Note: In this series I’ll delve into some of the better plugins available for WordPress that I am already using, or about to start using. I’m aiming to highlight 30 of the better plugins.
Integrating Twitter into your blog is, for me, one of the best things you can do. While there are plugins around that can display your Twitter profile and/or recent tweets, having WordPress publish your posts to Twitter automatically is a tidy idea.
Hence why I use, and like, WordTwit which “keeps track of when you publish new posts, and automatically informs all followers by pushing out a tweet.” The plugin details talks about an increase in traffic to your blog as a result of this automatic activity, and I can vouch for that – since loading the plugin back in April 2009 I have seen visitors to the blog jump from less than 1,000 per month to over 10,000 unique visitors each month.
You can choose from your preferred URL shortening service, but be warned you’ll need account details for some of them, so sign up and get the API key first:
You can personalise the message that is posted when you publish a blog entry, and you must remember to authorise the WordTwit plugin to your blog before it’ll work at all:
With the plugin working you’ll see something like the below on the new post page, including the shortened URL for the published post;
