If you are a blogger and you have not signed up for a Twitter account yet, you are missing opportunities to gain new readers and increase your hits.

Twitter has a search function. I use it often to find people who are interested in the tight niche about which I blog. I have had great success with this. I can literally search the world over (at least the part of the world on Twitter) for people who mentioning key phrases that pertain to my niche. I assume if they are tweeting those key phrases or words, they might be interested in my blog content.

I spend a little time studying their tweets, and if I think they’re a match and would be interested in my blog or have something to contribute to the conversation, I follow them. Sometimes, I re-tweet their tweets or if they have a blog, I’ll check it out.

I assume a few things while marketing my blog via Twitter:

1) If I create interesting, beneficial content, people will want to read it.

2) Some of these people use Twitter.

3) Half the battle is finding my audience. The other half is retaining it.

4) Frequent searches of key phrases can’t help me find the audience that will be responsive to my blog and my attempts to market it.

-jen