Now that my blog is up and running I am faced with what plug-ins and widgets to use? There are millions to choose from and I literally could spend days scrolling through them all.

If you cannot tell I love twitter. Tweeting allows me to stay in touch with friends, co-workers, and most importantly industry peers. I can see what is going on between meetings, blog posts, and the daily grind. Also with all the things that I do in a day a bite of 140 characters of information is easy for me to get through. The correlate side of twitter is people can get to know you as a business persona and as person. Lets face it people know what is authentic or a load of crap (aka spam). Really it is about engaging your followers. To engage you have to be engaging and authentic!

First you have to use twitter effectively on your blog; here is how you can

The 5 ways:

1. Add a “Follow me button“, there are tons of graphics out there and with a simple cut and paste you can have a nice button.
   How to add a follow me button:

   → Find a button you like. Take a look at Siah Design

   → Add that button you your site, preferably in at the top right of the page

   → Very important, link it to your twitter profile the “a href” link should look like http://twitter.com/YourProfileName ← change to your name

2. Show your recent tweets, you can show your latest tweet to the last 100.
   With a few lines of code

   → Get your twitter badge code at twitter

   → Choose a style to be seamless with your site

   → Place to code on your site

3. Add a “Tweet This” link; your already sharing your posts, it’s time to allow your readers to share your blog!
   Pick your Plug-in

   → Use a plug-in like TwitThis or Sociable

   → Customize your settings, have fun with your tweet introduction, maybe something like: “Awesome post at”, “Did you see”, “Hot off the press”

   → Try placing the button at the top and bottom of the posts for maximum exposure

4. Add a twitter feed for your blog. It reads your rss feeds and automatically tweets your latest posts. Lets face it is one less thing to do when you post
   Sign up

   → First sign up for a OpenID

   → Then sign up for twitterfeed

   → Populate your RSS feeds

5. Stay current on twitter apps
   See whats new

   → See what is new at Twitter Aps an official twitter app listing

   → See new apps daily Twapps an archive of the best twitter apps

It is as simple as that. One thing to remember is to engage your followers have fun and be authentic. Happy Tweeting!

This post is tagged effective twitter, engage followers, twitter badge, twitter plug-ins