Another Wordpress Blog

Did you know you can update your Twitter account automatically every time you create a blog post? And you can ping Technorati to get the tweet listed? That means Twitter can be used to create two streams of traffic: one directly from Twitter and one from Technorati!

I realized all this yesterday when I noticed that Jason Calacanis’s tweets appear on Technorati. I’d never visited Twitter until the day before yesterday because the “uses” I’d seen described didn’t seem useful to me.

But I know that Technorati searches some traffic, so it’s worth having your posts get listed multiple times. If there is an automatic way to do all this, I’m all for it!

Clearly, I need to do two things:

• Update Twitter automatically
• Get my Tweet account to ping Technorati automatcially!

I’m now updating Twitter automatically; I haven’t found a way to get Twitter to ping technorati automatically, but I will by Saturday! Meanwhile, I ping manually. ¹

If you want to get a start being listed at Twitter, do this:

1. Join Twitter: Just click “Join Twitter“; (not an affiliate link!)
2. Update Your Twitter Status:You can update manually. However, if you use wordpress, it’s better to install a plugin to automatically update your Twitter account when you publish a blog post. I’ve described a few below.
3. Publicize your twitter page: Some of the plugins mentioned below will do this for you in a variety of different ways. I’m looking for one that will ping technorati and other services but haven’t found one. For now, I’m plan to eventually do nothing more than post link to my Twitter Page on my sidebar- near the RSS feed button. For now, I’ve added a Twitter widget at the bottom of my right hand sidebar. (That lets me check that the WordTwitter is actually working.)

That process of setting yourself up to update Twitter will take you four or five minutes; it’s probably worth it. Later on, you can look for a better plugin that does what you prefer. Meanwhile, here is a handy list of the ones I’ve found.

Five Twitter Plugins for WordPress

• WordTwit:
  Duane Storey’s WordTwit adds your blog entries to your twitter account; the title and link show. That’s it. I’m using this because I’m unfamiliar with Twitter. I’ll also just post the link to my twitter page somewhere on my blog.
• Twitter Updater:
  Updates your Twitter when you post or edit a blog entry. Let’s you specify text for the update, which is probably convenient if you want to give your Twitter friends a bit of information about your post.
• Twit This:
  Adds a yet another social networking button to your blog that lets your visitors twit their friends. This could be useful if you think loads of your visitors use twitter a lot!
• Twitter Plugin:
  Alex King’s twitter Plugin lets you do a lot, but I’m having trouble getting Alex’s pages to load and/or getting his zip files to download. I’ll include the link when I finally succeed.
• Twitt-Twoo
  Dean J. Robinson shows your twitter status, and icon at your blog. Also lets you update twitter from your blog. This seems useful if you want to mention both your blog updates and also post honest to goodness tweets at twitter.

To find other Twitter Plugins for WordPress visit 10 Best Twitter Tools for WordPress Blogs. Because more and more twitter plugins are being written, you can also google twitter plugin wordpress to find the plugins that help you promote your blog.

I’m actually going to be looking for something that reports my blog posts several hours after I post and then pings Technorati. Why? Because if I’m going to blatantly self promote, I want nearly duplicate listings at Technorati to be spaced out That will maximize traffic from searches.

Summary: Four Steps to Promote Your Blog:

1) Join Twitter, 2) Use a plugin to either just post your blog to twitter or start displaying Twitter at your blog, 3) Put up a link somewhere to tell Twitter fans they can follow you at Twitter, 4) Ping Technorati and 5) Wait for traffic to roll on in!

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Notes:
1. To ping manually, I enter my Twitter url into the box at Technorati’s ping page! (Edited after testing!)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 8:45 am and is filed under Social Networking, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.