If you use Twitter, you probably know about Twitterfeed, a web tool that allows you to automatically pollinate your Twitter updates through RSS feeds.
For instance, if you click over to the @GoverningPeople Twitter account which I manage, you’ll see many updates sent from Twitterfeed, indicative of blog posts sent via RSS from the GoverningPeople.com online community.
Twitterfeed is fairly simple to set up, after determining the best authenticated login method to use; I use both MyOpenID and MyVidloop for different Twitter accounts I manage.
That said, because I currently use FeedBurner to convert my blog’s HTML into RSS–and because FeedBurner has been painstakingly slow in recent weeks–it is frustrating to wait up to eight hours (or more) for FeedBurner to discover my new blog post, add it to my RSS feed, and further wait for Twitterfeed to discover the RSS feed and post the new blog post to Twitter.
Make sense?
If your blog’s RSS is also managed by FeedBurner, you may want to join me in two initiatives:
1. Consider migrating your blog’s subscribers and RSS from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz, which apparently is the best alternative out there right now. That is something I’m looking into and will devote a future blog post about it.
2. Say goodbye to Twitterfeed and say hello to WordTwit.
A service of BraveNewCode, Inc., WordTwit is a WordPress plugin (only for self-hosted blogs, currently) that posts a tweet to my @ariherzogonline feed immediately upon my hitting the submit button.
Note: While many WP plugins offer Wordpress to Twitter functionality–such as Tweetable, Twitter Poster, TwitPost, TweetMe, WP-Twitter–they differ in features. The similarity between the above plugins, however, is they all send a tweet with a short URL, e.g. http://bit.ly/qwe, http://is.gd/qwe, or http://kl.im/qwe.
I wanted something more personalized, more branded to my blog URL, than the above. After testing Synected and Pretty Link, among other options, I settled on WordTwit for the ability to automatically create a 2-character extension at the end of http://ariwriter.com for new posts. Take a look at the right column of this screen shot to see what I mean:
Did I mention WordTwit sends a tweet to my account instantly, countering the annoyance of waiting hours for FeedBurner and Twitterfeed to discover the RSS?
I’ll continue to use Twitterfeed to cross-post my Huffington Post articles and Yelp reviews–and some other ideas I’m pondering to aggregate to my Twitter feed, too–but as of today, it no longer feeds AriWriter to Twitter.
For more information on the benefits of WordTwit and what-if future upgrades, check out Joe Brooks’ blog where he provides a useful guide.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the fact that you can turn your blog into it’s own URL shortener. Magicomm currently does this with a free script called SidePath, but it’s not a Wordpress plugin.
I am not a fan of twitter feeds of any kind. I think you should keep AriWriter from tweeting automatically and continue to personalize your Tweets revolving around your posts. It still boggles my mind that people can take the time to write a full blog post and for some reason they can’t put together 140 characters about that post.
I’ll probably still go and grab the plugin to take advantage of the URL shortening capabilities.
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Oh, I do personalize, albeit I’ve been lacking lately. There’s nothing wrong–especially considering the global nature of timezones–to retweet your own posts here and there, changing some words, and keeping the crux.
I have used wordtwit since setting up my blog a couple of months ago. I love it! thanks for the article.
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“WordTwit” sounds like a name someone called me in high school …
Gillian Swart´s last blog post..Lavish gifts are always acceptable
This is the plugin I’ve been waiting for. Installing right now. Bye bye twitterfeed…
I never used twitterfeed before.
Currently i am not taking advantage of twitter since i have used them before and they aren’t converting for my site.
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The custom URL is definitely a bonus. And I’ll be looking forward to your post on FeedBlitz – it would be good to know there is an alternative with a hopefully more stable count.
~ Kristi
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I currently use PingPressFM to get my blogposts out to every Social site I’m on. See http://www.soldoutactivist.com/pingpressfm for more info.
[mad]Berry
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Wordtwit looks like is is good! Whats with the name though? Wordtwt would have been much nicer!
Def going to check this one out. I’ve only used Twitterfeed a bit and never really played with it much. But this sounds like a great option.
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Thanks for this excellent post about this useful Wordpress plugin.
Regards
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Glad I could help.
Ari, looking forward to your article on Feedblitz.
I’m not totally sold on Feedburner either.
Posting in different time zones presents an interesting challenge. I’m not doing that yet, but my first step in automation will likely be posting at a set time in 3 zones 8 hours apart. Probably a good opportunity to test for best results.
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I haven’t noticed Feedburner being slow to be honest. I published a post today and received the feed in my email within an hour. I don’t have that many subscribers to that may make a difference.
As far as Twitterfeed, I’ve been complaining about them for a while now. If used correctly it’s a fine tool but most abuse it. Many accounts never tweet anything that is their own, it’s all just feeds from keywords they select. There is no two-way communication, no re-tweets, no @replies, just automated junk. The tweets seem to come in packs of twenty or more and fill up the entire page. To me it represents a totally worthless follower and I never follow back and ban most that follow. Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on a rant
It sounds like you are at least using it to tweet your own feeds so that’s not what I’m bashing. I use a plugin to tweet my posts too, I think we all do that.
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