Update Twitter with your Blog Posts Automatically

November 19th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

If you are using WordPress and looking to make your life easier, here is a plugin I just started using. Twitter Updater automatically updates your twitter account by creating a tweet with your message and a link to your most recent post.

There are a couple reasons I like this. It is my preference to make each of my latest posts available to those that follow me. If I did not use this plugin I would do it manually, however I also desired for those who follow me to know the difference from my personal random updates and my articles. Using this plugin you can have a consistent message before the link to your site. In other words you can pre-append something such as “Longest.com latest post” then your post title and a link is provided.

I only use one of the options of the plugin, which is to only create a tweet when I have created a new post and published it. The options available with this plugin are:

New post created - when a post is saved, not published
New post edited - when you re-save a post, still not published
New post published - when you publish the post
Existing posts - when you edit a post and re-save

In my opinion, too many tweets about the same article, even when just edited and saved is too often. I personally choose only the New post published option.

You can find the plugin author, download it, and the instructions for installation are here for Twitter Updater .

About the Author

Brian Longest's background is a programmer, intellectual property attorney (patent) and a serial online entrepreneur having raised Venture Capital on both coasts. Brian consults with startups and spins off new startups at Phase One Accelerators.

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There Are 3 Responses So Far. »

Comment by neil on 19 November 2008 :

The disadvantages I found with the Titter Updater plugin is its behaviour when post-dating a new blog entry. The plugin throws up the tweet to twitter the moment you press Publish, but as such post-dated content will not be visible until a later time, anyone following the link will receive a not found message. When the time does arrive for the post to appear, this plugin does not push a message to Twitter that the post is now available.

It also tends to double-post to twitter - which explains your double tweets over the past couple of days, Brian

It’s disappointing as I liked the flexibility of defining the content of message it posts, something most others do not have.
Comment by Brian on 19 November 2008 :

You are right, it is double posting. Very odd.

I had not tried the post-dating, very good point. Maybe the author has a fix.
Comment by Brian on 19 November 2008 :

I found a comment on Victoria Chan’s site (the author) linking to this fix here, I tried but it did not work.

Then I found a modified plugin, deactivate your current Twitter updater and install this one here. It took care of my double posting issue.