With all of the buzz around Pinterest, and the near-addict like dependence on Facebook, there is one social network that gets little love from businesses that use WordPress – Twitter.  Disagree?  Well, I’m going to show you why your company is not only missing out on the #1 way to promote your business on the most open social network in the world, but how you can make an never-ending and effective campaign in less than 5 minutes (I’ll also share some other goodies, too).

Editor’s note: Twitter drives more traffic to this website than any other social network!

But We Do Promote Our Content On Twitter!

Really? Yes, most WordPress sites have a “Tweet Me” button below or above their content, and so do you. I’m sure that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that at anytime someone could share that post with anyone at any time.  While that is the minimum you should be doing, it is definitely not the maximum.

The real power of Twitter lies in being able to share your content over time.  Think about all of the content that you have that is going to waste.  Not everything that businesses write on their blogs are going to get a lot of exposure via search engines or sharing by users.  However, that content still may just need more eyes on it before it starts generating buzz.

Get A Website Promoter for Free (Really)

Now, if you aren’t using WordPress, you could go through each of your posts and stick them into a scheduler, but that sucks.  But if you are using WordPress (as you should be) all you need is one simple plugin “Tweetily” and you are all set. Note that this is the newest version of the previously named Tweet Old Post plugin mentioned in The 14 Best WordPress Plugins for Social Media and SEO Optimized Sites for 2012.

Tweetily gives your company the ability to share your old content over time.  With a variety of configuration options, it’s a powerful way to keep the momentum going on your site – and hopefully make some customers in the process.

Here’s my secret for using it – don’t spam!  What I mean is use it sparingly.  For example, I hate to aggressively sell and promote.  Whenever I do, bad things happen.  So for one of my blogs,  You Can Work Less,  I set Tweetily to promote posts that are no more than 90 days old and I only allow 1 -2 post per day to be promoted.  This allows me to fill in the rest of the day with content from other people as well as tweets that engage.  Nobody is going to mind you promoting your business if you obviously care more about other people than a quick buck

So what does this do?  Well, it let’s me worry about building relationships on Twitter while I let technology act as my unofficial Twitter marketing director.  Nothing beats free marketing!  Another side benefit is that it forces me to make sure that I am engaging with other people.  Nothing looks worse than a timeline full of self-promotion.

Of course, there are other ways to give your Twitter campaign a kick in the butt with WordPress plugins.  Some tools that you may want to check out are:

• Sharebar – Yes, this is simply a way for people to retweet your posts.  However, the power is that it follows your visitor as they read your content.  Plus it’s unobtrusive, making it not only a great way to make sure that people share your content but it doesn’t piss off your readers in the process.
• My Tweet Links – Help your Twitter fans by giving the words you want them to share.  Talk about having the power to make your posts viral, My Tweet Links let’s you control how your posts are promoted on Twitter by giving your readers key facts about the article to share.
• Disqus – Popular mainly for comments, but one underrated function that it has is the ability to scour Twitter for people talking about your posts. That means that if your site is struggling to build a community, you can use this handy tool to build social proof around your content.  The more social proof, the more comments you’ll get and the more authority you will build. Fun!

One word of warning with plugins though is that they are free, and for the most part free means that they don’t get updated forever.  For instance, Tweetily is a revamped version of “Tweet Old Post” which has ceased to be updated.  In other words, especially with plugins that affect your business’ reputation you will need to be diligent to make sure that they work with every WordPress version that comes out.  Don’t let this scare you, it’s not meant to.  The benefits of WordPress plugins far outweigh the risk.

Ending on a positive note, start automating your site promotion using Tweetily and you will start to see consistent traffic from Twitter to your site without much effort.  Not only that, your content will get far more exposure than it would otherwise.  Articles that you thought were dead will rise again!

Dean Soto (4 Posts)

This monthly "WordPress Plugins" column is contributed by Dean Soto. Dean is the President and founder of Pro Sulum, LLC, an interactive development agency specializing in marketing and customer conversion products for the WordPress platform. With a focus on simplicity of functionality and design, Dean and his company help businesses engage more intimately with their visitors.