10 Awesome Ways to Integrate Twitter With Your Website

    Glen Stansberry on Jan 23rd 2009 with 252 comments

    Web developers with social media savvy are in hot demand. Imagine what it would be like to promise your clients a web presence that is fully integrated with their Twitter strategy and makes it easier for their content to go viral on Twitter. Would be nice, no? Well — why imagine? The tools for web developers to add a touch of Twitter to any site are out there and easy to use. Trust us — your clients will love you for it!

    There’s no better time to start utilizing Twitter integration tools than right now. Here are 10 of the most useful ways to start turning your site readers (or your client’s customer base) into Twitter followers, and vice versa.

    1. Twitter Widgets

    If you’re just getting started with wanting to integrate Twitter into your site, than simply adding the traditional Twitter widget to your site’s sidebar is a great start. It’s not sexy, but it’s a great way to show your latest tweets on your website. It’s an effective way to get readers involved into your Twitter updates, without taking up too much screen real estate.

    Twitter widgets can be used with virtually any site or blog, including HTMl-only pages. While they may not require the most exciting development hack to incorporate Twitter into a website (copy + paste), simplicity is not a bad thing.

    2. Twitter Buttons

    Twitter Buttons is a nifty little service that helps you quickly create a badge to promote your Twitter account. You can choose from over 40 different well-designed Twitter buttons, spanning different shapes and sizes. The service also allows you to automatically create the HTML needed to build the badge without any programming knowledge, not even a teensy bit. Easy peasy.

    3. Twitter Tools

    Thanks to WordPress’ dominance in the blog software world, many blog owners are using Alex King’s excellent Twitter Tools to integrate Twitter into their blogs. Twitter tools is a Twitter Swiss Army knife for WordPress, adding almost limitless functionality to an otherwise Twitter-less blog. The nifty plugin allows you to:

    • Create a blog post from each of your tweets
    • Create a daily digest post of your tweets
    • Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
    • Post a tweet from your sidebar
    • Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

    … and much more.

    4. TwitThis

    Twitter is a powerful promotional tool. Many influential Twitterers have thousands of followers, and an endorsement from one of the “Twitterati” could send a wave of traffic to your site. If you factor in that those followers might tweet to their followers, than you have a very viral social marketing tool.

    TwitThis is a little button that you can place in your HTML or in your blog template to allow your readers to quickly and easily share what they’re reading with their Twitter followers. Aside from an HTML button, users can also “tweet” their findings via a bookmarklet, and WordPress users have a nifty plugin they can install as well.

    5. TweetSuite

    TweetSuite is one of the most compelling uses of the Twitter API in a blog plugin. TweetSuite is a WordPress plugin that furrows among the Twitter API and finds the tweets that reference the current page. It adds another aspect to commenting, showing more of the total conversation around the blog post. Aside from that, TweetSuite boasts some impressive functionality like a Retweet button and a “Tweet this” button (like the famed “Digg this” button).

    6. Chirrup

    TweetSuite is currently offered only for WordPress blogs, but there is another solution for pulling Twitter comments across any platform: Chirrup. Chirrup allows you to display all of the references from Twitter on a given webpage (much like TweetSuite), except it does this by only adding a Javascript snippet. Chirrup is a PHP/Javascript program that has to be hosted locally, but only requires a tiny Javascript include to work on any page. This means that any static HTML page can now have a Twitter-based commenting system.

    That’s a lot of marketing potential for sites wanting to tap into Twitter.

    7. Tweet This

    Tweet This is a WordPress plugin that has much of the same functionality as TwitThis, with a few more bells and whistles. Tweet This automatically shortens your website or blog post URL with a URL shortening service, and also allows you to easily configure the look and feel of the service, without having to dig around in the template code too much. It’s a simple drop-in solution for WordPress blogs, but a powerful way to help spread your content among readers on Twitter.

    8. IntenseDebate

    IntenseDebate is one of the best 3rd-party commenting systems on the web. The service is famous for its threaded comments, user system and rating, excellent design and ease of installation. Yet one of the most progressive features in IntenseDebate’s deep feature set is the ability to notify Twitter when you’ve made a comment. Not only does this feature help the commenter showcase what he’s yakking about online, it also gives the originating site some more attention on Twitter.

    9. Aweber

    Prized for it’s stellar email marketing features, Aweber has an excellent feature for any newsletter marketer: The ability to tweet the newsletter. The newsletter delivery service has actually created a way to convert RSS to Email to Tweet (if you can wrap your head around that).

    There are many site owners who run incredibly successful email newsletters, so this feature is very useful for those wanting to bring that extra bit of awareness to a newsletter.

    10. Twitterfeed

    Last, but certainly not least, is a pioneer of website and Twitter integration: Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows you to automatically insert tweets into your Twitter stream from any RSS feed. Many blogs utilize this functionality to let their Twitter followers know when new content is available. You can tailor the format of the generated tweets, and it’s a great way to keep your Twitter followers engaged on your blog.

     
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    By Glen Stansberry

    Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

    Glen Stansberry is a web developer and blogger. You can read more tips on web development at his blog Web Jackalope or follow him on Twitter.  

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    Discussion 252 Comments

    Comment Page 7 of 7 1 ... 5 6 7
    1. Jase says:
      November 12, 2010 at 6:49 am

      Awesome, i’ve managed to get mine implemented onto the website. Also to match the style to the website.

      Auto size is the best feature to save messing around with sizing the widget itself (Although easily done)

      Be careful though as the JS can conflict slightly.

      Reply
    2. John says:
      November 12, 2010 at 7:35 am

      Thanks for great post for sure i will use it
      Thanks again

      Reply
    3. Carlo/Carlo At YourService Productions says:
      November 20, 2010 at 1:53 pm

      This is just what I was looking for. Thanks for writing such a great post!

      Reply
    4. Malcom Reynolds says:
      November 29, 2010 at 10:43 am

      The internet and its many features are definitely the way to go for your business nowadays. Gone are the days when the phone book was the best means of advertising.

      Reply
    5. coursework writing says:
      January 10, 2011 at 12:48 pm

      Auto size is the best feature to save messing around with sizing the widget itself (Although easily done!

      Reply
    6. Bollywood - News, Actress, Stars, Gossips, Movie, Reviews says:
      January 20, 2011 at 3:27 am

      Your article make it seem so easy with your topic. but It’s seems too complicated and very broad for me.

      Reply
    7. arun says:
      January 28, 2011 at 12:07 pm

      realy this one is very interestig article

      Reply
    8. Emma Lander says:
      January 29, 2011 at 9:24 am

      Hi,

      Thanks so much for this post, you just helped me out big time, really well written and easy to follow. thanks alot!! :D

      Reply
    9. รถยนต์มือสอง says:
      February 1, 2011 at 11:00 pm

      I’d have to give blessing with you on this. Which is not something I typically do! I love reading a post that will make people think. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!

      Reply
    10. Robbie Douglas says:
      February 10, 2011 at 8:14 am

      Option, options, options. Looks like I need to use WordPress more

      Reply
    11. Dana Greene says:
      March 8, 2011 at 9:04 am

      thx for the rund down Glen, im currently using xsitepro for my website will i be able to use any of these services.

      Thx

      Dana

      Reply
    12. Brand Design Agency says:
      March 21, 2011 at 3:14 am

      Thanks for sharing this has been really useful currently using twitter alot with with the many sites i currently manage intergrating twiiter with them is great.

      Reply
    13. newsletter software says:
      March 21, 2011 at 8:30 pm

      Great article!
      I am sure i will use it!
      Thank you for your sharing!

      Reply
    14. Deepak says:
      March 27, 2011 at 11:44 pm

      I want many friend . Connect me Dear.

      Reply
    15. Jiletli Tel says:
      March 30, 2011 at 8:17 am

      Cool tutorial for a starter like me, need to practice more now

      Reply
    16. john says:
      April 5, 2011 at 4:49 am

      thanks for letting me comment by

      Reply
    17. SunSpots Voice Talent Tom says:
      April 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm

      Thanks for posting these up! Someone earlier mentioned gone are the days of searching through the yellow pages for information. We’re still “letting our fingers do the walking” (the old yellow pages advertising tagline), but now are fingers are on the mouse and keyboard. Off to add some twitter feeds to a client’s site. Thanks-Tom

      Reply
    18. Adam Pervez says:
      April 17, 2011 at 1:39 am

      Thanks for these tools. Very helpful for someone new to blogging and twitter!

      Reply
    19. Martin Phoenix says:
      April 25, 2011 at 9:57 pm

      Thanks for clearing up a few points I was stuck on. My clients are starting to ask about combining twitter with their sites more and more. I have booked marked this page for future reference.

      Reply
    20. Curtis Simpson says:
      May 3, 2011 at 10:39 am

      Great information here. I do tweet and I have some integration with it on my website. I am going to try adding the twitter widget to my local meditation website right now! Thanks.

      Reply
    21. Magento Developer says:
      May 20, 2011 at 8:55 am

      Some great little tools here Im going to go and install the wordpress plugins now and get my twitter sync’d looks great

      Thanks for sharing these

      Reply
    22. The Nerdy Nurse says:
      May 31, 2011 at 9:16 pm

      great tools.

      been some innovations since this list, but helpful regardless.

      Reply
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    24. mdrayhankhan says:
      June 7, 2011 at 3:50 am

      This is a helpful webpage for web developer. If we develope any webpage so we need like this information…

      Reply
    25. Crime in South Africa says:
      June 14, 2011 at 12:36 pm

      Great Methods for implementation.
      Love these articles as they always help developers!

      Reply
    26. live chat services says:
      June 25, 2011 at 8:52 am

      Excellent article and have taken all you have said onboard. I especially like the Twitter Feed reference and have chosen to go ahead with that one. Interesting tools.

      Reply
    27. Michael says:
      June 30, 2011 at 4:08 am

      This is some pretty interesting stuff although most of it is just a case of repeating your tweets onto a different website.

      As a web design agency we are trying to diversify the way it is possible to interact with social networking sites such as Twitter.

      The first example that we came up with was grabbing a load of tweets on a certain subject.
      As we were exibiting at a business exibition called Let’s Do Business, we decided to make a hub page to do with the exibition. This page included a Twitter feed that grabbed tweets mentioning @letsdobusiness1, @Switchplane (our company), #ldbe and #cloudpun.
      The result of which can be seen here http://www.switchplane.com/ldb/

      We are also working on some code to check if people have retweeted statuses, are following us, etc.. automatically in order for them to collect rewards.

      I was wondering if anyone else has gone further with Twitter than just displaying Twitter statuses on an external website or if you have any cool ideas like the ones I have suggested above.

      Reply
    28. Zahid Rouf says:
      July 17, 2011 at 1:53 am

      Great post . Thanks for sharing , Very much useful.

      Reply
    29. andy says:
      July 19, 2011 at 7:26 am

      Nice list but I thought there were gonna be more options than the first Twitter Widgets.

      Reply
    30. Aban Eduifve says:
      July 27, 2011 at 4:26 am

      This is exactly what i was looking for.All info in one page. Nice useful article

      Reply
    31. android developers says:
      August 18, 2011 at 12:11 am

      Well said, the post is really the freshest on this valuable topic. I fit in with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your next updates

      Reply
    32. sam says:
      August 23, 2011 at 7:36 am

      Best article & also i applied all mentioned steps on my web site.If you have more tips please share.

      Thanks,
      Sameer

      Reply
    33. Pam says:
      September 26, 2011 at 4:54 am

      Great articles and I’m reading up on all your integration tips.

      Reply
    34. Daily Deals says:
      September 29, 2011 at 11:01 pm

      Very good post .i would do the same as i want my user to visit my blog once in a while

      Reply
    35. sarah says:
      October 25, 2011 at 1:59 am

      It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained! I’m sure you had fun writing this article.

      Reply
    36. Aarondsouzaa says:
      October 31, 2011 at 2:06 am

      Thanks for your valuable article. This makes other to get good exposure. I too using your valuable guidance…

      Reply
    37. Triscava says:
      November 21, 2011 at 11:24 am

      So many different ways of connecting! – Very interesting information, thanks.

      Reply
    38. Buy Generic Lyrica says:
      November 23, 2011 at 4:27 am

      This has to be one of the most interesting articles i’ve ever read on a blog! (then again, this is one of the most interesting blogs i’ve ever come across)

      Reply
    39. Rabia Sultan says:
      November 30, 2011 at 12:14 am

      Hello!!
      I want to have a social plugin for my blog such that
      what people read should be automatically tweeted.
      How can I do this???
      Thanks

      Reply
    40. SEO Glasgow says:
      December 7, 2011 at 9:31 am

      Great resource, brilliant for having the options to choose from as different clients sometimes prefer different methods. Also worthwile for running on different e-commerce platforms.

      Reply
    41. BluegrassPrint says:
      December 21, 2011 at 6:52 am

      Nice twitter apps. Thanks!

      Reply
    42. Kamal Hussain says:
      December 24, 2011 at 12:06 pm

      Thanks for sharing the idea, I am now planning to intergrate twitter feeds to my free web hosting website.

      Reply
    43. Daniel J says:
      January 5, 2012 at 3:07 pm

      Excellent article, really good selection go ways of integrating tweets into my site.

      Thanks

      Reply
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