Quick blog promotion tip – Twitterfeed.com is a service that will automatically twitter any post that you publish on your blog.
I’ve started doing it on my Twitter account and have seen quite a few visitors come across from it so far.
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I have seen a bit of traffic come from this too. Bit like the entrecard; still don’t really get how it works.
RT
Yes it’s taking over the world…. and yes this is giving you publicity, but really why do you need to have twitter when you have one of the most popular blogs in the internet?
Chris – to be honest I’m not a big user of it – but for me it’s more of an experiment with a new (ish) medium. I also am finding that more and more people are accessing blogs in different ways – Twitter fans love that medium and may not read blogs as much. Others prefer RSS, others bookmarking…. I guess it’s about putting your blog out there in as many ways as you can and giving people opportunity to interact with it on their turf.
I prefer to use it to publish anything else rather than my blog. I want to use Twitter more like an add-on to my blogging, not an index of my blog. I don’t wanrt people stop subcribing the blog feed and start subscribing my twitter instead
I wrote about this and some other cool uses for Twitter in a post entitled Tweet Better: 9 Unconventional (and Slightly Badass) Ways to use Twitter. Check it out! I’ve been using TwitterFeed and I love it.
Interesting. I’ve not taken to Twitter yet; too many other areas I’m enjoying working on website promotion with. But something like that is something I could work with.
I haven’t yet found a good reason to use twitter regularly. I can see why it’s popular, but it seems to be so full of inane crap that I have trouble seeing myself using it. Will someone please explain to me why I should use twitter?
I suppose that if your trying to make this blog more “user friendly” by joining in with the Twitter crowd i can see the advantages of that. Because this is your job I can’t see any problems with your tactics of spreading the words that come from your blog. In reality i should start studying your tactics…. and asking even more questions…
Is Twitter really a good source for viewer traffic? Seems only like another networking site. Would facebook/myspace bring the same amount of attention?
I have never had much to do with Twitter, and probably never will. I cannot fathom how it can help any blog when it is taking readers away from reading your main content.
I worry that my reluctance to use Twitter is going to turn into one of those vast life regrets… But I just can’t get into it, and I don’t know a single person who uses it… But maybe I’ll try this out and see how it goes.
Eric
Among regular Twitter users it’s considered bad form to use it primarily to promote a blog. If I want to know when you update I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed. I’ve stopped following more than a few people on Twitter because of this. A better use would be to extend conversations that are taking place on your blog. People that are interested will click through to your profile and find the blog. Most of them probably already know about it anyway.
I hate the signup process, it took like a lifetime to get the contacts from the email, I was about to give up when I first signed up with twitter.
Maybe I should look into it. I could use the traffic boost. I am also wondering if Myspace and Facebook would have the same effect?
Thanks. I might try it. I like the name! TWITTER! TWITTER!
Every little bit helps…I hoped on Entrecard and it worked wonders (especially the traffic from your site at 3 credits). Let’s see what this can do for me! :)
I’ve not tried twitter before, but like you said any traffic generating site is fine for me. But i still dream to make it big on stumbleupon, i’m so awed by the stats the stumble users give, i think thats by far the best traffic driver. I still have a long way to go to actually get traffic from stumble. But, thats exactly where i’m focusing right now..
For stuff like Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, etc, it depends on your target reader/market. For some they can be great promotional tools (though beware of looking like you’re doing it solely to promote yourself, as stated by COD above), but for others you run the risk of looking like you’re trying to be 14.
I love Twitter. I use it every day! It’s amazing and I do get traffic from there if I post anything directed to my site. However, this twitterfeed.com site is very iffy. I tried to sign up, and I made an openID thing. Tried to log into twitterfeed with it, but didn’t work. Now the site is not loading at all! :(
Also, Darren, as a request, can you discuss how to get more people using feedburner and how to completely convert wordpress to use feedburner. Maybe you already did in the past, but I just started checking out your site for about a month! :)
Thanks!
Is there an option to use something other than tinyurl?
Can you override the title of the post with something else?
This is another avenue open for blog promotion. As with other areas, it may or may not work for people.
Have not ventured into twitter land, to date, but it would be good to see what results you (Darren) get from this?
I have a twitter account, but I still haven’t done anything with it. When I start using it, I might try twitterfeed out.
Darren, there’s likely to be a backlash to this post. Many Twits (!) don’t like such auto-posting systems, and will UN-follow if you do it exclusively.
Guy Kawasaki did something different with this – he set up a new Twitter account to auto-post Truemors. Then, he posted a few stories out of them using his personal Twitter account too, with the rest being personal messages.
I don’t separate my accounts, but intersperse blog update announcements with regular tweets.
Using a Twitter account purely to auto-post your blog updates *might* get you short term traffic – but no one wants to follow an account that’s always updated by a robot! And without ‘followers’ on Twitter, the traffic vanishes.
There are twists to this. Mashable’s Twitter account is about their blog updates (but not auto-posted, as far as I can tell). Dell’s Twitter account delivers deal notifications ONLY – coupons and special offers. They use Twitter as an advertising channel.
I just came up with the idea of a TwitZine – to Twitter your ezine, creating a unique micro-e-newsletter format. Details will unfold on that TwitZine account soon. http://www.TwitZine.com
Bottom-line: Twitter is just as SOCIAL a medium as any other – blogs included. You wouldn’t read a blog that’s ENTIRELY scraped content auto-published by a robot, would you (even if it ranks high for a while on Google and gets traffic)?! Auto-posting to Twitter is similar.
Sorry, this got longer than I intended :)
All success
Dr.Mani
(drmani on Twitter)
I signed up for a twitter account ages ago and haven’t touched it since. It’s # 57 on my list of 1001 things I need to do for my blog. How many visitors is “quite a few”. More than I’m used to I’m sure.
I just wonder if the audience for Twitter are not the same people who already uses the more popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster.
So that it will not really give benefit anyone whose blog has already been exposed to those mentioned.
I’m not a twit (twitter user). :D
I agree with Business and Finances. The larger audience belongs to Facebook, MySpace, etc. Twitter is still considered minor and will not generate the traffic in large numbers like Facebook, MySpace, etc. Whoa I just answered my own question xD
Thanks for the plug, Darren.
I tend to use twitter 2 different ways.
1) To promote my non-profit. We use twitterfeed to get our blog/info about our work out to more people. Soon we hope to get some of our interns in Guatemala to twitter interesting things that are happening in the field. http://www.twitter.com/aidg
2) Personally, I use it to get to know other bloggers/professionals in my field. Most of the folks I follow are green/tech bloggers that I like and respect. It’s a nice friendly way to get to know people that you are not yet on a regular email/skype basis with. Oh I also use it to put links that I couldn’t get away with putting on my work blog :)
Looks interesting. I still don’t get what it does though.
The number of users on Twitter has grown a lot over the past couple of months which has transformed it into another tool for bloggers looking to increase their exposure. If you create interesting and useful twits with some well arranged phrases it has potential to drive some traffic to your blog. Twitter is free, so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it.
This is great information Darren!
Thanks for sharing.
Gisele
Thank you! I added this for erica.biz -> “ericabiz” on Twitter. I was wondering how others were doing that. :)
Neat idea, I may try it. Mostly I have to comment against those who suggest that Twitter is just another toy for the MySpace crowd. I love Twitter, it allows me to see what other professionals I read are up to, as well as my friends and family. It’s like having the company of a group chat window, without having to participate or devote a lot of attention to it. I find it a wonderful alternative to instant messaging, and it allows me to interact with quite a variety of people I wouldn’t find or bother on IM.
(Also, for the record, I do have a Facebook but not a MySpace.)
Thanks for the tip!
I just signed up for the service and also blogged about it at
http://onlinepresence.blogsailor.com/2007/12/18/join-me-on-twitter/
Just like you’ve mentioned, this is an experiment for me too. The idea is to see if new readers come my way as a result of doing this.
Hi Darren,
Twitter is currently in my “information overload” and “how to get sidetracked” pile, so I haven’t been using it so much lately. However, I am more than willing to do an experiment and see what happens by using twitterfeed. Thanks for letting us know about it!
Too bad the site looks a bit down… I can’t get it working though. Will check this one later, thanks for the tip Darren!
Twitter is really a powerfull tool and with TwitterFeed, it could become even more powerfull. Hope the website will be available again soon! :)
I rarely use Twitter for anything, mainly because I don’t have the time to do it. This seems quite interesting though so I may have to look into it at some point. Nice find!
Ian
If someone who’s really good / interesting does this, and posts, say, up to a maximum of a few times a day, it’s okay. But when people I’m following on Twitter start doing this with EVERY blog post several times a day, I unfollow them. If their blog is good, I’m already subscribed to it, so their posts are just clogging up my Twitter page, and it’s hard enough to keep up as it is. Just a warning for anyone who thinks this is a good solution for multiple inane posts a day.. people will stop following you.
Keeping this in the back of my mind all day I’ve come up with a little conclusion. If your able to slowly get used to the Twitter culture, I’m sure you’ll be able to accomplish this successfully. Your pushing out multiple blog posts every day and if you add some personal things behind the post I’m sure that it will be quite inviting (and enjoyable) to use both the blog + twitter to entertain and involve all of us, especially the devoted ones
I was thinking of searching for a WordPress plugin to autopost to twitter or even posting a request in the WordPress.org support forums. No need now…well, maybe. It looks like you sent them too much traffic and they broke. (Site’s down.)
You had a recent post asking what people miss about the “good old days” of blogging. One of the things was the early sense of community. Even among competing business blogs there was a sense that bloggers shared something that others in the same business didn’t. Twitter is kind of a silly little app that has the potential to restore that to some extent. Social networking without the need to pimp your page.
I used it to road blog random thoughts from my cell while on a cross-country trip in Sept. It drew some people to my blog but it gained me a lot of new Twitter followers, too. None of my blog or Twitter posts are the same, though I sometimes link to a blog post or Flickr page.
Haven’t used it for a work reason, yet, though.
It’s a great traffic strategy. It amazes me how many different ways there are to get traffic. Using systems like twitter, can really benefit your site and your blog. Although you’ll always have someone moan about it.
For folks that are concerned about overloading twitter followers: Twitterfeed lets you set how often it should check your rss feed (every 1/2 hr to once a day) and lets you set the max number of posts to put up on twitter at any one time.
Be careful with the Twitter trick. Twitter has been blocking some accounts that are nothing but feed links. I got a warning letter myself.
Also make sure you don’t follow or drop a lot of people at one time as well. That also appears to be a trigger for a warning.
But if you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s steverhode
Steve
Interesting article – I just signed up for this on yesterday, before having only used Twitter for social purposes (like finding friends at BlogHer). I, too, am using it on an experimental basis.
I will definitely try this opportunity to drive some extra traffic to my blog. Thanks for the tip ;-)
Looks like a great service. I’m a late-comer to twitter and have been doing this manually for the posts I wanted to highlight. Just posted every link to twitter seems like spamming my friends. I’d rather participate in some commentary or spur of the moment notifications than twitter every post.
What I have found twitter very useful for is as a source of new stories.
As much as your original post, I appreciate the comments on this topic. I’ve resisted Twitter as something trivial and a time-waster… and for me, I think I will leave it there.
So many worthwhile things to do and so little time!
I actually just created a twitter feed last week and already have a few followers – it’s all about making your content as easy to access as possible.
I never understood the real use of twitter. I am really very surprised to see that it is becoming so popular. I created one account on it, but never felt like using it. This is worst thing on internet I have ever tried. I wrote a blog post about it:
http://anuragbansal.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/what-twitter-does-after-all/
By the way http://twitterfeed.com is having problem loading the page.
Other than that, “First impression is the last impression”. My first impression of twitter was really bad.
Nice advice though for those who still use twitter.