have to do maths with your time zone. Generally, if you wish to post something which must draw attention then post it during 11.00 PM to 2.00 AM of local time. 

But it does not mean you should post only during these timings. It is better to post in those timings. So no hard rules is placed here regarding tweet timings.

Promote Blog and Twitter profile together

If you are reading this blog then I will assume you own or write in blog. If not start your blog today if have any specific idea that may found interesting for the Internet users! Do not hesitate to blog if you got some awesome methods and tricks regarding a niche! So what if you are not getting enough visitors? Though your content may speak for itself, it would like performing in empty opera! So are you running your Opera empty? Not even bystanders watch your performance? Banging your head hard for solving zero visitor issue with your blog? Then you can have Twitter to your rescue! I don't mean Twitter is the only way to get audience to your blog. But it is one of the efficient method to gain audience each day! It would be double win if you are able to leverage your Twitter profile along with your blog! The benefit of leveraging your Twitter profile is different, yet it is good to have your Twitter account linking to your blog! I am come for it later. Subscribe through email for updates.

Twitter For Blog

Basics: Alright, enough of stories! Now show time, if you do not have a Twitter account, it is time to sign up for one! Once you sign up you will find your self alone with no connections with anybody in this world who have an account in Twitter. Please do not worry at this moment, you have logged into the largest ever public social media network. Unlike Facebook, you won't need friends all time to share and like your tweets. All you need is someone who is in sync with your wavelength. If you find it hard getting followers on Twitter, never mind, you will get them eventually. If you are going to follow the steps mentioned below!

Step 1: Twitter has search function, if you want someone who shares interest or niche as same as yours, which will bring out people for the keywords you search. For instance, if you are interested in writing about automobiles, then search for the terms related to your automobiles. It will bring up latest and popular tweets. If you find anything interesting and work sharing, just retweet them without any hesitation. If you are good at retweeting someone's tweet, it would show that you are open for social interaction. For Twitter, interacting with stranger is the key. Even if you don't find someone who do not share your interest, you must interact if he responds to your tweets. The basis of Twitter is interaction. More you interact, more the followers!

Note: Please do not do broadcasting in Twitter. Most common mistake with twitter users is they just tweet and forget it! Following each tweet interaction is far more important! Rule of thumb!

Step 2: Do not market your blog! Well, feeling paradox! If you are reading this blog post then it is for marketing your blog in Twitter! But step 2, do not market your blog in Twitter contradicts the very purpose of this blog post! Right, it is half truth. I have seen most people who wish to gain visitors to to their blog, often make this mistake. They just broadcast the link and wait for the visitors. Well, if that to be your strategy, you failed in Twitter. That's harsh, huh? Remember, Twitter is an awesome platform for micro blogging and it will always be that. So just broadcasting and waiting for your 1st reader from Twitter is awful. To make it straight. Don't market your blog aggressively! But active engagement is possible! Try to create few awesome micro blogs i.e, tweets regarding your niche! Follow 80-20 rule!

80-20 Rule: What is this 80-20 rule? Lets see what it is! Consider you compose 100 tweets per day. Then 80 percent of you tweet must be real tweets without any links to blog i.e, tweets which are just worth reading from Twitter than from a link! I hope you understand the difference. 20% of your tweets can contain links from your blog! Still, don't schedule those tweets like 20 tweets all posted on same time of the day! Provide some decent time gap between each tweets and you are fine!

This 80-20 rule is flexible, if you feel that people love your blog then you are good to go with blog links. But do not involve in spamming! I have seen many people spamming same links for months together. Don't get yourself into the list of those people who spam Twitter!

Step 3: Then, in step 1, you have read about few words regarding interaction. Well, interaction is important factor! You can build relationship with your readers by getting involved in conversation! Healthy Twitter handle will have engaging users. Debates will never stop! Most of us find these problem common. Yes! Embarrassing followers! They would comment worst thing and denounce you. You might feel they are bring you down. But truth is they are betraying themselves! So do not care much about the negative tweets against you and your blog. So keep doing your own stuff. Do not stop until you achieve your result. For those who post negative comments, just welcome them. Welcome them for those comments. It would startle them and make them big fan if you continue the same trend. It happened really in my case. We fought and now, we follow each other! Arguments are best way to make friends! Do not heat up the argument too much. If your opponent has something good than you, accepting it will make him your friend! So Twitter is little bit psychological game. Have fight! Don't forget to have fun in the end. Each fight must earn you new friend! Love your enemies because they teach you a lot than your friends.

With setting right, you will not only find your blog get audience from Twitter but also leverage your Twitter profile to next level! With each tweet your value gets one step higher. So do your personal value.

Never forget to add Twitter follow button in your blog so if someone who gets to your blog will have opportunity to follow your Twitter account.

Google Webmaster Tools: How to use for Blog?

I guess your website is ready and awaits Google indexing! Yet, you failed to fetch link from top notch sites where your competitors get links to their websites. If you wish to start independent SEO for your site, it is a must to have Google Webmaster Tools account. Simple as that, you need Google Account to avail the service. Adding website to search console is optional. If your site is famous blog then you don't need to worry much about indexing or getting traffic through SERP. But in most of our case, the blog start with zero i.e, zero visitors! So as a blogger, it is our duty to make the world know about our new blog. You find yourself most of time marketing your blog than creating blog post. As always you is awful to perform in an empty opera! Get audience, perform your drama. All we do is advertise about your perform on that particular day! So do we do it in Search Console! It is letting Google Search Know there exist a blog.

What you got in Search console!

Well, using Google Webmaster tool must have its own purpose! Know well how to enable right options and analyze search data available from the search console.

• At dashboard, you will be greeted with important stats indicating health of your blog.

  

  Stats Indicate Health of the Website

  As the image shows, the important statistics for any website in the webmaster tool is Crawl Errors, Search Analytics, Sitemaps. Crawl error make sure your blog is healthy and free from any defects! Any error reported during crawl must be rectified in no time. Though, it may stat that particular error will not affect your search engine result ranking, it is not good to have so many errors unattended for longer time. Search Analytics, though it claims to be in beta phase, it is an important measure for website optimization. It shows for which keyword phrase your blog came up in SERP. And the Sitemap, we will come later!
• Messages: Google will send you messages regarding improving your presence on Google search engine results. It would recommend few settings and options that are handy to make it target users from country and analyse audience data. Though, recommendations made are not mandatory, yet it is good to heed advice from Google webmaster for such matters. For every update, Google Webmaster Tool will come up with new message confirming the change or update made to your blog.
• Search Appearance:
  Structured Data: Important section if you miss structured data from schema.org. Schema.org is collaboration project from major search engine indented to create standards for rich snippets in search result.

  

  Structured Data

  Data Highlighter: Well, if you are lazy enough to add microdata from schema.org, then Data Highlighter will be your friend in Google Webmaster Tools. 

  

  Data Highlighter

  You can just highlight text as you do in PDF documents to tell Google that it belongs to a property so that it can product rich snippet in SERP.
  HTML improvements: It would list the improvements needed in your blog template. If Google Webmaster Tools find any possible improvement, it will be reported in this section.
  Sitelinks: 'Sitelinks are automatically generated links that may appear under your site's search results. Learn more. If you don't want a page to appear as a sitelink, you can demote it. Only site owners and users with full permissions can demote sitelinks.' -Google Webmaster Tools

  

  Example of Sitelink

  If Google automatically creates sitelinks then, you select which sitelinks to be demoted i.e, removing them from SERP. But remember, Google must generate sitelinks so if you don't find sitelinks in SERP, don't try pushing hard!
• Search Traffic:
  Search Analytics: Here comes the stats which are most useful for optimizing your website for search engines. It provide data regarding clicks, impressions, Click through rates, position of your web page in search result

  

  Search query

  The very important metric which one must take into account is 'search queries'. It shows up for which keyword phrases web page from your blog showed up in SERP. So it is good check them often to know the keyphrase for which your web blog comes ups. Not only that! You must try optimizing your web blog for the keyword phrases and improve your SERP position.
  
  Links to your site: It will display all inbound links to your web blog! If you are planning link building as your SEO strategy, then Google Search console will produce statistics of web sites that are pointing to the web blog! It is very useful if you are planning for link quality assessment.
  Internal Links: It collects statistics regarding interlinking of web pages in web blog. Give it some time to collect stats, it will provide ample data to meddle with!
  Manual Actions: If Google Webmaster Tools reports any spammy activities in your web blog, it would mention 'action to be taken' by the corresponding web masters.
  International Targeting: It is must option if you are in marketing and looking for sale in specific country or region! Say to which part of the Globe, your blog must be listed in SERP. Not only marketers, but also who are all in PPC ad networks could target their web blog to a country which has high conversion rate!
  Mobile Usability: Whatever your blogging platform maybe, it is good to use responsive web blog template which adapts with viewport of the device. If Google Webmaster Tools finds any errors, it will be listed for rectification by the corresponding web masters.It is good to keep these metrics happy to get high ranking in Google SERP.
• Google Index: When you enter Google Webmaster Tools, your first day worry would be when will Google index my blog! Of course, most of them feel the same. At time, it would take even weeks to index web blogs. But sure, Google will crawl your blog once you have submitted your site with Webmaster Tools.
  
  Index status: Know how many resources are indexed by Google! Once you submit sitemap, Google will crawl your blog periodically. Google may add new contents to the index and remove inappropriate contents from index. So it is continuing process.
  
  Content Keywords: It will list keywords according to the number of appearance in your web blog. And also it would provide LSI form of each keywords and occurrence such LSI.
  Blocked Resources: It will list blocked resources. To know more about blocked resources.
  
  Remove URL: You can manually remove URL from SERP.
• CRAWL: The objective of submitting web blog to Google Webmaster Tools is make Google crawl your web blog and index contents. So this option lists crawl information.

  

  Crawl Errors

  Crawl Errors: It is good to maintain an error free blog. Crawl error will state about robot.txt errors and broken links (404). It is good to fix the problem as soon as possible.
  
  Crawl Stats: It will provide data based on past 90 days. It includes how many times Google crawled your blog and web page loading speed.
  
  Fetch as Google: It is time to test your site! You could choose any of the options to test link from your web blog. You could fetch either as Desktop or mobile! You will know how Google understands your web blog.
  
  Robot.txt tester: If you have not come across robot.txt file in your life, then it is good and safe not to touch this options. Any mistake will make Google ignore your blog for good! For those who are good at creating own robot.txt file then it is the place to test your robot.txt files. Once the test is done successfully, you can update the robot.txt in your web blog! Not only texts, but also videos, images, news everything could be manipulated with your own robot.txt file.
  
  Sitemap: Do you remember? When I started this blog post, I mentioned about sitemap. It is important parameter to measure health of your web blog. So submitting sitemap make Google understand your web blog with ease. It would be like providing a map for a navigator. The Google Bot will crawl your website without missing any content that you wish to be indexed.
  
  URL Parameters: Here you can add parameters to URL of your web blog. But be sure before making any change as Google will miss many pages if found with mistakes. Learn more about URL Parameters
• Security Issues: Well, if your web blog is found with security flaws or got hacked by hackers, it will be reported here.Not just hacking issues, but also you will warned if malware activity is found in the web site.
• Other Resources: Time to explore! Not only webmaster tools, Google will provide you with other infant and beta tools to play with. If you got time, explore them.

  

  Other Resources from Google Webmaster Tools

So far made my best effort to make this simple guide on Google Webmaster Tools for Blogger blog. If you have queries, just leave them in comments. You feedback is always welcomed. Do not forget to share this.

Google Account creation

Through out your Google experience, you have encountered so many places that need Google account. Previously, google account is nothing but your gmail id. If you have gmail then you can get access to ask Google services. But with loyalties around email providers, official email accounts has kept large number of users from Google account's benefits.
As Google has made Google account mandatory for almost all Services, it is now must to have id. No more gmail.com. You can create Google account with your existing email id.

All you have to do is select the check box before clicking sign up button on Google account creation page. You are good to go with Google. You can access gmail, Google+, blogger, drive, Google Search console, play store, maps and all with single id. That too with your existing mail id.

Though you won't receive gmail messages or any messages relating to Google to you existing email id except for Google account information and confirmation.

Google Account Creation

But still you have to use gmail id if you are wish to use gmail service. That's different story! You get all major Google service with your existing email ID if you wish to keep it so.

For user who mind privacy, your one stop privacy settings in one place. Visit myaccounts.google.com to manage your privacy settings.

One Stop place to Manage Google Account Settings

With myaccounts, you can manage every aspect of your Google Account. It would provide easy way to manage your privacy for each service through myaccounts!

Google Webmaster Tools + Blogger

Time to improve Search Engine presence of your Blogger blog. Now, we will do it for Google Search Engine! What's special with Google? Well, it is most popular search engine around the world makes it special! So your presence in Google index is far more important for the business. That too making top 10 of the search result will be priority sooner. But you need not worry about it yet. Google Webmaster Tools is a vital tool each webmaster must know to handle. It was renamed as Search console, yet, still Google Webmaster Tools terms bring up search console in the SERP. No matter what it is name! Functionality remains same. 

Now login to the Search console using any of the Google Account. It is recommended to use Google account used in the Blogger.com. Still, it is your preference use any Google Account as you wish. Once logged in, you will be presented with Search console Dashboard where you could manage websites you add to Google Webmaster Tools.

Adding Website to Google Search Console:

Add a property

1. Login to your Google Webmaster Account. Now from the dashboard, click on 'Add a property' button.
2. A dialogue will open stating to enter the web address of the blog which you wish to add in Webmaster tools.
   
3. After you enter the Blog web address, Webmaster tool dashboard gets updated and list your blog in the dashboard. Now, give some time to Google to find your blog. It would take at least a day or two. And you must be good when you search your sub domain! If not found in top 10 results, it must be found in top 30. (The idea of this post not about improving SERP ranking, those who are interested in SERP must read about SEO). 

   

   Webmaster Tools Dashboard
4. That's it you are good to go with your Google SERP presence. For Google Webmaster Guide, check how to use Google Webmaster Tools

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