Keeping Your Twitter Account Interesting With Automatic News Feeds
{ Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009
by Jerry Work / Chris Work
}
This article will describe a very cool strategy for keeping your Twitter account updated automatically with interesting and useful content. It involves the use of two components (in addition to your Twitter account): a tool to systematically update your Twitter account with posts from an RSS feed; and a news source that is available as an RSS feed.
First, let's talk about where to get the news source. There are millions of RSS feeds you can tap into. Just look for the little orange RSS symbol and click it. The page that loads is the URL to feed into an RSS reader, or in this case, a Twitter feeder. News and sports web sites, in particular, are rich sources of news. And one technique I like is using Google Alerts to bring back custom keyword-based Google news items.
To use Google as your source, go to www.google.com/alerts. You will need a Google account. Once logged in, create a new feed with a keyword relevant to your industry, set the source as news or blogs, and set the delivery mechanism as feed, rather than email. Once this is done, Google will provide you with a URL for a custom search results page of news results based on your keywords.
Now let's talk about the other part: feeding that RSS source into a tool that will use it to update your Twitter account. One tool that I like for this purpose (that works very well) is TwitterFeeder. Visit the site and create an account. A single account can manage many feeds for multiple Twitter accounts. You might want to set up numerous news feeds as sources for your Twitter account. Follow the directions on the screen to add your news feed. I suggest you also click the Advanced Settings link, set it so that only the title is used in the tweet message (due to the severe character limitation on tweets), and that it check for new updates every hour.
If you combine this strategy with a recurring post strategy, such as facilitated by a tool like TweetLater, your account will stay constantly updated, fresh, and interesting. That is a good first step in running a successful Twitter account.
First, let's talk about where to get the news source. There are millions of RSS feeds you can tap into. Just look for the little orange RSS symbol and click it. The page that loads is the URL to feed into an RSS reader, or in this case, a Twitter feeder. News and sports web sites, in particular, are rich sources of news. And one technique I like is using Google Alerts to bring back custom keyword-based Google news items.
To use Google as your source, go to www.google.com/alerts. You will need a Google account. Once logged in, create a new feed with a keyword relevant to your industry, set the source as news or blogs, and set the delivery mechanism as feed, rather than email. Once this is done, Google will provide you with a URL for a custom search results page of news results based on your keywords.
Now let's talk about the other part: feeding that RSS source into a tool that will use it to update your Twitter account. One tool that I like for this purpose (that works very well) is TwitterFeeder. Visit the site and create an account. A single account can manage many feeds for multiple Twitter accounts. You might want to set up numerous news feeds as sources for your Twitter account. Follow the directions on the screen to add your news feed. I suggest you also click the Advanced Settings link, set it so that only the title is used in the tweet message (due to the severe character limitation on tweets), and that it check for new updates every hour.
If you combine this strategy with a recurring post strategy, such as facilitated by a tool like TweetLater, your account will stay constantly updated, fresh, and interesting. That is a good first step in running a successful Twitter account.
2 Response to "Keeping Your Twitter Account Interesting With Automatic News Feeds"
Good Post! Hey I have just published a twitter marketing guide and am looking for a few bloggers to give an unbiased, honest review of it. I was wondering if you - or any of your readers - would like to review my guide? My product can be found at twitteruniverse.info and goes 'live' through paydotcom on 20th September. Just send me an email (beepy1968@yahoo.co.uk) with UNIVERSE in the subject line before 20th Sept 09. And I’ll send you over a copy for review. Many thanks, Bryan
You can also use a tool like Tweet Whistle to automate tweets and send them out at a timed interval. You just create a file of tweets you want and set the time in the tool to pull them out and post them. They have a free demo you can use. Check it out at http://friendaddertools.com
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