I have been wanting to add threaded comments to the blog so that is possible to reply to a specific comment rather than the whole chain of comments. In the past I had used the Brian’s Threaded Comment’s Plugin. There have been some changed to WordPress with 2.7 and 2.8 and Brian’s plugin has some been updated since 2008. I started to search for another solution but I couldn’t find a plugin that didn’t require me to make changes to the template.

A friend suggested Disqus as a solution. Disqus is a service outside of WordPress that allows people to create a profile which can be used whenever they leave comments on a blog that has Disqus – you don’t have to have a Disqus plugin to leave a comment on a blog with Disqus. Continue Reading »

via inc.com

I think this quick article from the July 2009 issue of Inc is a great example of how Twitter can be useful for business. In this article, Lorien Gabel, who is the CEO of Pingg, talks about how he has used Twitter to get valuable feedback about his company.

Unlike many people, I don’t use Twitter to send out a constant stream of updates. Instead, I monitor what people are saying about us and about our competitors. I use TweetDeck, a simple, free software program that allows me to search for up to 10 terms on Twitter at once. Whenever a Twitter user mentions pingg, Evite, Evite alternative, party planning, or event planning, the message pops up. If someone has a complaint about pingg, we send a response and try to address it. If someone praises pingg, we’ll respond and say thanks. It’s a very easy way to build community online — much easier than getting your users to friend you on Facebook.

Posted via web from blogtelling’s posterous

On my other blogs I use the plug-in Postalicious to automatically create a post from links that I have saved to delicious.  I have a delicious account for each of my blogs and this has been a great way to save and share revelant information.

But recently I have been using twitter to share links so I was thinking maybe there is way to create a blog post with recent tweets.  I did some searching and found this great list of tools from a marketing firm in Texas.  Here are 2 of the wordpress plug-ins that help you connect your blog to twitter.

1. Twitter Tools – here are a few of the features that I think are helpful to bloggers

• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens

2. Twittar – when someone leaves a comment – Twittar checks their email to see if they have a twitter account, if the person has a twitter account – Twittar uses their twitter avatar next to their comment.

I am going to try using twitter to share some links and then use the Twitter Tools plug-in to create a daily digest of those tweets.

Twitter offers some widgets to display information on your blog, but the widgets for wordpress blogs are pretty limited.  Here are some other tools that I have tried out on this blog and others to help you connect your blog and twitter (by the way you can follow blogtelling on twitter here):

1. TwitterCounter

TwitterCounter offers some widgets that you can add to your sidebar.  I believe that TwitterCounter is still in beta but I found it very easy to set up – just enter your twitter name and go.  

• a box that displays the number of people following you on twitter
• a box that shows your most recent followers, you can customize the number of people that are displayed and the colors

TwitterCounter also offers a nice page of stats about how many people are following you over time.

2. WP-Twitip-Id Plugin 

This is a wordpress plugin that adds an extra field to the comments section where people can leave their twitter ID when they leave a comment.  It is pretty easy to install and you can customize how you want the commenters Twitter Id to display next to their comment.  I have installed the WP-Twitip-Id plugin on this blog so you can leave you Twitter Id when you leave a comment.

3. TwitterFeed

This is a helpful tool that creates a tweet from your RSS feed.  It is a great way to automatically post a tweet when you write a new blog post.  TwitterFeed is easy to set up – just enter your RSS feed and your twitter account info and you are good to go.  The most difficult part of TwitterFeed is logging in with OpenID – I just set up an account with MyOpenID which made the process much easier.  TwitterFeed lets you customize how often your tweets are updated and how many tweets you want to post.

I was also going to include TweetSnap, which displayes your most recent tweet in a pretty image, in this list but I can’t find a quick way to change the size of the image so I don’t think it is as helpful as the others listed above.

Check out these other posts about Twitter tools on Twitip and Quick Online Tips.

Some possibly related blog posts about Twitter and blogging… 

• How to Integrate Twitter into WordPress Comments? (shankrila.com)
• Feed your Blog to Twitter using TwitterFeed! (tipsblogger.com)
• Twitter instead of RSS? (nevillehobson.com)
• Two practical lessons about Twitter (nevillehobson.com)

This is a great question, and one that wasn’t easy to answer. When I first tried to understand Twitter last year there was very little information on Twitter.com about what it does. Fortunately they good folks at Common Craft have put together one of their great little videos to explain Twitter.

Continue Reading »