This post marks the first in a series of posts in which I will explain how you can leverage various tools to automate the process of making your blog the nexus of your social media universe.
An emerging and effective technique for expanding a blog’s readership is through the use of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and many more. The essence of the concept is to create a social media identity on all of these sites which can then be used to post links that point back to the original articles on your site.
The concept is sound and unquestionably beneficial. But the basic problem for the site manager/blogger is that reposting links to content on these sites quickly becomes both tedious and time consuming, which is definitely not how a well run site operates.
Recently I made a conscious decision to begin expanding The Well Run Site’s presence on social media sites. As I contemplated the potential audience, it seemed clear to me that starting with Twitter made the most sense. But my love of automation made me abhor the thought of posting twice: once to WordPress and then again to Twitter.
So my first order of business was to find a tool to automate the process. My requirements were very basic: each time I posted an article to The Well Run Site, I wanted a link back to that article posted on The Well Run Site’s Twitter stream so my followers would be notified.
As I searched for a solution, it seemed clear that there are a variety of tools I could use to solve the problem. The most direct approach would simply be to use a WordPress plugin, which was my preference. In this regard, the very best of breed, and the one I have chosen for this blog, is Alex King’s Twitter Tools.
Alex just released version 1.6 of his plugin, and it includes a host of optional features that go well beyond my admittedly basic requirements:
- Creates a blog post when you post to Twitter
- Creates a daily digest blog post of your tweets
- Creates a weekly digest blog post of your Twitter tweets
- Lets you specify the author, tags and category for your posts
- Lets you post to Twitter directly from your sidebar once you’ve logged in.
Installing the plugin is just like installing any other WordPress plugin. Just drop the software into your plugins directory and activate in the WordPress Plugins section. (You’ll need to have your Twitter account login and password ready) The default options are probably acceptable for most people, and once you’ve completed the installation you can pretty much forget that it’s there. Just post to WordPress and it shows up on Twitter.
So my problem has been solved. I can continue to use WordPress to create and post my content and Twitter Tools for WordPress takes care of posting the links back to it on Twitter. If you’d like to see this in action, follow The Well Run Site on Twitter.