Increase your blog traffic with Twitter

Note from the blog owner: This article is partially outdated; Twitter Feed was shut down on October 2016. 

One proven way to redirect traffic to your new posts is “to tweet” them.  In other words, if you write a new blog entry, make sure you also create a new tweet for it. This simple procedure will give some traffic on the fly to your new posts.

“Tweeting” your posts has several benefits, but I would like to enunciate two of them:
  • It allows you to have visitors even before the major search engines (ex. Google, Yahoo, Bing) have indexed (and crawled) your newly added post.
  • If your post content is good and sticky, you will gain flowers on Twitter, which means the possibility to increase your traffic in an exponential way, due to the viral nature of this micro-blogging platform.
All this sounds good, but you should agree with me that adding tweets by hand is boring. If you are a lazy blogger like me, you should find a way to create the tweets automatically, after a new post entry has been published.

I am sure there are several ways to do this, but here is my own:
  1. Create a new Twitter account for your Blog. Notice the blue pigeon to the right of this page: it links to my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/yanniel_alvarez. This is the account I use for tweeting my blog posts. Take a look and notice how all my posts have been tweeted.
  2. Create a new account in Twitter Feed. This is a really cool system that allows you to “feed your blog to Twitter”.
  3. Configure Twitter Feed to redirect your blog post entries to Twitter. Just follow the given instructions, which are very straightforward. The most important things you need to remember are authenticating to your Twitter account, providing your Blog’s feed URL and setting the update frequency of your tweets. [1]
The following snapshot shows how I configured the feed for my Blogger Blog (www.yanniel.info). In your case, it might be slightly different depending on the blogging platform you are using.

Twitter Feed Settings

Once this is done, you don’t have to worry about updating your Twitter account; instead, the tweets are created transparently every time you add a new post.

Note:
[1]: The update frequency can be found under Advanced Settings (Twitter Feed). By default the update frequency is 30 minutes.

Avoid your Debit Card Monthly Fee by opening a Tax-Free Savings Account (Canada)

RBC clients have to pay a monthly fee as a compensation for using (or holding) their debit card (client card). The amount varies depending on the plan you have chosen. In my case, I have to pay $4.00CAD each month. This allows me to perform up to 13 transactions. Other clients, with higher privileges, are allowed to execute more transactions and for that a higher fee is applied.

If you want to avoid this Monthly Fee, I suggest you to open a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). For that, go to your near branch of RBC and ask for a banker (account manager). Tell this banker you want to set-up a Tax Free Savings Account. There is no minimum deposit to open this account; in my case I just put 10 dollars, which is a good idea if you don’t want to put much money in this investment.

By holding a TFSA you become an investor of the bank, which is why they refund you the $4.00CAD of your Monthly Fee.

The following picture was taken from my online banking account:

Online banking showing the Monthly Fee and the MultiProduct Rebate

Notice a monthly fee of $4.00CAD applied on November 2nd (see red rectangle).  Notice also on November 2nd, a deposit of $4.00CAD (see blue rectangle). The deposit, labeled MultiProduct Rebate, was made as a compensation for being an RBC investor; in other words, I was rewarded with $4.00CAD for having a Tax-Free Savings Account with RBC.

It’s easy to figure out that the difference between the monthly fee and the MultiProduct Rebate is zero. This means, you will be saving 4 dollars each month…it’s like avoiding your Debit Card Monthly Fee. You will save $48CAD annually.

Holding a Tax-Free Savings Account gives you more advantages, but I will talk about that in further posts. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section, I will be glad to answer them if I can.