I have several niche websites up and running now. Lately, I've been working towards bringing traffic to some of the newer ones via social media. When I do this, I always start with Twitter.

I just keep coming back to that site! It's the first social networking site I really got into and the one I like the most.

Simplicity

Firstly, it's elegantly straightforward. You follow people who share your interests. Hopefully they follow you back. You share stuff between each other and build online friendships. Simple.

Facebook has a similar overall purpose. But it's got some funny rules and regulations about who you can connect with. This is even more pronounced on Linkedin.

It's Twitter's simplicity that make it great for social media beginners. It might take a little while to get your ehad around it but once you do you can see lots of possibilities immediately. Odds are you'll be hooked right form the get go.

Once you've mastered Twitter, the other big networking sites are easier to get a handle on. So it's a good place to start if you're new to social media.

Brevity

The brevity is another attractive feature. Sure, it can be a bit frustrating at first that you have to keep everything down to those 140 characters. But after a while you actually appreicate this aspect of the site.

There's no mucking around. You have to get right down to brass tacks and be as succinct as possible. So it's good for your communication skills (although of course you don't want everything you write off Twitter to follow the same pattern!).

Speed

Then there's the speed. Because of the strict tweet length requirement, tweeps crank out tweets at a great rate. If you're following quite a few people then they just zoom past you.

Again, this is daunting at first. But after a while you appreciate it. It really trains you to process information quicker than before. You can get through more information on other sites as a result.

Focus

Then there's the sheer focus of it. It's amazing. You can get very specific with an interest and find people to follow who are similarly focused. When you know what you're looking for and what you're doing you can build a following very quickly.

If you're a comedian, you can connect with other comics. If you are a blogger connect with other bloggers. And if you want to make that interest geo-targeted and just follow people who live in your country or city, well there'll be quite a few of those, too.

And the more the people you follow are like you in interest and location, the more likely they are to follow back. So you can build followings quickly.

Sure, you can do all things on the other social sites. But not in such a focused, fast way. The other sites are bigger, slower, with lots of different functions. Sure, they're fun, and all the possibilities are worth exploring. But building a network takes a while, and there are a lot of distractions.

Twitter is distilled. It's 100% proof. That's why I really like it.

This is a fairly obvious point, but it's really important to have breaks from blogging from time to time. I know that when I do I come back fresher than before. And I have heaps more ideas than if I've been cranking out posts for a while. They're better quality, too.

Excessive blogging lowers content quality

If your main intention is to produce, say, a blog post every day for six months then obviously the quality will suffer after a while. It will become thinner. It won't be as insightful. So you've got to walk away from it every now and then, confident in the knowledge that your subconscious will still be mulling things over.

As well as lowering the quality of posts, working too hard and too long on your blog can narrow its focus. After a while you realize that you're just blogging the same old stuff.

A break brings new perspectives

If you have a break from blogging about a particular subject, however, you widen your point of view and see other things to write about.

And just as there are countless things to write about, there are also countless angles you can take on the same subject.

This is where a break can help a lot. You get distance from the subject, and you can approach it in a new and interesting way.

After all, it's really important to have unique content. It's also important to have a unique perspective. Those two things combined will really help you stand out from the pack.

This is why having several different blogs can be an advantage. If they're in different fields, then you can be blogging regularly, and still having breaks. So it's not like you stop producing content. You just stop producing content in the same genre. You're coming back into each one in a comparatively fresh state of mind.

Some Twitter users follow lots of others mainly because they want lots of folllowers themselves and know that a certain proportion will follow back. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with this approach, since it certainly does work. But it shouldn't be your only reason for doing this.

It provokes responses

There's a better, more productive motivation for following lots of others on the site. That's because doing so gives you a lot to react to. Every time you log in, the stream will be different. It's just so much easier when there are all those new tweets scrolling down in front of you. Even if you're not really in a tweeting mood you're sure to see something that catches your eye, makes you laugh, give you an "Aha!" moment. Before you know it you'll have tweeted several replies. There will also often be things that you want to retweet.

And it's really important to do this, because you'll get on the radar of many more people this way. So your follower count will grow much quicker than if you just follow others for the follow back only.

Be discerning and niche-specific

So, when going on a bit of a following binge, make sure you search only within your chosen niche. The tweets of these people will be more likely to elicit genuine and relevant responses from you. Similarly, your reactions will be specific and therefore more appealing to those in your niche.

Make sure that the tweeps you do follow are active and engage often with others. Don't be indiscriminate -- although you shouldn't be too picky, either. As with so many things, a middle of the road approach is needed.

And if you are very new to the site, you can afford to be less choosy than you are later on, when you're more established. Just make sure that the people you're following are relevant, real and active. You can always unfollow people later on. That said, you shouldn't "churn" through your following just to build your numbers. That's bad manners, and can get you suspended. It's best to unfollow only those who haven't tweeted lately, or whose content you don't find valuable.

It's a bit like blogging early on. I think when you start a blog, you should posts as often as possible, even if those posts are short. It's all about getting some stuff up there and building momentum.

It helps you gather momentum

I know that this is an emotional thing. It's not truly rational. But it's really important nonetheless. And the emotion you're getting from tweeting is a sense of connectedness. Getting those replies and retweets is fun, and it motivates you to keep going.

It's sort of like going to a social event. While there's something to be said for just sitting there for a little while and taking things in, you don't want to do this too long. And you don't want to be too snobby either. It's a good idea to mingle. If you meet lots of people and there are sure to be a few you really like and strike up ongoing friendships with.

I'm a bit of a current affairs junkie, and there's a popular political discussion show on the ABC called Q and A. Like so many TV shows it has its own hashtag, #QandA. I often watch the show and tweet when it is on. Whenever I do this I get a lot of response, and usually increase my follower count by a few tweeps every time.

Clearly, tweeting a lot during popular shows, making sure to include their hashtags is worthwhile no matter what niche you're in. It's a very good method for those wanting to gain more followers fairly quickly. It certainly beats following others in the hope that they'll follow back, which is what a lot of people do. (Actually, if you use it a lot you'll end up with consistently more people following you than the other way around, which certainly makes you look more substantial than most people using Twitter.)

The other advantage of this technique is that it can be used to get geo-targeted followings. You just have to tweet about a show made in your own nation and you'll be sure to be seen by lots of your own countrymen. You can even do it on the city level. (Local news bulletins are applicable here.)

And there is sure to be a show for you, no matter what niche you're in. If you are a food blogger, then tweeting during Master Chef would be a great idea. If you blog about building and construction there's The Block.

While you'll still get some benefit from this technique no matter what time of the day you tweet about your favourite shows, the effect is much more powerful during the time it's being broadcast. That's because everyone is sitting there, eyes glued to the TV screen, hands on their iPhones!

Make sure you do it regularly, too. You'll become a familiar face to a lot of people during these times. People will even be looking for you, thereby increasing the amount of engagement you can get.

That's why it's always a good idea to tweet consistently good stuff. If you can make your tweets funny and/or witty, that helps too, since they're more likely to be retweeted.

Crank out ten or twenty choice tweets during a show and you'll almost certainly get quite a few replies. There'll also be some trolls, of course (particularly if it's a political show). But I wouldn't recommend interacting with them while the show is on. You can always do that afterwards. The main thing is to keep referring to what's going on on screen, and to get maximum exposure from this.

Another potential benefit: Many TV shows broadcast related tweets at the bottom of the screen.  It's a boon if you can score one of these because many thousands, if not millions, of people will see your Twitter handle. Just one such exposure can win you several new followers.

A while ago, when Julia Gillard was still PM, the Aussie Labor party was suffering hugely poll-wise. The leadership were looking for excuses. So Gillard and her team took to describing any criticism of her as sexist. This "misogyny" angle was clearly false and seemed to make Gillard's popularity plummet even more. So clearly a lot of people were getting very annoyed by this.

At about that time I noticed a Facebook page making fun of this tendency of hers. It's disappeared now, so I can't be totally sure of the name. But it was called "It's Because I'm a Woman" or something like that. I immediately liked the page even though there was almost no content up there at the time.

It just seemed to nail something that I and a lot of other people found very annoying. And it got me thinking about how bloggers could use this technique in other ways. After all, a Facebook page doesn't always have to relate directly to your blog and its content. You can generate a community around some widely held sentiment, or a meme, then use it to promote your posts.

The example I cited above was political. But you could do something similar with pretty much anything. Maybe you have a blog about beer and there's a popular beer brand that has a cool advertising campaign that everyone's talking about. Maybe you could set up a page for fans of the campaign? Along with direct references to that ad campaign, you could share some of your blog posts. Or you could just have the link to the main URL in the description. You'd be sure to get a fair bit of targeted traffic as a result.

Or perhaps you have a website about entertainment. And there's some celebrity who a lot of people find extremely annoying for some reason or another. You could build a page about that and tap into the traffic that ensues.

The potential is limitless. The key is to find something in the news that is provoking a lot of public sentiment. Then build a page, or even a group, around this.

Of course the benefits may only be temporary, which is a downside. But if the page goes viral to even a mild extent it could be a great way to get lots of new blog readers.