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It’s not a big secret that Twitter is a great platform to grow any kind of business. In fact, 34% of marketers say they use Twitter to successfully generate leads, according to Jeff Bullas.

Awesome, right?

That’s why I decided to create this comprehensive guide.

I’m going to show you exactly how to leverage Twitter in order to grow your business very quickly.

In each chapter, you’ll learn actionable hacks to shortcut your path to success.

Are you ready to grow?

1. The Growth Hacker’s Eye

Before we get into the practical stuff, I want to introduce you to one of the most important concepts of growth hacking — I call it: “The Growth Hacker’s Eye”.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when running a business is to focus on the wrong activities — and I mean, activities that don’t give you anything in return.

When it comes to business, everything you do throughout your day needs to be entirely focused on growth. If a specific activity is not gaining you more money, then you’re wasting time.

That’s why you need to develop a “growth hacker’s eye”, so you can easily identify what your income-producing activities are, and what activities are just a waste of time. This way, you can focus your attention on things that give you the most results.

Remember, as a business, your most valuable asset is your time. The more time you save, the faster you can grow.

Credit: Quotesgram

Once you develop this “eye”, it will be really easy for you to find new ways to shortcut your path and get the results you want.

“How do I develop the growth hacker’s eye?” You ask.

Two tips:

First, start by asking yourself questions like, “How will this activity grow my business?” or “Is this the fastest way to get the results I’m looking for?” By answering these types of questions, you’ll be able to quickly figure out whether an activity is worth your time.

Second, you need to develop critical thinking skills, so you can solve problems and/or any kind of situation really fast, or better yet, solve them as efficiently as is humanly possible.

Credit: Boundless

If you’re patient and constantly follow the two tips above, eventually you’ll become really good at finding income-producing activities and shortcuts to success.

Further reading:

• How can I become a growth hacker?
• The Profile of a Growth Hacker
• Becoming a Growth Hacker: What You Need to Know
• 9 qualities of world-class growth hacking teams

2. Hack Twitter’s Advanced Search to Grow

One of the best things about Twitter is you can use it to grow your other social networks. And no, I’m not talking about cross-promoting your profiles. Although that’s an attractive option, there are more effective ways to do it.

With Twitter’s Advanced Search feature there are infinite combinations you can make to find people who:

1. Are interested in your main topic and
2. Are very active on your other social networks

Once you find these people, all you need to do is start the conversation and start growing your social media profiles.

“But, how can I do that?”

I’m glad you asked!

Here’s how:

First, head over to Twitter’s Advanced Search. You’ll see something like this:

In the section marked “All of these words” you should type in keywords related to your main topic.

Here you’ll tell Twitter to show you only results containing all the keywords you typed in. This is very useful to find people who are interested in more than one topic.

For example, if you’re targeting people within the Internet Marketing space, but who are also interested in SEO, you should type in keywords like “Digital marketing”, “SEO” and “Search Engines”. This way, Twitter will only show you tweets containing all of those words.

On the other hand, if you want to find people who have recently shared something more specific, you can type in your exact phrase in the section marked “This exact phrase”.

Another option is to use the section marked “Any of these words”. If you decide to use this, Twitter will show you content that contains any of the keywords you typed in.

If you want to exclude some specific words, type them in the section marked “None of these words”.

Finally, once you have your keywords in place, it’s time to write your hashtag.

Here’s where you need to start thinking strategically. If you want to find people who are very active on SemRush, you should type in the hashtag #SemRush. Btw, If you don’t know what SEMrush is then check our SEMrush review and tutorial.

This way, Twitter will only show you tweets containing that particular hashtag, which means that content might come from a SemRush broadcast.

On the other hand, if you want to find people who are very active on Instagram, you should type in the hashtag #Instagram.

And you can repeat the process with any social network you want (even Twitter). All you need to do is create a list of at least 100 people using this process. Then, you can reach out to them using the following script:

Note: This script is just an example. I highly recommend that you modify it accordingly.

(If you’re wondering how to find a person’s email, you can read this guide).

Remember, you’re reaching out to highly-targeted people, so they’re very likely to respond positively. Not all of them, but a good chunk of them.

Further reading:

• How to Use Twitter Advanced Search Queries for Leads
• Advanced Twitter Marketing Techniques That Will Help Your Twitter Account Take Off
• HOW TO: Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Features
• The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Advanced Search

3. Advanced Twitter Hacks For Content Promotion

Content promotion is really tough, right?

Well, actually no.

In this chapter, I’m going to guide you step-by-step through two Twitter hacks that will allow you to put your content in front of dozens (and even hundreds) of highly-targeted people in just a couple of minutes.

Tactic # 1: Hack BuzzSumo to find Twitter Evangelists

For those who are not familiar with BuzzSumo, it’s a tool that shows you the most popular content on a specific topic sorted by the number of social shares.

Want to know the best part?

BuzzSumo will show you not only how many people shared a blog post, but who shared it. This is very useful to find people who might be interested in your content.

Remember, when someone shares something on social media, you know two things about that person:

1. He or she is very interested in that specific topic
2. He or She tends to share content on that topic.

Which means that if you put a high-quality piece of content related to that topic in front of them, they will be very likely to share it, too.

So first, head over to BuzzSumo and enter a broad keyword. For instance, if you’re in the Vegan Food space, you could type in “Vegan Recipes”.

Then, the tool will show you the most popular blog posts about vegan recipes.

Now, you should select your date range, so you can find people who have recently shared something on your topic — I suggest selecting “Past Week” or “Past Month”.

Then, sort results by “Twitter shares”:

Click on “View Sharers”:

Finally, click on “export”:

Once you have your list of sharers, it’s time to start cutting off irrelevant info (and people). Try to cut down your list to 200 sharers.

First, delete all the columns, excepting “username”, “name”, “URL”, and “number of followers”. Your list should look like this:

Now it’s time to delete irrelevant people. A rule of thumb is to delete every username that has less than 1,000 followers.

In order to do that, select column B and click on “Data”.

Then, click on “sort range”, check the box marked as “Data has header row”, and click on “Sort”.

Finally, select all the accounts that have less than 1,000 followers and delete them.

And you’re done – you have a list of highly-targeted people.

Now you need to start reaching out to your list using the following script:

As you can see, a very simple approach, but it can give you great results.

Now you can repeat that same process to promote every piece of content you publish.

Tactic # 2: “Steal” Your Competition’s Success

When someone mentions a competitor or shares a competitor’s blog post, that person is very likely to share your content or mention you as well (if you give them a good reason to do so).

The good news is that with Twitter’s Advanced Search it’s really easy to find those mentions. And when done properly, you can easily turn those mentions into massive growth.

Here’s a solid process:

First, you need to find tweets where your competitors are mentioned. To do this, head over to Twitter’s Advanced Search and look for the section marked “mentioning these accounts”.

In that section, you need to write the Twitter usernames of your competitors. For example, if you’re running an SEO software, your competitors could be @ahrefs, @moz and @majesticSEO.

Note: If you don’t know who your competitors are, you can find them by following the steps in this guide.

Then, in the section marked “from this date”, set up your date range from 1 day to 1-week maximum. This way, Twitter will only show you mentions that are very recent.

Finally, hit the “Search” button and Twitter will show you all the tweets where your competitors are mentioned:

Now all you need to do is reach out to the person who mentioned your competitor and use one of the following scripts:

Option 1)

Option 2

And you’re done!

Now you have a solid process to “steal” your competitor’s success.

Further reading:

• 10x Your Content Views/Shares with Crazy Analytics Hacks from WordStream & BuzzSumo
• 5 Ways to Use BuzzSumo to Grow Your Email List
• How To Use Buzzsumo To Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy

4. Introduction to Twitter Newsjacking

Newsjacking is one of the fastest ways to grow your website.  In fact, some of the biggest brands in the world use newsjacking to generate massive word-of-mouth.

For those who are not familiar with the concept. Newsjacking consists of taking advantage of the trendiest news to grow your website’s popularity.

Credit: Adrianswinscoe.com

For instance, when Google releases a new update, HubSpot quickly creates valuable content regarding that update. This helps HubSpot generate massive growth through word-of-mouth.

Credit: HubSpot

The good news is you can get similar results.

Just apply this simple Twitter hack and you’ll be able to leverage effective newsjacking.

Here’s how:

First, head over to Twitter’s Advanced Search.

Then, fill-up the form with keywords related to your topic.

In the section marked “Hashtag” enter one of the following hashtags (or all of them): #News, #BreakingNews, #HOT

Then, set up your date range.

Remember, the more recent the new is, the more effective this strategy will be, so I highly recommend that you set up your date range between 1-3 days.

Click “search”, and Twitter will show you relevant news on what’s happening within your industry. Now all you have to do is create a great post around that news and watch how your traffic starts increasing.

Notice that sometimes you won’t find hot news at the first intent, so you need to play with your keywords and hashtags until you find a great one. Yes, it can be tedious, but believe me, it’s completely worth.

Also, I highly recommend that you follow large industry blogs and magazines. Why? Because this kind of blogs tend to be the first on sharing a new.

For instance, if you’re in the business and marketing space, you should follow sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fast Company.

On the other hand, if your site is focused on SEO related topics, you should follow blogs like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Monetize.info 😉 and Moz.

Further reading:

• 5 Brand Marketing Efforts That Took Newsjacking to the Next Level
• Newsjacking: Real-Time Link Baiting
• Newsjacking: Why it Works and What Not to Do
• David Meerman’s Newsjacking Vault
• 10 Oscar-Worthy Examples of Brands Newsjacking the Academy Awards

5. How to Build a Twitter Marketing Robot with IFTTT

As I said earlier, your time is your most valuable asset. Fortunately, the world is easier now and there’s a ton of tools that can automate a huge part of the twitter marketing process.

One of them is IFTTT.

For those who are not familiar with IFTTT (If This Then That), it’s an Internet automation tool that connects hundreds of applications, social networks, and tools to automate some of the most tedious processes online.

For example, you could connect Twitter and Gmail, so when a specific person shares a new update, you receive a notification directly to your Gmail account.

Basically, you can automate almost any task you can imagine, but in this chapter, I’ll focus on automating just two things:

1. Content sharing
2. Relationship building

That way, you’ll be able to save a ton of time and focus on things that actually make you money.

Here you go:

5.1 Sharing Robot:

In order to automate sharing, you’ll need a list of at least 20 industry blogs that always share mind-blowing content. Why? Because you’ll use IFTTT to connect those blogs with your Twitter account, so when any of those blogs update their RSS feed, you’ll automatically publish a new Tweet.

That’s why it’s very important that you choose only blogs that always share valuable content. This way, all the content you share will be useful for your audience.

“How do I find blogs?” You ask.

Well, you can head over to Google and type in one of the following search strings:

“Top [keyword] blogs”

“Best [keyword] blogs”

“Best [keyword] blogs” + Specific year

Then, you can analyze results and start building your list of blogs.

Another option is heading over to AllTop.com. It’s one of the largest blog directories worldwide. You can easily find blogs that share content similar to yours.

Once you have your list of blogs in place, it’s time to start looking for their RSS feeds URLs.

Generally, you can find a blog’s RSS feed by typing: http://domain.com/feed

But if you can’t find it that way, I recommend that you go to the blog in question and try to find it manually.

Once you have your list of blogs and RSS feeds, it’s time to start automating the process.

Here’s how:

First, head over to IFTTT and create an account (if you haven’t already).

Second, click on “My recipes”

Now click on “Create recipe”

Click on “This” and type in “RSS” — select the icon that shows up.

Then, click on “New feed item” and type in the RSS feed URL of the first blog in your list.

Now you should click on “That” and type in “Twitter”.

Then, click on “Post a Tweet”.

Finally, click on “Create action”, and then “Create recipe”.

And you’re done!

Now you have to repeat the process with every blog in your list. This way, every time any of those blogs publish a new blog post, you’ll automatically share it on your Twitter, and since you made a good effort to find only blogs that share valuable content, your audience will be very happy.

5.2 Relationship Building Robot

When it comes to social media, relationships are everything. The stronger your relationships are, the stronger your business will be. That’s why it’s very important that you create a system that allows you to connect with people, even if you aren’t present.

Don’t worry, it’s easier than you think.

Now I’m going to show you a simple trick that can help you build stronger relationships with no extra effort.

First, head over to IFTTT and create a new recipe.

Again, click on “This” and type in “Twitter”.

Now select “New Follower” and click on “Create Trigger”.

Again, click on “That” and type in “Twitter.

This time you need to choose “Post a tweet with image”.

Now you need to actually create a “Welcome image”. To do it you can use free tools like Canva, Pablo, or PicMonkey.

Don’t overthink this process, just create an image that clearly expresses that your new follower is really welcome. Keep it simple.

Once you have your image in place, copy and paste the URL of your image in the section marked “Image URL”. Then click on “Create Action”, and finally hit the “Create Recipe” Button.

And you’re set!

Now every time a new person follows you, you’ll automatically publish a new tweet with your welcome image. This tiny trick will help you build stronger relationships in the long run.

As you can see, automating your marketing with IFTTT is really simple. You just need to start thinking creatively and find new ways to make things even easier.

The sky’s the limit!

Further reading:

• The Ultimate List of IFTTT Recipes for Marketers
• The Big List of IFTTT Recipes: 44 Hacks for Hardcore Social Media Productivity
• 17 IFTTT Recipes to Help Every Content Marketer Work Better
• 9 Clever Ways to Automate Your Small Business with IFTTT
• 14 IFTTT Recipes for Marketers That Will Make Content Marketing Easier

6. Four Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier

Who else wants to see the most helpful Twitter Marketing tools?

I know I do.

That’s why I decided to put together this chapter; to show you four of the best Twitter growth hacking tools on the market, and specific ways you can use them in order to grow your business faster.

Let’s get rolling:

6.1 Twilighter

Twilighter is an interesting tool that allows people to highlight any part of your website and instantly share it on Twitter. Very useful to increase the number of people who actually share your content because they can literally share anything they like while reading your articles.

Smart approach:

According to Neil Patel, blog posts that contain stats and data get 149% more social shares than the average blog post.

This means if you focus on including a ton of helpful data throughout your articles, Twilight could help people share those stats even easier, which ultimately could increase your traffic.

Website: http://www.appsumo.com/twilighter/

6.2 What The Trend

If you want to be updated with the most trending Twitter topics, What The Trend is the best tool on the market to get the job done. Not only does the tool tell you what’s trending right now, but it tells you WHY it’s trending.

Smart approach:

You can use What The Trend to find a trend, and then start sharing content mentioning relevant hashtags. Since that topic is really trendy, you’re very likely to get more retweets and engagement.

Website: https://whatthetrend.com/

6.3 Pay With A Tweet

Pay with a Tweet is one of the best referral marketing tools I’ve ever seen. It allows you hide your most valuable content, tools, and/or the information and deliver them to your audience for free in exchange for a tweet. Very useful to increase your traffic very quickly, especially if your offer is really good.

Smart approach:

Focus on creating downloadable material for each of your blog posts, and use Pay With a Tweet to get people sharing your stuff in order to download that material.

For example, if you create a blog post called “How to Create a Facebook Ad in Four Steps”, you could pay a designer to create a beautiful checklist of that post, so people can download it and easily follow the process every time they need. This kind of stuff is really attractive for users and can help you grow really quickly.

Website: http://www.paywithatweet.com/

6.4 Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet is a free tool that allows you to create and add shareable quotes, stats, and links throughout your content, so people can easily share them on Twitter by just clicking on them. It also provides you with in-depth analytics, so you can discover valuable information about your audience.

Smart approach:

Focus on adding at least one shareable box within every post you publish — it can be a quote or a stat. This will encourage more people to share it, and, therefore, you’ll increase your referral traffic.

Website: https://clicktotweet.com/

Further reading:

• 35 Growth Hacking Tools for Marketers Who Don’t Code
• 7 Tools to Hack Your Growth (That Means Get Big, Fast)
• 15 Growth Hacking Tools Every Growth Hacker Must Have
• 50 Growth Hacking Tools for Marketers at Startups

7. Increase Your Email Subscribers With Twitter

What if I tell you that you can get much more subscribers than you’re getting now by just making a tiny tweak to your thank you pages?

Because you can…

In this chapter, I’m going to show you how the pros are leveraging the power of Twitter to double and even triple their number of email subscribers with no extra efforts.

Note: For this strategy to work, you already need to have a lead magnet or some way to get people signing up to your email newsletter.

Here’s the deal:

If you sign up to 10 blog email newsletters, you’ll find that almost all of those bloggers generally send you to a thank you page where they welcome you to their email lists or give you access to whatever they offer.

That’s a solid process. However, you can easily improve it by adding another page to your process where you ask people to share your link on Twitter on order to access to your private content.

This way, you can leverage a powerful traffic snowball that will attract more and more leads even if you do nothing.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. I discovered this technique when I signed up to Okdork newsletter. And as you probably know, Noah Kagan is one of the most prolific online entrepreneurs in the world.

In addition, I leveraged the same strategy at Engagebit.com, and I can easily say that for every person who signed up to my email newsletter, at least two more people came to my website.

That’s just awesome!

The good news is you can have similar results.

Here’s how:

First, head over to your website and create a new page.

I can’t tell you the exact copy you need to use on your “bridge page”. In fact, it doesn’t matter that much. Just tell people exactly what to do.

Here’s an example:

Once you’ve written the copy of your bridge page, it’s time to add your Tweet Button.

Just copy the following code and paste it into your WordPress’ text editor (at the end of your page).

Now, you need to edit the link on that code, so it displays the text you want to show up when people share your page.

Don’t worry it’s really simple.

First, you need to add your Twitter username here:

Then, you need to start writing your copy word by word and adding a “+” between each word.

Finally, you need to add the link of the page you want to promote at the end of your line . Look:

Here’s an example of how your final version should look like:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Reading+%40josuevallesp+how+to+hack+Twitter+http://socialquant.net

Once you have your button in place, you just need to add a link to the thank you page people would normally see, so they can get access to your offer.

And you’re done!

Now you have a powerful way to get more people signing up to your newsletter by leveraging word-of-mouth.

Further reading:

• 15 Twitter Hacks That Will Turn You Into a Twitter Pro
• 9 Awesome Twitter Hacks that You’re TOTALLY Not Using (But Should!)
• 10 Secret #Twitter Tips, Tricks and Hacks (That You Probably Don’t Know)
• 13 Twitter Following Growth Hacks for Small Businesses

Your Turn!

As you can see, Twitter can be used in many different ways to grow your business. All you need to do is start thinking creatively and experiment. As long as you do those two things, I’m sure you’ll find smart ways to grow much faster.

I hope that this guide has given you a great start on hacking your growth using Twitter. If you found this guide helpful, don’t forget to share it with your friends on social media.

Either way, I look forward to seeing your comments below.