If you are on Twitter and have a sizable following, you can dramatically increase blog views and blog subscriptions by tweeting them following each new post. However, if you are into social media in any big way, updating Twitter, Facebook and posting to reviewing and bookmarking sites are all horribly time consuming.
You can ease the burden through automation if you choose. There are several free tools that will automatically tweet your new blog posts using your Twitter account:
- If you are using WordPress software for your blog, there is a plug-in called “WP to Twitter” that will post new articles through your Twitter account automatically. It installs automatically through your WP control panel and has a solid five star rating.
- TwitterFeed, a free stand alone application, will also automatically tweet your new blog posts. By the way, it will also update Facebook, Ping and Hello Txt.
- HootSuite is a free online Twitter client that you can use instead of or along with the online software provided by Twitter. It too will automatically tweet new blog posts. HootSuite will also update Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ping.
So which one of these tools should you use? That is up to you. I use all three of them. It does not do any good to have three of the same tweets at the same time. In fact, it is harmful as it appears you are a spammer. The key is setting each to tweet at different times. For example:
- “WP to Twitter” tweets it immediately. It has no setting to delay or stagger the time of the tweet.
- “TwitterFeed” allows you to set the frequency for it to check your blog feed for updates (e.g. ever hour, every two hours, three hours, etc.). I have mine set for three hours.
- “HootSuite” works the same way as TwitterFeed. I have mine set for six hours.
This is not a perfect system but for the most part it does stagger your automatic tweets and allows you to spend the time saved to build the number of followers on Twitter.
Yet, as with most things, it is your choice how you use it or if you use it at all.
One person mentioned that the Retweet button besides each post wasn’t working for her — that is, showing a 1 or higher after a post was retweeted by her on her Twitter account. Has anybody else noticed this?
I tried it and it did not work. So I went to some other blogs and tried it and it did not work there either. You may need to contact Retweet.com to see what the problem is.
I talked to Neicole and she suggested Tweetmeme — that it works well for her and in another case. So I set that up and the RT numbers now seem to reflect the modest RTing I thought was occurring.
Excellent suggestions Mike. I never really considered using all three! I started with a Twitter feed and didn’t love it. Do use Hootsuite — it’s great, but largely have been using it to post other’s content to my Twitter sites. Have to explore using it for uploading my own blog posts. Had used an automatic feed in the past, and they do take the fuss out of it all. But using all three at different scheduled postings is a very interesting tactic. Will have to seriously consider it.
Great tips. Thanks for sharing. I was using these until I developed Twitter for Business. Personally I do not like posting every hour or 3 hr. In http://www.trcb.net (Free to use for the basic), you can mention how many post you want in the whole day and you can define your day hours too, it will read rss every hour, spread into whole day by following your day hours and post it accordingly. Now even it is automatic, you can act like human instead of 24/7 feeds which is good for news channel and not for blog posts.
Hope this helps
Okay, where do I secure information on this before I use it? I want to know exactly what I am getting into. Their site doesn’t tell you anything.
I would like to know about the sensitive issue of annoying people in your tweet stream by posting more than once or twice about your blog. I put up a tweet by hand in the morning and again in the afternoon to notify of a new blog post and try to change the headline so it is not boring. But even so I am really wary of putting people off, am I being over-senstivie ?
Lucy, I will give you my opinion and let others throw rocks at it.
I do not think you will annoy anyone unless you tweet the same message multiple times in say five minutes. Most people following you will never see the message anyway, unless they are mentioned by @username anyway.
However, when people check out your profile to see if they wish to follow you on twitter, I don’t think it looks good to have the same tweet several times in a row. But you could have the same problem if you do it manually.
Just one man’s opinion but one I respect.