[H]ow important is Twitter to you? For me and for the uninitiated, it’s just noise in 140 characters or less. For those who learn to use it, it’s a great way to kill a server with a traffic spike, and a concise way to be found by the right people.

My wife, who is new to both the Twitterverse and the blogosphere (she used to have a blog but I took it over and sadly she stopped posting, but she got me into blogging to begin with back on Vox.com), managed to make me a bluebird believer.

I Have The Social Ineptitude of Toe Fungus

Let me be real for a second: I’m not a Twitter “power user.” I’m not Chris Brogan (whom I read voraciously lately, especially on Google+ and his blog) – I don’t un-follow 131,000+ on Twitter.

I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I digress.

But, I’ve recently started investing more time in the media and have found some surprisingly easy ways to go about it. I’ll get more into all of that later, but as an affiliate marketer – social media is a slippery fish.

It’s not like firing up a link blaster tool and hitting “Tweet,” though there are tools for that. To use it properly, and you should after you read what my wife did, takes a bit more care than most marketers want to invest.

Social media isn’t easy and it wasn’t built for marketers, but as a marketer I can tell you,

Thar’s gold ‘n them thar hills!

I’m a student more than anything at this point in social media, I have the Klout score of a silk worm (on a good day), and learn from the likes ofUltimate Blog Post Promotion Guide – that really opened my eyes to what was possible from social media.

Until reading that book, honestly it all seemed like a waste of time. Now I’m reading a book called The Tao of Twitter by Mark Schaefer to learn just a bit more about Twitter in particular.

BTW, those two books are linked with my affiliate links, so I will get da monies.

You’re probably wondering:

Why do I care, again? I’m here to make money, not waste my life 140 characters at a time…

Well, for one thing…

Social Media is Google-Proof Traffic

 

With people losing websites and getting de-indexed, hedging your bet by diversifying your traffic sources is just smart business.

Oh, you get links, too.

But let me be perfectly honest with you. When it comes to Twitter or any social media,

I

have

lots

to

learn.

Hopefully you get the picture here that I’m a student still, what I’m about to share is news to me and exciting because it’s fresh in my mind and it impacted my wife’s new website in a pretty noticeable way.

Twitterportunity*

Because I consider myself a social marketing student, I’m always adding to my repertoire of tools and knowledge by reading my betters like the folks I mentioned above.

Don’t get me wrong, I know how to get websites ranking. I can get traffic from organic search, it’s my favorite form of traffic on most days. But what my wife did with her site is unbelievable to me.

She crashed our server with just one Tweet.

She got 219 Facebook ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares,’ which brought in more traffic. She got 3 Google +1′s, 14 Tweets and 5 RT’s on Tweetmeme, with 27 comments.

OK, she’s not Zenduck quite yet, she’s not breaking records compared to other blogs you may read like ViperChill…but that’s precisely my point.

Nevertheless, she exceeded our server’s bandwidth allowance (read: she shut us down for a couple hours!), and she’s been at this less than a month.

What was the madness to her method?

Well, first off her site isn’t even monetized yet. She’s not like me in that regard, I already know where the money’s coming from before I bother. Her website’s about a bunch of ‘niches’ of sorts, she’s still hammering that out.

(We are totally different people.)

She doesn’t think like an IMer as much as she is simply “being a human being.” You know…not using Twitter like a spam artist? Yeah, something like that.

Her blog has a lot of heart, she’s vulnerable and shares the struggles of being a mom to 7 kids and carrying the world on her shoulders. All of that’s on her transparent blog, and she’s doing one thing well:

Connecting with people.

She’s a marketer without knowing it – marketing is always about people. But what she did on this otherwise quiet, new blog of hers is pure genius in its simplicity.

So far, thanks to her minimal efforts, she’s seen an increase of 9000% according to Google Webmaster tools…

She crashed our server…

She has guest post opportunities now…

She grabbed the attention over a cyber-celebrity in the Paleo diet niche…

All of this hoopla – over one well-placed Tweet. It was strategic on her part, but not scammy. She just uses these channels like a real person – not a marketer.

Interestingly, it’s the best form of marketing – the “un-marketing” method. It’s called “being real.”

(Can I coin that phrase? No? It’s taken? Alright…Figures.)

I can’t improve on her method other than claim to be the one who told her to engage her community. Funny how well it worked out – now I think she’s on fire. :D

Her Winning Tweet and Blog Post

OK, since she’s not really in it for the money, I don’t mind sharing her URL though it’s not usually something I do with my own niche sites.

The title is, Is the Whole 30 Really Life-Changing? If you’re not familiar with the Paleo diet revolution, the Whole 30 is simply the 30-day kickoff to the diet.

The diet, in brief, is focused on eating like cavemen would have: no refined sugars, nothing out of a box really, no processed foods more or less, no grains or gluten…and no calorie-counting, either.

Essentially, you eat natural foods, including bacon, eggs, steak and pretty much everything that grows (with few exceptions).

The first 30 days you pretty much have sugar withdrawals, but it wasn’t bad actually, I felt more healthy than I have in years.

For the record, it’s my favorite way to eat. (3 slices of bacon and two eggs in my favorite morning salad…fried onion rings…but still getting fit? Yeah, it rocks.)

Enough about our eating habits, the winning Tweet can be seen below, my wife is @TheWholeMom and it begins at the bottom, in chronological order, working up.

The big response (which she was hoping for) came from a leader in the Paleo diet world, @Whole9life:

Twitter Traffic

The results?

Twitter Traffic Spike

Not to mention, I’d shared the story on my Google+ and inadvertently scored my wife 2 guest posting gigs, which she was pumped about (of course it’s a good thing).

So 200+ Facebook likes, about 20 shares at least on Twitter (directly sharing her URL), nearly 30 comments (would have been more like 70 comments if they weren’t spam-trapped by Spam-Free WordPress), over 3,000 visitors and one melted server.

Oh, and the same people shared this info on their Facebook fan page, which has 7,593 fans (they have 3,620 followers on Twitter, but we’re all huge fans)…all that means for my wife:

Less work. Bigger results.

Still think Twitter’s 140 characters is a joke?

No spun articles. No outsourced content. No proxies and subscriptions, or VPS servers needed – just intelligent marketing and one Tweet to one helluva post.

Was My Wife Just Lucky?

My wife’s a smart cookie, a born natch for marketing though she’s really just a great people person (did I just repeat myself?). She’s intelligent to say the least, and yes: she knew what she was doing.

This is how she described her plan:

Well, first I wrote the post. I wanted to get some traffic to my blog and so I sent a Tweet that said, “How a mom of 7 answers ‘Is the Whole 30 really life-changing?’”

(She hash-tagged the Tweet with proper hashtags, which operate much like WordPress post tags, too.)

I made sure I got the attention of @Whole9Life because it was their movement, they invented the “Whole 30″ – and I knew I wasn’t their typical follower with seven kids. So I made sure I included that.

I wanted to include them in the Tweet without saying, “Can you read my post? @Whole9Life” or something lame. So I simply thanked them. It’s a small niche, it’s easy to find who the leaders are.

She’s Hot. She’s Smart. She’s a Marketing Maven. She’s Mine.

Just to run it by you again (with a few additional notes):

    • Don’t think that 140 characters isn’t enough – it’s plenty.

 

    • Find market leaders or those close to market leaders in your niche to include in Tweets.

 

    • Tweet at a time this other person will catch the Tweet – my wife is in the same timezone as @Whole9Life, so it was pretty easy.

 

    • Use smart hash-tags so others might find you who are following or searching for them.

 

    • Be interesting. My wife wrote an interesting, moving post, and agonized over the content. This wasn’t a $2-$5 outsourced article on M-Turks or Elance, it was from the heart, very real and visceral. Then she included the “hook” – she has 7 kids and their diet plan changed our lives, really.

 

    • Don’t be desperate. This is “Inbound Marketing” principle 101, or “Attraction Marketing,” whatever you want to label it – if you got the stuff, flaunt it. Begging for a re-tweet vs. deserving one is not the same thing.

 

    • Don’t just be self-serving – here my wife was writing a post that effectively marketed for another person’s blog that changed our family’s health for the better: it’s free advertising for THEM. But being generous pays off, so don’t be afraid of doing it.

 

    • Social media is for sharing interesting bits, not just a link to an affiliate offer…but the resulting traffic and the opportunities won can easily segue into financial opportunities down the road.

 

My wife’s blog isn’t set up for profit, it’s not set up using my SEO system, it’s really her blog to air out her ideas and hopefully will translate into a financial opportunity at some point.

She’s blogging for the joy of it, because she needs to get her ideas out – but don’t let those facts persuade you that this isn’t a genius way to get traffic to a for-profit website. It is.

And my wife showed me how.

So – what are you doing on social media? Are you leveraging Facebook, Twitter or Google+ yet? If not, why not?

*Twitter + Opportunity

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!