Ask and you shall receive! Does that phrase sound familiar. Yup twitter works just like that. I have seen many different retweet guides on the web, but this is the simplest and by far the most effective technique in my books. The best way to get retweets is by simply asking.

Here let me give you an example:

Take this article that we wrote at WPBeginner – 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks (has 944 tweets)

This was the example text I wrote 6 days ago when I first tweeted it:

55+ Most Wanted #WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks – http://bit.ly/7EfP1W (Pls RT)

You see the magic word at the end. Pls RT, got the article tweeted many times. Now because it was a quality article, it took off and people started retweeting it left and right. I cannot emphasize enough how important the content really is.

But I did not just stop there. I have some very close friends on twitter which everyone should. There is no way that you can follow 3000 people. I have a group of 40 friends that I really keep track of and chat with. I sent out messages to each of them asking them to retweet this. It got retweeted more times.

Again, all I am doing is just ASKING. It really depends on how you ask because some of these top guys get hundreds of requests daily, so you have to be smart. Don’t make your article spammy, always ask nicely, and acknowledge them in your tweets. You absolutely CANNOT go ask someone you do not have a previous relationship with. If you do you will just come off as a spammer.

Use twitter the right way and you will have plenty of friends that actually know you, and you actually know them.

But all to all, it is a really simple formula.

Quality Content + Ask = Tons of Retweets

Twitter at its peak point and every marketer trying to get the love from the community, we are seeing more and more users leaning toward Auto Tweets. If you consider yourself a marketer, or thinking about tweeting for the sake of exposure, Auto Tweets are probably THE WORST way to go about it. Why? Because auto tweets are generic, Auto tweets are annoying, and not interesting.

Think about why people use twitter. I use twitter to connect with friends and other users who share the same interest as me. I use twitter to find new articles, and resources. But since there are thousands upon thousands of articles being tweeted every day, I can only pick the ones that grab my attention with the title. This applies to majorly everyone. You don’t really get a creative title with Auto Tweets. Sometimes your title is too long and you have auto tweet setup, so it will cut the title of. Most of the times, it starts with a generic statement saying: New on ….

This type of statement would not only make people ignore that tweet, but if you do that more often, people will begin to ignore you on twitter as well. So one of the reasons why you should always tweet the messages personally is because you can come up with creative ways to attract users. You can post the same article a few times and space it out with other tweets and use different titles to approach different type of audience.

Twitter uses hash tags and that is one thing Auto Tweet cannot do for you. If you tweet the link manually, you can not only make the best title, but you can also use hashtags for the keywords like “Designer”, “WordPress”, “Blogger” or what not. You can either incorporate these hashtags within the title, or at the end of tweet nonetheless these will get you targetted audience from twitter as people search for that specific hash tag.

What are you losing by posting tweets manually? Simply 15 seconds. But what are you gaining from posting tweets manually? A lot more targetted visitors and more credibility. Now there might be an issue with posting tweets on specific time. That is why you have programs like Hootsuite and others that will let you schedule your tweets, so use that and manually write your tweet. Don’t make excuses.

The answer to the question asked in the title is NO and if you read the post, you should know why.

Power of advertising your posts individually is often underestimated. I will say this is probably the best way to get more followers to your blog. Almost all followers that you get from advertising your posts individually will stay.

Many bloggers don’t know the right process of how blogs should be advertised. Its not a blatant statement I am making, I came to this conclusion after receiving many direct messages on twitter from people when I follow a them: Check out my blog – http://xxxx.com. I would never check out their blog because they didn’t give me a reason to do so. Instead what you should do is maybe sent a direct message of an individual post which might be useful to that person. And hope that the quality of your content persuades this person to explore more content on your blog and become a loyal user.

During the years that I have been working online, I learn that you can never get loyal users by simply advertising your home page specially when working with Discussion Forums, and Social Media Networks. If used effectively, both of them can bring you insane amount of loyal users for free. But you need to know how to do it the right way.

It might seem like that there is a connection with all top power diggers on digg, or all top users on twitter, but really there is not. They will digg or retweet your post, if it is worthy of it. So making that statement clear, I am telling you that you should not advertise all of your posts individually because not all of them are worthy.

The same way you should not put digg submit buttons, or reddit submit buttons on every article of yours. It hurts your site more than anything because not all your articles are digg worthy. And if your site is submitted on digg specially with an article like Attention Users there will be no post on Balkhis… Then you will probably get banned from social media networks. So refrain from abusing the system.

Now here is how you should do it. Lets take Twitter for example.

You should not just tweet your own articles. Tweet what you think your followers will like. Bring variety to the table. Its all about sharing the love in order to get it back. Contribute to the community and then community will appreciate you and will send its love to you.

So on average if you are tweeting 5 of your own links then tweet 10 of other people links. Now those could be the links that your friend tweeted, or asked you to retweet via DM or others that you found on the web.

Now when other sees that you are sharing useful information, they will begin to retweet your tweets, and next thing you know that your own site is being retweeted by others as well. Now if you simply put check out my site www.wpbeginner.com, most people won’t click it, but if you put check out 21 Mindblowing Premium-Like Free Wordpress Themes then more people are likely to see that article and your website indirectly.

This is killing three birds with one stone. Because you got the user to your website, you advertised the article, indirectly they saw your website as well, and now they are your loyal reader because they liked the article. So quality is a must.

Now when you are in social media networks, it is about making new friends. You can ask the friends to check out this link, and retweet it through a direct message. This way their followers can retweet as well. You can do the same with digg, facebook, and any other social media network.

What I am trying to say is don’t just stop after publishing your post. Instead you should go out and share it with others.

Even though it is very obvious that Social Media is extremely powerful many of you guys weren’t convinced. After I created the twitter category and started suggesting all of you to join twitter, I was getting emails asking is twitter really useful. Those of you who never had any social media experience have many doubts in the power of social media. So therefore I decided to conduct this study to reveal the power of Social Media with Proof to my new users and those who still doubt it.

In the past every social media network I tried, I was trying them one by one. I never combined them due to lack of time. So when I recently started being active on twitter, I saw the true power of all Social Media combined. Things fly out from one place to another in a matter of seconds. That is when I decided to take on this secret mission. The mission to dominate every social media and examine the power of social media when it comes to traffic, advertising, increasing subscribers, and increasing popularity. In this study, I will show you exactly what type of results you get when you combine the power of all social media networks. And what you really have to do.

To spice it up for you and get you excited the results that I got looked something like this for 3 days:

68,038 Unique Visitors

122,469 Total Visits

653,984 Pageviews

5.36 Million Hits (5,362,635)

RSS Subscriber Count Increased by 1734 making my total count to 5321.

Literally, I doubled my stats from my whole last month in a matter of 3 days. Now seriously and truly, do you want to do this? Well then prepare for your ultimate guide which is this post.

Before I start, I will say that this article does not guarantee the same results because there are too many factors that go into it which I will mention. But what I can guarantee you is that you will see an increase. Maybe a little less than this, or a whole lot more than this.

So You might be wondering at this point how did I do this? Where was my traffic coming from? Obviously this is a blog, I must have written a killer article. Which I did. You can find the article here: 55+ Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers.

And what got me the traffic was bunch of different social media networks and websites. The list includes: Twitter, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious, Digg, tweetmeme, twitturl, and countless others.

I got 5 Stars in Stumbleupon

Frontpage on Reddit

Delicious Popular over 1400+ Bookmarks

Ofcourse you can see that the post retweeted on twitter over 400 times and by some of the most popular celebrities on twitter. But I will go on to say that none of the above was possible if it was not for twitter. Twitter is a place where the celebrities from all other social media networks interact. So if you convince the audience of this network, the other networks will be a peice of cake.

So JOIN Twitter. I have asked a few of my friends who also have a good influence in social media networks and they run quality websites. Here is what one of them say:

“Focus on twitter first, build a good reputation then after that you can invite them to follow you on other social media sites.” @naldzgraphics

So guys twitter is essential. But once you join what exactly do you do? Well the first thing you should do is follow me @syedbalkhi. Ah ok well here is what you should do according to Patrick:

“Be friendly and helpful to all and other Social Media members will pick up on that and start helping you as well.” – @Jenocide312

Follow his advice, and then read my article that lists 25 Tips to Increase Your Influence and Gain Followers on Twitter.

Now you should know somewhat of what you are doing on twitter. Your goal is to get as many people to know about your new article. Well then you should Retweet or as it is known on twitter as RT. Basically when you tweet make sure it is something interesting. That means write exceptionally great content that your audience will love. Having that said, it means not everypost deserves to be heavily promoted. Pick your best ones otherwise your friends will think you are spamming them. Before you ask anyone to Retweet anything for you, or do you a favor make sure you know them at least. Or as my good friend Tal Siach says:

“Get to know your friends and treat them the same as you would want to be treated” – Talsiach

Just follow the Ultimate Guide to Retweet and you should be set.

You need to make connections. When I started twitter, I had alot due to my experience in this industry, but you can do it as well. Provide quality tweets, and believe me others will follow you. You should search for users who are at the top in other social media networks such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and others. And follow them. So once you have the connections with all of the top users from multiple networks, then kindly present them your article and ask for a Retweet. If you get it, then you are all set.

So the whole idea is you need to show them that you exist. You can do it by Retweeting them, replying to their tweets, their sites, and so on. Well that is what I did and I got some of the top users on twitter such as Darren Rowse (@problogger), Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudious), Cheth (@cheth) to tweet that post for me.

Ofcourse alot of my friends and followers tweeted it, but followers of these users also retweeted. So you combine just the followers of these three and you have almost 100,000 people. That can definitely create a buzz on twitter. Note while you are creating a buzz on twitter, services like tweetmeme and twitturls are reporting the most tweeted urls on twitter recently. So if yours is one of them, then you are also being featured on these websites that also recieve alot of views from tons of good users.

Since you have friends in other social media networks as well, I am sure out of many a few got to be special ones. You can ask one of those to submit this into another social media, or you can just let it happen naturally.

All I did was ask a good friend on digg Bart Gatsby to submit it on digg for me. This article got over 170 diggs, even though it didn’t hit Frontpage, but I got the attention of these 170 people. If you look at them, alot of these users have very nice reputation in other social media networks.

Next thing I know is that I am on delicious most popular page at the top. Reddit’s front page, Stumbleupon 5 star popular post. And I am loaded with traffic.

So once again who said Quality Content can’t get you anywhere? Let me write a new formula for you:

Quality Content + Good Twitter Friends = Success in Social Media

Now making connections, posting good content, being the king of social media must take alot of time huh? Well it really depends on who you ask. Some says Yes it requires alot of time while others say it doesn’t.

“Get ready to spend some long addictive hours communicating with some of the nicest people online.” – @DinOthman

“Don’t think that you have to online 24/7 to be considered a solid contributor” – @bullfrogmedia

I am most likely to agree with the second one. You don’t have to spend alot of time to be a solid contributer. All you have to do is stay updated and share interesting stories. Now it gets addicting and you might end up spending alot of time, but in reality you don’t need to be online 24/7.

Well so are you ready to get the same results as me? Well then rock on the bandwagon of Twitter.

Twitter is getting alot of exposure in the media, and recently posted a news that it has attracted over 14 million users this past month. Twitter is HOT, and if you are not on it, you are missing the free lemonade in a hot sunny day. Well, I was kinda ticked off at twitter for a while, but I recently decided to restart my way into twitter. I am making more contacts getting to know more people and enjoying the benefits. Well I think it is so important at this point, that I am making a whole category devoted to twitter which I plan to write on for a few weeks at least, so you will be seeing alot of articles related to twitter on Balkhis. I asked all of my followers and friends to tell me why someone should join twitter, and I have picked some good responses which you will see in the post.

1. It helps to make Connections

Twitter is one tool that will help you make connections with users that you will never have known before existed. You can get to know a whole different side of a person. You can know more about me by following me on twitter rather than just reading my blog post. Twitter is the key to make another door of connection. You might not be able to ever get to know me or have me link to your post because I don’t know you, but twitter lets you do that. Twitter lets you talk to people. I can ramble on and on, but I hope you get my point. If you don’t then Andrew Chuang puts it best.

“You should join Twitter to strengthen existing bonds, and make new ones.” ~ @Tsuyomaru

2. Quick Support

With the speed twitter is growing, more and more businesses are creating their user accounts. They are even hiring a person who is on their twitter account tweeting back at their customers. So sometimes you might not even get a response through your email, but you will be able to hear back a response through twitter. This works if you want to connect with top bloggers and marketers as well. These guys have insane amount of emails to go through daily, so your email will be ignored, but tweets since they are only 140 characters, they will respond because it doesn’t take them very long. You can get quick support if you join twitter.

“Twitter is a valuable and underestimated research tool; u can increase your “web of influence” & exchange with thought leaders” ~ @blogbrevity

3. Good Learning Tool

You can never have too much knowledge. Specially if you are a designer like me. Half of the people that I am following are designers. I see so many great articles and resources that help me improve designing skills daily. No matter what your niche is there is always someone there for your niche, and there is always resources for you. And if there is not, then man you are lucky because you can capitalize the zone, and take full benefit from the newcomers.

“Why join twitter? B/c I learn so much from the 20 or so people I follow.” ~ @lnxwalt

4. To Keep UP

No matter what you are trying to keep up with, twitter has the latest info of it. From technology to breaking news, you can find it all on twitter. Heck the earthquake in Italy was first reported on twitter before it was on CNN. You can follow the web trends, news, special sites, and more by being on twitter. As a webmaster, or just as a normal person, you don’t want to fall behind. So to keep up you should join twitter.

“I was completely skeptical. I joined reluctantly, to keep up w. web trends. Now, I enjoy it. (Despite being a bit intimidated)” ~ @lt3design

5. It’s the Next Big Thing

I don’t know if you notice, but twitter is everywhere. It’s on the web, it’s on the news channels, it’s in commercials, it’s in paper media such as newspaper. It is taking over the world right now like facebook and myspace did at once. If you are one of those people who joins things because it is the next big thing, then this is your chance. Twitter is the next big thing that you should join because everyone is here.

“You should join Twitter because it’s the next big thing.” ~ @JohnChow

6. It Helps Your Creativity

Marketing is all about being creative. Creative campaigns are short and sticky. That is how your tweets are suppose to be also. 140 characters max. You have to get your point across and if you want others to read it, you got to make it interesting. Basically it is an ultimate practice for you to elevate your pitch. No one likes to read a whole page of boring proposals. The best proposals I have agreed to were short and they had very catchy headlines. Twitter is a practice for you to write better and creative headlines, so after a while you will be a better blogger due to twitter because it is helping your post titles.

“You get pretty damn creative saying what’s on your mind in 140 char or less!” ~ @danib3

You should read this in the full page because it is 3000 words, and I don’t want to make this page a big a scroll down.