The Redwood Technology Consortium recently held its annual Holiday “TweetUp” at the Eureka Inn. It was a pleasure to hold the event at this revitalized establishment and to have so many folks attending – from those who were curious to learn what all the twitter is about, to those who have been using it for years.

Admittedly, the RTC’s TweetUp is also billed as a holiday mixer to raise awareness about the RTC, and was generously supported by a number of local businesses such as Cassaro’s Catering, Lost Cost Brewery, Six Rivers Brewery, Mad River Brewery, Winnett Vineyards, Riverbend Cellars, and of course the Eureka Inn. Our objective is to hold an annual mixer to get local folks together to have some fun, meet others involved in IT and business in our community, and well “mix”.

This article is for those who are wondering what all the twitter is about and how to take advantage of it for your business – specifically: how you can add Twitter to your web site.

If you are still curious about what Twitter is or how it could help your online presence, please have a look back at Tech Beat articles for context:

• The Ins And Outs Of Using Twitter by Daria Topousis
• Getting The Scoop On Twitter by Bob Morse

(Tech Beat articles are archived online at both the Times Standard and Redwood Technology Consortium sites; use the search feature on either site to find them).

Once you’ve realized that Twitter is a valuable medium for communicating with your site visitors and customer base, you will want to make a connection between your web site and your Twitter profile so you can get a thread of communication going and leverage Twitter to start your message going viral. Many influential Twitterers have thousands of followers, and a mention from of one these “Twitterati” could push a wave of folks to your web site. If some of those folks “re-tweet” or post their own tweets to their followers . . . then it goes viral. Word of mouth advertising at its best.

Here are some easy ways of doing it:

Basic Follow Button

The most basic and common way to get your site visitors to your tweets on Twitter is to put a follow button somewhere in your web site theme – the footer is a very typical place, but it could be anywhere you like. You could make your own button; grab one you like from some other site; or use TwitterButtons.com. Twitter Buttons is a free service with lots of nicely designed follow buttons from which you can select. Simply enter your Twitter ID, select a button that suites your site design, and Twitter Buttons will generate the code snippet for you to paste into your site’s HTML code.

Twitter also provides a set of follow buttons under their resources, but there are only 18, and frankly they aren’t all that fabulous to select from. However, they also give you the code snippet to paste into your site.

The basic idea here is to let your visitors know you tweet and to give them an easy way to find you on Twitter and then follow you.

Twitter Profile Widget

While simply adding a follow button is, well, simple and space efficient, it doesn’t actually pull your tweets from Twitter right onto your page. There are definitely many advantages to showing your visitors, right when you have their eye, what your most recent tweets are without making them click a button to leave your site. What’s more, there are many advantages to keeping your page content fresh with new content. This helps to make your site “sticky” and to keep search engine robots coming back looking for new content.

The simplest way to add a feed of your most recent tweets to your web site is to use Twitter’s own Profile Widget. Go to Twitter.com -> Resources -> Widgets -> My Website -> Profile Widget (or http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_profile). From here you can enter your Twitter ID to get started. Next select your preferences for the content you want to display, including how many tweets to include and whether you want to have a scrollbar. You can then define style colors to match your web site’s theme. Finally, you can define the dimensions for your feed. Test your settings (which will give you a real time display of how this will look with your most recent tweets), and when you get it just the way you like, select Finish & Grab Code to get your code snippet to paste into your site.

The widget will then show your most recent tweets right on your web site, your avatar, and provide your visitors with links to your profile, where they can start following you if they like.

Advanced Integrations

There are many more ways to incorporate your tweets into your website, including advanced displays using more sophisticated options and even Twitter’s API if you are a serious programmer. This is just the first of a series of articles I’ll be contributing on various methods for incorporating your tweets into your web site and/or blog.

Sean Connors is the owner of and Chief Project Manager for Web Merchant Services as well as a member of the Board of Directors for the Redwood Technology Consortium.