How effective are your Twitter marketing campaigns? How often do you retweet your blog posts? Do you just retweet current articles, or do you ever dig deep back into your archives to find posts to tweet to your followers?
A great method I can’t recommend enough to bring back life into old articles is to simply retweet them to your followers on Twitter. This opens your blog up to a lot of new discussions and keeps old posts alive by keeping traffic flowing to them.
It’s something I recommend, but it’s not something that everyone likes to do. After blogging consistently for a few months, you will have a lot of posts to look through. It can become pretty difficult to find a good, retweet worthy post. There are over 300 posts on this blog, and there are so many I want to share with my Twitter audiences.
Why make this decision yourself?
This weekend, I want you to look into the plugin I am going to describe below. In brief, it will select a random post from your blog archives and retweet it to the Twitter account you connect it to. There are more details as to what this plugin can do and how it benefits your blog even more below.
Introducing: Tweet Old Post plugin for WordPress
The plugin I am talking about (big thanks to my friend Rob for sharing) that has done wonders for this blog is called Tweet old posts. I use it here, and without even touching it after changing a few settings initially, it has brought some discussion back to old posts on this blog.
All that’s required from you to set it up is your Twitter username and password, which is all configurable through your own domain. So you don’t have to worry about anybody getting your account details.
After installation, you are given many options to configure how you want your tweets to look. Now, a few of the most notable and useful features this plugin has to offer are:
- URL Shortening - All URL’s are shortened by default, to minimize the amount of space used in the tweets the plugin sends out.
- Add hashtags - In any tweet this plugin sends out, you can add specific hashtags to each one. So, I chose to add #blogging and #wordpress to each tweet this plugin sends out. Read more about hashtags and their importance here →
- Set time to tweet - This plugin tweets posts at random times, so all of your followers in different times zones can get a heads up of an older blog post. The plugin gives you the ability to control how often a tweet it sent out.
You also have the ability to filter what categories the plugin grabs posts from, and you can set a minimum age requirement for any posts to be tweeted. The plugin offers great filtering, so it only tweets the posts that are probably buried deep into your blog.
Again, if you want to use this plugin on your blog (you would be absolutely out of your mind not to), you can download it here. It’s absolutely free of course.
Will you be tweeting over the weekend?
Have I convinced you to take a look at this plugin? It is hugely beneficial, and your readers will really enjoy the content. Let me know if you do end up using this plugin, and how it alters the traffic to your blog.
Enjoy your weekend!
35 Discussions
Alex,
The plugin seems nice, but there are a couple problems:
1. You flooded my tweet stream this morning. This isn’t a big deal, but its kind of annoying and makes me less likely to visit the links.
2. This is the big one. One of your tweets was basically “hey check out my article about Wordpress 2.8.” Annoying. Good way to get unfollowed. It makes me think you’re using plugins to promote your stuff via Twitter…which is exactly what you’re doing, but it needs to be done in a way that looks genuine.
Let me suggest an alternative. Some posts are just general announcements or are time sensitive (like the post about WP 2.8). You don’t want these to be tweeted about months later. So, when you post something that IS timeless, and provides significant value (tutorials, blogging theory, etc.), use a free service like TweetLater (or whatever they’re calling themselves now) to schedule tweets every few weeks or months or however often you want to tweet. This takes 2 minutes every time you post and achieves the exact same effect…and it doesn’t annoy your loyal followers like yours truly. And you can use one less plugin…plugins are overrated anyhow.
Adam Baird´s last blog ..Hello world!
Hey Adam,
Sorry about that, I must have had the options set to do it too frequently and I didn’t filter out some of the older content like I should have. Thanks for bringing that up, hopefully it works out better.
The plugin actually has really good filtering options, I just failed to look at them close enough when I configured the options. I don’t mind the extra plugin as it has really done well on our subscriber count and traffic here.
But thanks for the shout about TweetLater, I’ll have to look at it to compare the two.
Yea, decreasing post frequency to a tweet per hour might work better. It will also increase chances for click.
King Sidharth´s last blog ..Ego v/s Self – War of the Worlds
Good idea on the retweets. I go back through my blogs and pick ones to retweet myself. That way I can control what blog goes up, when it goes up and what it says.
That’s a fine way of doing it as well. I just think it’s nice to have it automated. Thanks for stopping by!
Appreciate the shout out Alex. And I’m with you on this, retweeting your old articles are a great way to bring your posts back to life. I mean, a article is only good for what 1 week? Then it usually dies out and nobody reads it again? Why not bring that post back to life, the content is still good, so why not share it?
Great post.
I agree man, thanks for showing me it.
It’s been really mind blowing to see how much traffic Twitter could bring in after using this plugin for just a week now. Articles don’t last long, so you have to do something to get them more in people’s faces.
This coversation really makes sense and is social proof for power of twitter and this plug-in.
Thanks for sharing
King Sidharth´s last blog ..Ego v/s Self – War of the Worlds
Unless of course it hits your most popular list.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I!
Thanks for sharing this, Rob and Alex. With this great plugin, the biggest benefit I can enjoy is that I can post more often now. I used to wait for a few days before publishing another new post just to wait for enough tweets to increase exposure and conversations.
Second is that it helps to bring comments to those old ‘buried’ posts too. Definitely a great plugin to increase traffic and readerships. Thanks.
I think we miss out on so many great opportunities, both traffic and discussion wise with these older posts. Some posts on this blog would do better being published now then at the time they were published. This plugin really puts that old, still relevant content back up front in a way.
Ah! so this is the secret of tweeting your old posts, I was wondering when I sow the tweets on the last days!
The plugin idea is cool, I am just not a big fan of automated tweets! I am afraid of doing mistakes so I prefer doing it manually!
Anyways, it will probably work better for blogs that has more than (let’s say) 500 posts, as for now I can not use it on a blog with 150 posts as I think random tweet will not be random after a month of running the plugin
Also it’s not a goo idea for news blog for example, it should be a blog with a non-related to time content.
Just an opinion!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..MMO Social Network increasing Traffic by Opening Promoted Links in a new window on the main page
You’re right, the number of posts a blog has will definitely have an impact on how useful this plugin actually is. You don’t want to be spamming your followers with all of this content over and over again. This blog has about 300 posts. I think that is a good enough number for this plugin to work for a while without repeating too frequently.
The # of posts AND # of followers….if you gain 50 or whatever per week, you’re still tweeting to new people…some old might get annoyed but hopefully not enough to make an impact.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I!
Sounds interesting, but I have also had bad experience with automated tweets, I still tweet my current posts, but not alot of automated messaging. I definitely will give it a try to see if I can get some more comments on my older posts. All tips are good tips as far as I am concern.
Corey @ MLM Street Journal´s last blog ..Conquer The Internet, A Few Reasons To Go For My Lead System Pro
It doesn’t hurt to try, right? This plugin has brought some great discussions back to older posts here, and I really hope you see similar results. Let me know.
Very happy to read this blog for the first time and find this great concept. I honestly never thought of tweeting older articles and posts. I think we only post new material though we have lots of older materials that are still worth tweeting. Will also check out the plugin.
Julius´s last blog ..A Day Through The Eyes of a Blind Woman: Part 3
Thanks for dropping by Julius! Let me know how the plugin works for you.
Have to check this on on Sunday at relax time.
These kind of norms always make me confuse.
Buy 2 Pay for 1 Offer´s last blog ..High Quality Designer for Hire – Samples Inside
I normally re-tweet posts and articles only when I have updated them. And I made the same experience like you that it revives old blog posts and discussions. A plugin that does this automatically sounds great to me, I will check it out! SY
hospitalera´s last blog ..Inetglobal wants to sue me
Glad to see these methods working for others as well. Thanks for dropping by! Long time no see.
Thanks for sharing! I know what to do with my old posts now. You really help me a lot. May i know what can we do else for our old posts instead of just retweet it? Thanks!
Kok Siong Chen´s last blog ..3 Types of Pro-apoptotic Proteins
Treat them like any other blog post and keep marketing them. Interlink them in newer posts, display them as a featured post or something like that on your blog. The possibilities are endless.
Just downloaded it Alex. Thanks for sharing, I will have to check it out because retweeting like this is so valuable.
Alex Monroe´s last blog ..The Entrepreneur All Star Football Team
Fortunately my blog not that old yet! This plugin really will resurrect many blog posts that are resting in peace.
scheng1´s last blog ..My colleague committed suicide
I strongly agree on retweeting or reviving old blogs as a tool for a great marketing campaign, it’s like replenishing something old. Plus, it looks new to those who are not updating their blogs or tweets regularly. I suggest when you revive it, just put additional or latest information into it with that was previously available.
You mean that this plugin will not able to tweet those new articles I created?
Palabuzz´s last blog ..Pinoy Big Brother Teen edition 3 Audition Schedule
I can’t get this plugin to work “Cannot instantiate non-existent class” comes up.
Alex Monroe´s last blog ..The Entrepreneur All Star Football Team
I’m also so not a fan of auto-tweeting current posts, but if this is THAT configurable, might be a real sweet deal.
Thanks for the heads up.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I!
What a wonderful discovery ! I use WordPress extensively and have never heard of “Tweet Old Posts” … I am a true believer now and will watch my blog traffic to see what happens. http://www.edparton.com/blog
This plug in sounds like a good idea. I would definitely try this one. Thank you for sharing. This is a big help.
Hey Alex,
I am glad, you and many other are liking the plugin. I would really like to extend the functionality further. If anyone have any ideas or suggestions, guys please let me know.
Cheers,
Ajay Matharu
Ajay´s last blog ..Happiness Strategies
Great post, Always wanted to see how i could bring life to my old posts, as i think they are some posts that could really be helpful for my readers, will be checking the plugin later on.
Joseph´s last blog ..University student at birmingham city Dave Scotford on how he started his own record label
Any help on reducing the minimum post age?
chinmoy´s last blog ..Call of Duty 7: Black Ops Release Scheduled
You can adjust that on the options page.
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