Believe it or not, Twitter has become a huge phenomenon. Some even say this micro-blogging platform has threatened the life of blogs, especially those personal ones. Of course I won’t say it goes as far as that, but it’s a good idea to keep both of them close together, so that either side does not miss out on anything.
The three main reasons to integrate with twitter are:
1. The main reason to integrate with Twitter is to market my blog content to a wider audience; this is made much more streamlined with Twitter plugins.
2. Increasing productivity is another reason to integrate, most bloggers spend a huge amount of time developing and marketing their site, if this can be made more efficient that time can be spent on other more important takes such as content development.
3. You do not own our content on Twitter/Facebook or any of the other social sites; you need a place to call your own where you house your original content. If you have a business blog, this will be where your call to action to generate income will be.
If you want your blog and twitter account to seamlessly merge into a single platform to get your word out, here are a bunch of twitter extenders that will effortlessly popularize your blog among all your twitter followers, and beyond.
TweetSuite:
TweetSuite adds server side tweebacks to your posts, so if someone tweets about your post, it adds it to the list. Users get to retweet any of the tweetbacks, or can click on the ‘tweet this’ button to announce your post in their twitter feed. The “tweet this” button is completely automated, with title truncating and URL shortening so the user doesn’t have to do anything but click on the update button.
Posts as Tweets:
The main feature I use in this plugin is the ability to push posts as tweets into Twitter. Using this functionality I create a tweet which says “new at my blog Integrating Twitter with WordPress http://tinyurl.com/xyc” this tiny URL then send Tweepl back to the original post.
You can push all posts to Twitter, or opt them out. I only push out my key work in this way not every little post I publish on my blog.
TwitterSplit:
Anyone and everyone who uses Twitter periodically send out interesting links to their followers. These links are not pointing to your site, so other than creating goodwill among your followers, they offer no ‘return’ for your blog.
TweetSplit is an interesting concept, as it embeds the external page, inside of your URL. The user will see the intended page, but also see an unobtrusive bar at the top reminding the user who it is that brought them to the page. You could embed any graphic or even an ad at the top (don’t over-do it!) to make the best of Twitter.
Twitter Link comments:
Allow your commentators to include their Twitter username along with their comment so a follow-me link can be displayed with their details on the list.
