TwitterFeed – Promote Your Blog Posts to Twitter Followers

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78 Responses to “TwitterFeed – Promote Your Blog Posts to Twitter Followers” - Add Yours

• RT the fitness guy

  December 18th, 2007 11:00 am

  I have seen a bit of traffic come from this too. Bit like the entrecard; still don’t really get how it works.

  RT

• Chris Vincent

  December 18th, 2007 11:16 am

  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?

• Darren Rowse

  December 18th, 2007 11:21 am

  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.

• Sérgio Rebelo

  December 18th, 2007 11:22 am

  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

• Jake Bouma

  December 18th, 2007 11:22 am

  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.

• Stephanie

  December 18th, 2007 11:26 am

  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.

• Michael Hampton

  December 18th, 2007 11:37 am

  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?

• Chris Vincent

  December 18th, 2007 11:38 am

  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…

• Pete

  December 18th, 2007 11:52 am

  Is Twitter really a good source for viewer traffic? Seems only like another networking site. Would facebook/myspace bring the same amount of attention?

• Russ

  December 18th, 2007 11:56 am

  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.

• Eric Grey

  December 18th, 2007 12:05 pm

  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

• COD

  December 18th, 2007 12:09 pm

  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.

• Learn SEO

  December 18th, 2007 12:10 pm

  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.

• IndependentKitten

  December 18th, 2007 12:11 pm

  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?

• Seth Sluggo

  December 18th, 2007 12:13 pm

  Thanks. I might try it. I like the name! TWITTER! TWITTER!

• Rob Schultz

  December 18th, 2007 12:32 pm

  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! :)

• Guru

  December 18th, 2007 12:43 pm

  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..

• Caitlin

  December 18th, 2007 12:46 pm

  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.

• Rebellious Arab Girl

  December 18th, 2007 12:52 pm

  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!

• Patrick Grote

  December 18th, 2007 1:03 pm

  Is there an option to use something other than tinyurl?

  Can you override the title of the post with something else?

• Bri

  December 18th, 2007 1:10 pm

  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?

• Artur Kim

  December 18th, 2007 1:18 pm

  I have a twitter account, but I still haven’t done anything with it. When I start using it, I might try twitterfeed out.

• Dr.Mani

  December 18th, 2007 1:36 pm

  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)

• Complete Geek

  December 18th, 2007 1:44 pm

  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.

• Business and Finances

  December 18th, 2007 2:00 pm

  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.

• redwall_hp

  December 18th, 2007 2:06 pm

  I’m not a twit (twitter user). :D

• Pete

  December 18th, 2007 2:29 pm

  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

• Cat Laine

  December 18th, 2007 2:32 pm

  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 :)

• Technology Slice

  December 18th, 2007 3:34 pm

  Looks interesting. I still don’t get what it does though.

• Marlon Burrows

  December 18th, 2007 3:55 pm

  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.

• Gisele B. from myBeautyMatch.com

  December 18th, 2007 4:43 pm

  This is great information Darren!

  Thanks for sharing.

  Gisele

• ericabiz

  December 18th, 2007 5:24 pm

  Thank you! I added this for erica.biz -> “ericabiz” on Twitter. I was wondering how others were doing that. :)

• Danielle Signor

  December 18th, 2007 5:26 pm

  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.)

• Anuj Seth

  December 18th, 2007 5:53 pm

  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.

• JoLynn Braley

  December 18th, 2007 5:57 pm

  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!

• Coen Jacobs

  December 18th, 2007 7:27 pm

  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! :)

• Ian N

  December 18th, 2007 7:30 pm

  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

• Peter Cooper

  December 18th, 2007 7:41 pm

  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.

• Chris Vincent

  December 18th, 2007 8:37 pm

  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

• Tom Hanna

  December 18th, 2007 8:51 pm

  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.

• Michelle S.

  December 18th, 2007 9:16 pm

  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.

• Shawn

  December 18th, 2007 10:47 pm

  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.

• Cat Laine

  December 18th, 2007 11:31 pm

  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.

• Steve Rhode

  December 19th, 2007 12:06 am

  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

• Kelly

  December 19th, 2007 12:13 am

  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.

• PoWah

  December 19th, 2007 12:21 am

  I will definitely try this opportunity to drive some extra traffic to my blog. Thanks for the tip ;-)

• John Frost

  December 19th, 2007 12:39 am

  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.

• Lane

  December 19th, 2007 1:03 am

  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!

• ZRC Erik

  December 19th, 2007 1:11 am

  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.

• Anurag

  December 19th, 2007 1:25 am

  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.

• DefogMyBlog

  December 19th, 2007 1:41 am

  I like Twitter and use it for a mixture of fun and blog promotion. I’ve also found some really interesting blogs to follow. It does not give up its riches immediately. It is a bit like truffle hunting.

• Adam Snider

  December 19th, 2007 2:22 am

  I really don’t like auto-poster systems on Twitter. It smacks of spam, especially if the person doesn’t post anything other than blog posts.

  Personally, I prefer when people only post their best articles to Twitter. Or, even when they post every article, but obviously do it manually. Combine that with other, non-blog posts, and it feel more genuine.

  I have to agree with Dr. Mani above. I have unfollowed people for doing this.

  I won’t unfollow Darren, because, well, he actually posts other stuff as well, and the vast majority of his blog posts are worth reading (though, I get them in my feed reader already). But, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this promotional tactic for everyone, as it has a fairly good chance of back firing.

• Aaress

  December 19th, 2007 2:53 am

  Excellent way to boost traffic!

• Rinaldo

  December 19th, 2007 3:07 am

  Now twitterfeed.com doesn’t want to open… maybe a Digg-1stpage-like effect from this post?.

• Eric

  December 19th, 2007 3:10 am

  I have been trying this method for a few weeks now and haven’t seen much of a response but my blog is so small I wasn’t expecting a lot of follows.

• Andrew G.R.

  December 19th, 2007 3:18 am

  Every little bit helps. Gonna register now! Thanks.

• Anne

  December 19th, 2007 3:28 am

  I have a new travel blog and I got traffic from twitter. I ran a search and pulled up people interested in travel and listed them as people I’m going to “follow”. A number of them visited my site and I saw a big traffic surge. From this I got a handful of people who now actively contribute to my blog.

• Katrina

  December 19th, 2007 3:48 am

  I use the Twitter Tools plugin for wordpress (Wordpress site). It has some pretty good features. I mostly just use it to post my blog entries to my twitter account and display my current tweet on my page, which are the most useful features I find. It can also create blog posts from your tweets and if you updated twitter a lot, it can create a ‘daily digest’ post of your tweets – but I haven’t used those yet. :)

• Shane

  December 19th, 2007 4:23 am

  I also use the Twitter Tools plugin. I works great.

  I prefer a one way to twitter from my blog.

• Trevor Carpenter

  December 19th, 2007 4:35 am

  Thanks for this one. I’ve noticed your posts in your twitter feed. It seems nice.

• Linette

  December 19th, 2007 4:43 am

  I haven’t tried Twitter yet. It’s on my list of things to try, maybe I’ll get around to it after the Christmas rush. This is definitely something to contemplate trying.

• Sterling

  December 19th, 2007 4:46 am

  I use twitter to give one line tips and to add a bit of lifestyle description for my readers. I don’t do that on the blog, which is more business oriented. People seem to really like it.

• Michael Grove

  December 19th, 2007 5:44 am

  Sounds cool… Any known bugs? better try it..

• Deb Ng

  December 19th, 2007 5:52 am

  I’m new to Twitter as of last month. I didn’t want to get sucked into another social networking distraction, but so many people convinced me of its benefits when I was at BWE, I decided to give it a try.

  Yes, it can be a distraction, but it’s also a great way to tell everyone what I’m up to and make them aware of my posts.

  I’m debng on Twitter.

• Lipton

  December 19th, 2007 6:21 am

  I can’t find any documentation on that site? Trying to embed vidoes and photos, but I dunno I guess they expect people to magically figure it out?

• MyBlogContest

  December 19th, 2007 7:19 am

  Cool site and service!!

• Jawed Iqbal

  December 19th, 2007 12:52 pm

  I have been trying this method for a few weeks now and haven’t seen much of a response but my blog is so small I wasn’t expecting a lot of follows.

  http://www.infobulb.com

• iqbal

  December 19th, 2007 4:18 pm

  hi
  i am also using twitter to bring traffic.

• TGrundy

  December 20th, 2007 1:54 am

  Darren: interesting reading the responses to see how many people don’t use Twitter yet. Also, find some of the negative comments interesting. I’ve just started using it (Twitter) recently (within the past month) and find that I like it a lot. Not only is it entertaining in many ways, but I’ve also discovered some good blogs to read because of it.

  As far as TwitterFeed goes I hadn’t really thought of using Twitter in this way until I saw this post. Bears checking out, although the concerns about losing followers is a legit one.

• Ruchir

  December 21st, 2007 6:39 am

  Thanks for letting us know about the service. Now, I won’t have to do it manually…

• Angela (Cottage Magpie)

  December 21st, 2007 8:10 am

  Thanks for the tip! I am just starting to get into social media and twitter, and so any info is good info for me.
  ~Angela :-)

• Andrei

  January 7th, 2008 11:34 pm

  It’s a great way for new bloggers to get some traffic.. thanks for the tip!

• Cat Laine

  January 8th, 2008 3:24 am

  Took some of folks’ advice from the comments and used it for AIDG’s twitter account. Results: It seems that twitterfeed is a great way to get traffic to your blog, but you get much more traffic if you interact with friends/followers + use twitterfeed. Otherwise unless you’re an A-list blogger (Darren, Boing Boing, Laughing Squid, etc.), you’re just noise in the twitterstream. If you’ve made some connection with your readers (stuff about you, @ replies, some DMs to peeps you find interesting, other useful links), folks seem be more likely to check out your posts afterwards.

• Brad Anderson

  May 9th, 2008 1:07 am

  If you want to automatically post your eBay items, just like Twitterfeed does for RSS, you can use http://twibler.com. My name is linked to the site.

• Jason Moody

  January 1st, 2009 7:31 am

  I’ve found that at its simplest twitter is great for posting small items or stories that aren’t big enough to justify a full blog post. Sometimes I expand the twitter into a full post as a story develops.

  Some of my most useful contacts have come from the strangest places so I wouldn’t discount Twitters networking capability, and I suppose at one point the internet, website, blog, (fill in your own choice here) was regarded as a bit strange and of little use, but as we have seen, the next generation will view things like encyclopedias and local advertising directories in much the same way that we wonder how things were transported when the options you had was a steam engine or a horse.

• Skin Clinic MD

  March 14th, 2009 2:26 am

  Excellent tool. We’re now using this to send medical treatment updates to our patient base directly.

• Thomas DeGroff

  April 20th, 2009 6:04 am

  I am just learning about Twitter, I am anxious to connect with others. I want to share my knowledge, experience and know-how about being a professional sales person and sales leader. I have written a book entitled; “Thoughts While Shaving, Selling and Leadership Ideas that Worked for Me”.

  For additional information tweet me at tdegroff@cox.net

• Internet Marketing Blogs

  June 7th, 2009 11:09 pm

  Yeah, another vote for twitterfeed here. The main advantage of placing the blog feed into twitter is that your blog articles will automatically be sent to your twitter messages, though not all content of the articles will be sent, but only the title or the top paragraph including the link to your post.

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