I have mentioned the benefits of being on Twitter before. I encountered another today, from the computer of @GottaLaff when I checked out a link to one of her posts at The Political Carnival. You never really know what you will find when you follow a link on Twitter, although I have not yet been RickRolled there, but I have enjoyed the writings of GottaLaff that I have already read, so it was not a big risk.

This particular post was mostly from an Op-Ed piece at the New York Times, so I went over there to read the original. I do not know just how accurate the piece is about the European point of view, since I do not live in Europe and have not been taking any polls there. But I do know a few Europeans, and while they feel that Bush did do a few decent things, they mostly think that Obama is a huge improvement, both for their nations and for the United States.

I have to say that for me personally, the article is accurate, as far as it goes. I do feel proud of our President. And I have a great deal of faith in him and his leadership. This doesn’t mean I think he is the “messiah” or he can do no wrong. He has some positions I disagree with, and he has made some mistakes already. But it does mean I think he has the ability to lead us, and show us as a nation, how to be a better than we are.

I just hope that when he makes a big mistake, which I am afraid is inevitable, it will not cause the faith and hope he instills in so many around the world to backlash. We are always hardest on our leaders when they fail us, and the greater the hope we feel, the lower the depths we fall to. And in over thirty years of following politics, I can not remember anyone instilling so much hope and optimism in so many people.

I knew when I did my first post on Twitter plugins that there were more of them out there and I would have to do another post. And in the last two weeks, that it looks like the number of them has exploded. So with the knowledge that keeping up with the writers, here are a few more plugins that will help you integrate your blog and Twitter.

Twitbar Widget grabs your latest pearls of wisdom from Twitter and put them up in your sidebar. The only options are where you want it in your sidebar, the widget title, the words for the link to follow you, and the number of tweets that will be shown. You just need to put in your ID, no password required, and it grabs your tweets.

This plugin is pretty much the definition of plug and play. The only thing that can be a problem is the fact it shares your blogs styling. This is usually a good thing, but with some themes, like the one I am using, the look is less than pleasing. But this is not the fault of the plugin, which does everything it is supposed to. If you want to put your tweets on your blog, this is a nice way to do it.

Easy Twitter Links makes it easier to blog about Twitter. It automatically goes through your posts and changes any #tagname or @username to links, either for searches or the users Twitter home page. It does a pretty good job at this, it doesn’t grab email addresses that someone is silly enough to post. And the hashtags need to have other words around them to be linked. There are no options available, just install and activate and you are good to go. Not a big thing, but if you do much posting about Twitter and the people there, a very nice plugin to have.

Fishy Tweet places a text link at the end of your posts that allows your readers to submit your post to Twitter. You can set the text of the link, the title of the link, and you can choose to add html and CSS to the link. The plugin automatically shortens the url of your post (using 1 of 3 shortening services) and places it in the text field at Twitter.

A nice plugin for helping get your posts send to Twitter. No options about placement of the link, which would be nice, and only the three URL services, but all in all a good setup.

TwitPlusNNNF is a plugin for twittering your post automatically. When activated, it places a small window on your post editing page, where you control the tweet. It is very unobtrusive, using javascript to hide the sections for adding your Twitter info and the codes you can use in the tweet to replace the post title and URL. It can automatically use the nn.nf URL shortening service, with the option of just using www or including the http://. And there is a check box you need to click to have the post sent to Twitter.

This is a nice plugin. It gives you complete control over how your post goes out to Twitter, with enough options to avoid having your tweets looking identical. The only thing that it really needs it the ability to change the URL shortening service for people that have accounts or prefer other sites.

Bird Feeder also tweets your posts automatically. You save your message on the option page, and it is used for all your post tweets. You can choose to use the URL of your blog rather than the post itself, and you can allow the shortened URL to give a preview.

You don’t have the option to not tweet about a post, and you are limited in the options you do have. The shortening service is coded into the plugin, so you can not make any changes for that unless you want to do some PHP editing. Easy to set up and use, but limited. If it covers what you want done, not a bad choice.

WordTwit is another plugin for tweeting your posts. It has the same kind of options as Bird Feeder, all on the option page: a hard coded URL service, one message for all posts. You do not have the options of using the blog URL instead of the post permalink, and you can not use a preview link. It does use meta-data so that it will not tweet a post that it has already sent to Twitter. This is useful if you do not want updates on old posts going out.

What goes for Bird Feeder fits for WordTwit also. Limited options, but if it covers what you want, a solid choice.

Final Words

And there are 6 more plugins you can use to make your blog more Twitter friendly. They are all very focused in what they cover, not trying to be the one tool for all things WordPress-Twitter. This means more plugins, but it also makes each of them pretty simple to set up.

I will probably have to once again look at Twitter plugins, it is just too popular an area to cover easily. But I will try and wait for a bit before doing so. There are a few other areas in the plugin depository that are also worth covering.

These days, Twitter is one of the major ways to share your posts. And everything else you feel like. The signal to noise ratio is not the best, but it is far too widespread (and spreading) to ignore. And making it easy for people to follow you there means a ready made audience you can tell about your new posts. So the first thing you need to do is add a button on your site so they can follow you. Then, make it easy for yourself to post tweets about your posts. Oh, and check out Dan Zarrella’s advice about what words to use when tweeting your post.

Tweet Tweet

TweetMe does not have many options right now. The only one is the ability to change the template message. The author wanted a plugin that would sent a tweet when he posted a blog entry, then wouldn’t when he edited it. This plugin does that, using bit.ly for short URLs. If that is all you want for every post, this is probably the plugin for you.

Twitme automatically sends a tweet to Twitter every time you post. It sets up a separate menu on your dashboard where you put in your account name and password, it will then post a link to your new posts. You can choose to exclude categories, which allows you to focus what you share there, and you can set an auto-reply for people that start following you. The message you send can either be a template or a short post summer, both with the URL (regular or shortened) of your post.

A very nice feature is the ability to follow your Twitter account from right there on your dashboard. Including showing your followers and allowing you to send tweets or direct messages from there. Not hard to set up, and automates one of the most important ways to publicize your posts on the web today. A choice of URL shorting service and finer control over which pages and posts are sent would be nice additions, but are fairly minor points.

WP to Twitter also auto-tweets your new posts to Twitter. One of the thing that endeared this one to me is that it checks your server to see if you have the necessary php functions for it to work. This is one answer to a pet peeve of mine. There are quite a few options available for this plugin, including tweeting new pages, additions to your blogroll, sending tweets when you remote publish, and integrating Google Analytics, including channels.

It uses Cli.gs on your tweets, and if you have an account there you can see the traffic associated with your short URLs. You can set it to auto-tweet your posts, or only when you check a box on the edit page. And you can write the tweet right there on your edit page at the same time. One of the major parts of the plugin is support for multiple authors, allowing each to use their own Twitter account. A more involved setup, but a huge amount of flexibility.

Tweetbacks is not a way for others to follow you. It is for putting tweets about your posts into the comments section of the post. It defaults to putting the tweets right into your comment stream, but the author gives instructions for hacking your php to separate your tweetbacks from your comments and pingbacks.

You can block specific usernames, and clean up your database to remove spammers that get through, and it allows you to block retweets. It will also pick up old tweets about your posts from before adding the plugin and add them in. There have been some issues with spamming comments getting into feeds, so it is important to keep an eye on what is coming into your site. A good idea, but use with caution.

Twitter Tools is a very popular plugin, and looking at the options it is easy to see why. It gives you the ability to automatically tweet about posts, or to decide on a post by post basis what is sent. It will also post your tweets on your blog individually and create a digest post of your tweets, either daily, weekly, or both, allowing you to set the time the post is created. It also provides a sidebar widget that shows your recent tweets and allows you to post from right there to Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are some serious downsides to the plugin. You have no control over the message sent to Twitter, it is hardcoded into the plugin to avoid a loop of posts and tweets. It doesn’t use a URL shortening service, but the author does provide a hook that can be used to pass the URL to a service. The widget has no style of its own, but it does have some CSS tags that can be styled if you dig them out. There are some nice features to this plugin, but the necessity of coding CSS or PHP to do things other do out of the box means it is probably not a good fit for most people.

Tweet This is not a plugin for tweeting your posts on Twitter. At least not by you. It places a Twitter icon at the bottom of your post for your readers to use, just like other other social site icons. If they click on the icon, it takes them to Twitter, with the post title and shortened URL already in the text box. You can modify the exact message placed in the text box, and you have your choice of 16 different ways of shortening the URL. There are also a decent number of options on placing the icons on pages and posts. And you can choose to have a list of the tweets about the post under the content.

Despite the name of the plugin, it is not just for Twitter. The author has included 7 other services, including Digg, StumbleUpon, Plurk, and Ping.fm. None of them have as many icon choices as Twitter, although still a nice variety, and there is no listing of how many times they have been used. A nice plugin, that can make it easier for your readers to share your posts, but aside from choosing the URL shortening service and the listing of how often the post is tweeted, it is not too different from the plugins I looked at last week. I have to say, the author does give great support on his blog.

There is one more plugin to keep an eye on. If you really want to integrate Twitter into your blog, TweetSuite is a one stop shop for pretty much everything you could want to add. Buttons for your readers to tweet and retweet your posts, tweetbacks, auto-tweet new posts, and 4 different widgets for your sidebar. And an impressive amount of control of all of them.

Sad to say, there a few things missing that keep this from having everything. First, there is no way to post a tweet from your site. Not a major problem, there are so many ways to post already it is hard to keep up. The second thing is a lack of fine control over the auto-tweet function. It is not possible to designate whether individual posts will or won’t be sent to Twitter. It is all or none. And what is posted is also somewhat lacking. Finally, there is no Follow Me option on any of the widgets. But the plugin is still basically in beta, with the author wanting to add in more features. As it stands, it is already a very nice plugin, not too hard to install, with loads of features.

Final Words

So there are 6 finished and 1 unfinished plugins for getting your blog posts to Twitter. And vice versa in a couple of cases. You should be able to find something that suits your needs in the list, but if you don’t, don’t despair. This is far from all of the available Twitter plugins, but I need to cut things off somewhere.

I have only been on Twitter for about a month and a half now, don’t have many followers, and am only following a few dozen people. I started using it because of the Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) news hour (Hey CNN, take an hour off of Situation Room and give it to Rick. He just gets going and has to stop.) and have been using it more and more ever since.

I started out using TwitterFox which is perfectly adequate for quite a bit. It makes it easy to do a quick tweet from your FireFox browser without having to switch applications. But when I started to expand my list of people I was following, I needed a bit more control. So I have been using TweetDeck the last couple of weeks. The ability to split replies up into groups is very handy, making it easier to follow conversations.

I think the major benefit of using Twitter is not just getting to interact with famous people. Most of them have so many followers that it is not likely they will actually respond to your message. Although sometimes they do. The major benefit is getting exposed to things you never would have known about otherwise.

Following Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) lead me to Marian Call (@mariancall). Not only is she a wonderful singer, she is a geek:

Then there was this bit of social commentary by Louis CK, found and tweeted by Danielle Corsetto (@dcorsetto).

Following the Discovery Channel PR account, led to an interesting article on Dirty Jobs next episode this week. Then checking a string of replies from astronomy buffs, led to these great photos of a comet I had never heard of before.

So there is a lot of benefits to Twitter, makes me wonder what kind of things I missed before I joined.

I have just started on Twitter in the last couple of weeks. But getting pointed to things like this on it already make it worthwhile. Andrew Sullivan’s post was mostly written by someone else, but it strikes to the heart of the change that happened in this country last week.