Automated Twitter Accounts That Don’t Suck #1 – Tweet Your Blog
Twitter is a great place to hang out, network & promote your blog, but like any successful service, it can be prone to bots. Rather, it is prone to automated twitter accounts posting spam.
Spam is bad, but automated twitter accounts aren’t necessarily. A number of great twitter accounts (such as the National Rail Enquries Twitter Account) are automated, as there isn’t a need for it to be anything but – why create work for yourself? I propose that you create a twitter account purely for your blog posts. Why? Well, a number of reasons.
- It secures your brand - If your blog takes off, people will snap up Twitter usernames associated with it. Capture them first before they do.
- It allows you to promote your post twice without pissing people off - Your main twitter account (the one you network with) can retweet your automated twitter account, rather than you retweeting yourself. It does look a little better, plus you promote both your post and your twitter account.
- It disassociates you from your blog (in a good way) - Whilst you will be the person behind the blog, it’ll help build the brand around your blog. If you ever sell your blog or move on, you can give a twitter account away, so the blog will continue to be successful even without you.
So, how do you create a useful twitter account for automated posting of your blog? Here’s what you need to do:-
1. Sign Up For a Twitter Account
First off, get a twitter account. You can sign up here. Note down the username & password – you’ll need it for the next step.
2. Download Twitter Tools Plugin for WordPress
We will use a plugin called Twitter Tools by Alex King for this tutorial. Download & Install it using your chosen method of installing wordpress plugins.
3. Set Up Twitter Tools
To set up Twitter Tools, click on Twitter Tools under the settings menu in the wp-admin. A screen like this should appear:-
Insert your Twitter Username & Password into the boxes & test the login. Make sure you switch the “Create a Tweet When You Post” & Default to Yes, and the Tweet prefix to what you want. Make sure other options are switched off – you don’t want the creation of blog post of your tweets. Save, post & check your twitter accounts.
4. Integrate your Favourite URL shortener to Twitter Tools (Optional)
A number of popular URL shorteners can be integrated with twitter tools. I can’t go through the setting up of these – most use an API key which can be gained from your account on your URL shortener. Here’s some of them at least.
Try it yourself! Set up a Twitter account purely for your blog. Here’s mine you can follow for my blog – @gospelrhys. What’s yours?
Tags: How To, twitter, twitter tools, wordpres plugin | Comments: 9 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
An account *purely* for publishing your blog? Not sure about that.
Meh, it works. And if you don’t like it, don’t follow it! I was surprised just how many of my followers on twitter cared more about my post than my inane chatter!
I have nothing more to add to this discussion. However, it appears that by posting this, (assuming you accept it) I become your Top Commentator. Deary me…
I’ve used Twitter tools and never really liked it.
What I do now is use HootSuite and automate my Tweets via a RSS feed. I also use Ping.fm…again via HootSuite.
I’ve resisted the urge to start setting up multiple Twitter accounts. I have 2 travel blogs and a membership site now, in addition to my main (personal) Twitter account.
Maybe with so much going on, it’s all the more reason to set them up.
Question: I tried to secure a second name, but Twitter didn’t seem to let me sign it up using the same e-mail address. Do we seriously need a separate e-mail address for each Twitter account?
@Dave I think so. Never really thought about it (as I have email addresses coming out of my earholes), but can understand why.
I wouldn’t tweet on 2 accounts, too much hard work, but I’d create them, just to secure the names.
@Dave: you do need separate email addresses for each account.
I have 2 accounts (1 personal & 1 for my blog) for the exact reason you said, Rhys, most people aren’t interested in my inane chatter. Also, I was drowning out my blog with everything else I was posting. I don’t automate them, though. I used to, but I didn’t always want to send to Twitter as soon as I hit publish.
Twitter Tools is a cool word press plugin for Twitter, but you have to remember to continue to Tweet your blog post at least 3 more times within 6-8 hours of itself.
I have my main personal Twitter account, but also have a separate one for each of my websites that’s automated and purely tweets out new blog posts. (in my experience you do need separate email addresses)
I think it’s a useful way of doing things and it means people have another optional way of effectively subscribing without all the casual chatter that I might personally do on Twitter. At most there might be 3-5 tweets in a day, so it’s not like it’s a spammer account that just sits there all day retweeting stuff.
Equally, I follow a bunch of automated Twitter accounts that do the same, nothing wrong with an automated Twitter feed as long as it has it’s use for some people.