There are many, many twitter tools, some of which are wordpress plugins. Plugins add functionality to your website. I think they are very cool. Only add and activate plugins which you want to use on your website. Sometimes a plugin may have a conflict with another plugin. So I prefer adding one new plugin at a time, making sure my wordpress website still works, etc. Some plugins, too many plugins may slow down the load time of your site. Have the plugins you use serve a purpose.

Twitter Plugins for WordPress

Auto Tweet Your Posts

Adding Tweet This Plugin to a WordPress Blog (and you can do the same thing to add other plugins–a fun thing to do).

Adding Tweet This Plugin to WordPress

• Managing the setting in your twitter account
• What are twitter @replies?
• What is a twitter direct message or dm?
• What is a rt or retweet in twitter?
• What do those # things mean in twitter, such as #Happy09

Remember, add followers, courtesy to follow back those who follow you. Two rules of thought on that subject:
Follow everyone who follows you, it is the polite thing to do. Invite 2 way conversation with many new friends and clients.
or
Limit your followers to those you know best, to those whose tweets you value. Building closer relationships with those you follow. Your time is limited, but you still read all @ replies.

Last but not least, don’t spam! I saw one guy on twitter whose messages were nothing but something to the effect of look at this cool thing I’m sellling, buy from me. 0 followers and he followed 0. Twitter wasn’t working for him.

As you get the basics down, there are many tools and applications that are built to make twitter a more productive and enjoyable experience.

Great Twitter Resources

• Big Juicy Twitter Guide
• Twitter Handbook
• Twitip – Blog full of twitter tips

Related Posts

• Auto Tweet Your Posts
• I Almost Didn’t Tweet
• Hello Ike

Twitter Newbies – Quick Tips

Galveston Sea Wall

Quite windy, rain off and on, son, his wife and my grandson visiting, enjoying their company. via Twitter – 3:37pm

Stepping outside, enjoying the wind via Twitter – 4:32pm

Saying hello to ike wondering how far the trees can bend before they snap. . . via Twitter – 6:39pm

Crack, There went a tree across the street, missed the houses and cars thankfully #ike texarkana. via Twitter – 7:06pm

Getting dark outside quickly. via Twitter – 7:23pm

And then I lost my internet, silence for over 2 hours, apology to friends who were worried, hoping I’d only lost power. (Actually it was both our universal backup battery and router on the blink). Another crack and more broken trees.

Ike packed quite a punch, seemed to go on and on. Considering the size of the thing, I guess it would take a while to move on through the area. And I don’t doubt it strengthened heading on into Arkansas because the last little bit was a whammy. You’d think it’d be weakening on the tail end, but not so.

My son, his wife and their little boy were visiting, made a wise decision to to travel back to Dallas that evening. Ike took up the whole interstate between here and there.

Friday, Texarkana went crazy, Walmart parking lot looked like Christmas season. Everyone inside stocking up. Long lines at the gas station and prices had jumped. Some stations were empty. Soon they all were empty. One of my friends was stranded in Hope, Arkansas, she couldn’t get gas there either.

Now I love storms, just not the damage they cause. I love the way it feels when a storm comes in. You can smell the rain, the wind blowing in your face, everything feels so alive, the clouds, the lightshow in the sky. Don’t mind a few sprinkles. But times like this I’m very happy that I don’t live on the coast (although I wouldn’t mind it rest of the time.)

I called friends in close by, to check on how they were doing. Many were without power, but had their cell phones turned on or their old corded phones plugged in. Inside the kids played games while my grandson slept through the first half of Ike. But Ike went on and on, naps don’t last forever.

Envied Angela her blackberry she was twittering from, checking her home from her cell. Yes, if I’d have set up text messages and twitter on my phone, I could have continued to give updates even if my power and internet went down. Learned that if you checked #ike on twitter’s search engine, you’d get constant storm updates http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23ike

We made it through, so nice to see sunshine the next morning. Fences down all over the neighborhood. Chain saws cleaning up the felled trees and branches. We had a pickup load of downed branches from Gustav to which we added Ike’s. When it dries up we’ll take them all over to the recycling center to get chopped up into compost.

Thankful that things were not worse, and as much as I was tempted, I did not run around the block during the storm, dodging falling tree branches, but stayed close to the porch or safely inside.

Feel free to add your storm story to the comments or add the link to yours.

Hello Ike

Still catching up from my trip, lots to share both photos and ideas, but first to unbury my house, mow down the jungle of my yard, etc. One of the things I like about twitter is the ease with with information is passed. I saw I had a new follower @EatTheView so I checked out their page. Loved the idea, made a quick blog post to share with others. As with any good thing, feel free to pass it on.

A White House Garden?

But the more I heard about twitter, the more I knew I’d have to check this one out.

Finally I decided I might as well save my name. So I grabbed a twitter account, was delighted there was no lengthy profile to fill out. I have some of those already, I can just point to one, better yet, my business page.

Funny thing happened, while I was checking it out how it worked, I just started using it, finding friends, communicating back and forth. No long posts, no more than 140 characters.

• If you have Facebook, click on the twitter application on the left, add your twitter info, then your tweets update facebook too.
• If you have a blog you will want your posts to auto-tweet. See Auto Tweet Your Posts</li>
• Looking for something?Search Twitter
• Many twitter tools make your life easier. I’m using Digsby. Thanks to Blake!
• I believe what is even more valuable on twitter is the connections you make, read Felicia Slattery’s Ryze post

Learning how to Twitter. Tweet! Tweet!

I Almost Didn’t Tweet

]]> http://www.connectsimply.com/blog/i-almost-didnt-tweet/feed/ 4 http://www.connectsimply.com/blog/auto-tweet-your-posts/ http://www.connectsimply.com/blog/auto-tweet-your-posts/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:30:57 +0000 Heidi Caswell http://www.connectsimply.com/blog/?p=278 Anything that saves me time and helps me keep up (somewhat) with all these social media trends is a good thing. One thing I like about twitter is that I can feed my tweets to Facebook, and feed my blog’s feed to twitter. Anytime I create a new post it goes straight to twitter then [...]

Auto-Tweet Your Posts

]]>

Feed Your Blog to Twitter

Anything that saves me time and helps me keep up (somewhat) with all these social media trends is a good thing.

One thing I like about twitter is that I can feed my tweets to Facebook, and feed my blog’s feed to twitter. Anytime I create a new post it goes straight to twitter then Facebook. More links to my blog, and those friends and followers who hang out there are informed of my new posts. Auto-tweets.

There are several wordpress plugins that work with twitter. I don’t know which work best, but feel free to share you favorite twitter tools and plugins. If you want your tweets to show up on your blog, check out the twittertools plugin and other twitter tools.

I am using http://twitterfeed.com/, a very simply way to feed your rss feeds to twitter. I signed up for twitter and facebook same day. Two places I kept putting off investigating. To my surprise there was a twitter ap in the left side of facebook, so I filled it in and happy days, my tweets were now on face book.

Twitterfeed, “. . .feed your blog to twitter.”

Auto-Tweet Your Posts

]]> http://www.connectsimply.com/blog/auto-tweet-your-posts/feed/ 8