S.W. Lothian – Author

Blogging is all about sharing your passion.

It’s a way to communicate with people from all over the world. Nothing is better for a blogger than connecting with visitors and engaging with them through comments, or reciprocal visits, or following their blogs. But not all visitors leave comments and it’s a lost opportunity to engage and meet new people.

Many blogs have ‘like’ buttons. It’s a quick way for a visitor to let you know they dropped by and that your post was interesting and likeable. That said, I know there are also many blogs without the ‘like’ function. There are plenty of times that I visit a blog and don’t really have a comment to offer, but I use the ‘like’ as a show of support to let the blogger know that I visited. 

It’s almost an unwritten rule that we all have share buttons on our posts. We hope that visitors share our post to bring in new readers via Twitter, Facebook etc. But this is where I see there’s a bit of a gap in many blogs I visit. I’d say that in 50% of the cases when I share a post on Twitter the tweet has no reference to the blogger’s twitter account. I’m not sure how they would know who has tweeted their posts. It’s a lost opportunity to connect and thank visitors for sharing.

There is a way (on WordPress, and I assume other platforms as well) to add your Twitter name into your settings so that it shows in any tweets that your visitors share. This gives you a heads up when ever your posts are shared via Twitter.

A simple Twitter search on your Twitter name will show you a list of all tweets that contain your name. It’s a perfect list to enable you to see who has tweeted your post, and drop by to thank them or see what they are sharing. You may find some new friends and favorites.

For WordPress blogs, it’s just a simple update to your settings. In Admin, select Settings/Sharing, then scroll down to the field relating to your Twitter name. Just add your Twitter name into the field, save the change, and then your Twitter name will be included in all tweets shared from all your posts.

It’s so simple, and I assume that other blogging platforms would have a similar setting. Now, instead of visitor tweets just showing ‘via @wordpressdotcom’ they will always show ‘via @swlothian‘ (with your Twitter name).

I hope this tip helps you to better connect with your visitors. Best of luck.