Friday, March 1, 2013

Making Your Blog Twitter Friendly

Making your blog Twitter friendly has become kind of indispensable unless you want to ignore a significant way of publicizing your posts. There are nifty plug-ins that do all the work for you. Let's go over some of the more popular ones first.

1. Twittar

Twittar can track emails of commentators and insert Twitter avatars or Gravatars or a default image beside their names. This makes the comments section look lively other than making it easy for you to know who on Twitter is interested in your post.

2. WP-Twittip ID

This plug-in will add a field to the comments section for the Tweeter handle of the commentator. This creates automatic links to each commentator's Tweeter profile.

3. Tweetmeme

This one makes it super easy for your readers to tweet your article. They are presented with the title of your post along with a shortened url and they only have to click to tweet. There is a counter included that updates itself with each unique tweet. TwitThis is a similar plug-in also quite popular.

4. Twitter Tools

This one works with your Wordpress blog. You can set it up so that your tweets are published in the form of an article at set intervals. It also inserts a widget to your sidebar to show your most recent tweets in real time.

5. Tweetbacks

Want to show off to your visitors? When your posts get tweeted, this software automatically inserts them into the comments section of your blog. You can also keep a separate section in which to display them.

However, plug-ins and software alone cannot ensure that your content is shared effectively or at all. Certain other details are important if you want really good results.

Make your headlines Twitter friendly

When someone tweets your post, they will include the title and the url. Their own Twitter handle is included by default. Hopefully, you will have retweets. With each retweet, anew handle is added until your post title begins to make no sense because it got curtailed to accommodate the 140 character limit for tweets. Keeping titles under 80 characters is good practice.

Also, there is a difference between vague and intriguing. You are likely to draw more tweets with the humble 'Salsa in Three Weeks' than 'Be the Mistress of the Floor in Twenty One Days'.

Be clever with long titles

Always ensure that titles make sense even when truncated. 'Relevance of Backlinks after Penguin and Panda : A Complete Guide to Google Friendly SEO' will continue to draw attention even after losing half its characters. 'The Magic of Making Up: A Totally Irreverent Way of Looking at Lovers' Spats', however, loses much of its unique appeal when the tag line is clipped.

Do not confuse your fans

There is the 'follow me' button, and then there is the 'tweet this' option. Not everyone is web savvy, and you must spell out certain things to make them work in your favor. Keep the follow button in a prominent position on your blog where your visitors can see it. The usual placement is top right along with subscribing options that include the RSS icon. The tweeting option must be placed at the beginning or end of each post (maybe even at both ends) to be effective.

Remember the keyword factor

The final step to making your blog Twitter friendly is to pay particular attention to placement of keywords. This, again, is part of the technique where you add a tweet-worthy title to your posts, but with a difference. Here, we further ensure that those multiple retweets actually happen.

The trick is to let the first 10 - 20 characters of the title include or simply be, the keyword or phrase. Make sure this does not clash with the rule that the title must make sense even when curtailed. This should not be too difficult, and in any case, you would be using this technique with select posts.

A final word on making your blog Twitter friendly: don't try too hard. Twitter is only one (albeit very important) way of making a buzz. You must strike a balance so that your blog makes sense to begin with. A natural way of writing is often the best. Add to that a bit of care that makes it convenient for your visitors to share your stuff on Twitter, and you have yourself a winner.

Jason Smith is an online manager for Superior Notary Services. He is an expert on SEO & PPC tactics and in his free times likes to read and understand about mobile notary services.

No comments:

Post a Comment