Regardless of your motivation for being here, you want people to read your work.  If you’re writing for fun, you want people to read your work.  If you’re writing for money, you need people to read your work.  And if you’re writing to get people to read your work, well…

Tweet

It turns out that Triond was on to something by offering up auto-tweets to Twitter.com.  There’s only one problem, the majority of users are doing it wrong.

Twitter is a community.  If you just sign up to have your auto-tweets go somewhere, nothing’s really happening.  You simply wasted thirty seconds of precious time you probably should have used starting a new article.  But don’t worry, you can get back on track.

Tweeps

Without a following, those tweet’s aren’t going anywhere.  You need to get people to follow you to have an impact.  There’s a few ways to do this:

• Follow a lot of people.  This method will get you some followers.  Some.  It won’t be a lot.  And those that you do get probably won’t care what you’re talking about.
• Follow specific people.  Twitter has a handy search function that allows you to find people discussing specific topics.  This let’s you find Triond users, writers in general, or any sort of people who may be interested in your niche. 
• Engage.  This is the most effective way to grow a following on Twitter.  Be interesting.  Have discussions.  Whenever someone responds to you (@yourname) your Twitter profile link is spread to all of their followers.  If the response you’ve generated is intriguing, then their followers will want to follow you too.  

Not everyone agrees on what’s most important on Twitter, number of followers or the quality of them.  But if you’re using it to promote your work, you’re going to want people who will click those links.  Who better to do that than people who will have their own to share with you?

Twspam

Don’t do it.  Spam is never okay.  Not even when prefixed with extra letters.  If you’re clearly only using Twitter to promote your work, then people won’t like you.  If people don’t like you, they won’t follow you.  It’s important to keep a ratio of conversation vs. promotion that you yourself would be willing to follow.  In fact, when I first started using the service, I waited several days before promoting my first link. 

This may seem like a waste of time, but would you rather have 15 annoyed followers, or 300 interested ones?

Twitter Allows You To Build Your Own Community

No two tweet-streams are identical.  The people you follow can provide inspiration.  The people that follow you can provide encouragement.  If you use the service to it’s full potential, you will notice a dramatic flow of page-views every single time you toss up a link. 

You may even want to consider disabling Triond’s auto-tweet feature.  If you control your links personally, you will always be able to control the frequency.  Your followers will appreciate the personal touch.

And if you thought getting a lot of comments on an article was nice, wait until you see other people spreading your link across the Twitterverse for you.

Just make sure you don’t forget the basics.