Mike Paetzold back again for day 3 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

Yesterday I discussed a few of the ways that Twitter can help a blogger and vice versa. They really do work well that way together and both are more powerful together than separately.

Today I want to talk about some of the easy ways to integrate the two. I am always about automating things where it is possible and making it easy for people to follow me in the format that suits them.

After all some people are really into Twitter. Others love to use Facebook or MySpace. Some like to keep track of various blogs using feed readers. My goal is to make it easy to get my information on multiple platforms so each person can find me in the way that they like.

It is easy to tie your blog and Twitter together. Tweet My Blog is a plugin that will automatically send a tweet through your Twitter account every time you add a blog post. It will allow you to add a widget to your side bar and show your latest Twitter entries on your sidebar.

The good part about using something like Tweet My Blog is that you set it up once and it keeps working for you.

Now you can do this with other services like Twitter Feed but they are more complex to get configured.

Either of those will automate both tweeting your posts and showing your latest tweets on your blog.

Twitter though is social networking and one of the best ways to integrate your blog and Twitter is to make it easy for blog readers to let others know about your blog post.

Now you and I both know that unless your post is extremely valuable none of your readers are going to take the time to copy the url then go to their Twitter account or whatever Twitter tool that they use to let their followers know about your post.

Adding TweetMeme Retweet Button like I have here when Fred wasn’t looking (sorry Fred ;) ) makes it easy. You can click the button and it will automatically retweet the post to your Twitter followers. This makes it much more likely that your readers will pass the word along. You have made it easy for them and removed a lot of the friction for them.

Finally make sure that you make it easy for your readers of your blog to follow you on Twitter. You can do this by adding a ribbon on your blog (just do a Google search for Twitter Ribbons) or use a button in your sidebar. Again you can find lots of these by doing some searching on Google.

You can add a follow me link in your signature like I do. Speaking of which are you following me? If not click the link in my signature below and start now ;) .

Tomorrow I will be back and finish up with integration using other social sites. The more places you share the more likely you will get the results you want.

Now go follow me on Twitter. (Yes, sometimes it helps to ask more than once ;) )

About the author

align=left Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter


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