I created a new blog that I want to share with you. Twitter.waynejohn.com is the new location of the domain, and the best thing about it is that I don’t need to do a thing with it to keep it going. It runs itself, and as long as I keep using Twitter, it will keep growing and growing, getting indexed, and maybe even help to increase my search traffic over time.
I also think it’s a great way to give you more insight into who I am and what makes me tick, and what ticks me off. I’ve become pretty vocal on issues and don’t mind sharing with the entire world exactly what I think about something. This is yet another way, perhaps a more convenient way for some, to learn more about me and understand what’s in my wee little head. For those of you that don’t use Twitter, you can check out my posts on my Twitter blog, comment if you like, and keep up with me there.
Functions this accomplishes for me
The blog performs a couple functions for me.
- It allows me to integrate Twitter into my blog without clogging the sidebars and my regular posts with Twitter stuff. I’ve always wanted to somehow integrate all my Twitterings into my blog, but I didn’t want to flood my sidebars with all the widgets and “stuff” that you could with Twitter and all that is publicly available for it.
- It posts a daily digest each and every day. At the time of this writing, I have a total of three posts up there that contain each days Twitterings. Tomorrow there will be another one. I’m doing nothing extra that I’m not already doing for this to happen.
- It provides me a space (sandbox) to test widgets and code that integrates with Twitter. There are several things that I’d like to write for Twitter, and now I have a place to perform testing where it won’t interfere with my real blog.
- As a sandbox of sorts, I’m able to try out all the existing Twitter widgets and tools for WordPress, again, without interfering with my normal blog.
- You won’t be able to see it, but one of my widgets there also allows me to tweet from the page itself. I don’t need to hit Twitter to tweet if I’m logged in on my Twitter blog.
- It’s completely automated. I don’t have to do a thing to operate it, and I like that very, very much.
Anticipated benefits
Some of the benefits that I and others may get from having this blog under a new subdomain (twitter.waynejohn.com) that I expect I’ll see are:
- Possibly a good step towards obtaining Google SiteLinks. There are no benefit of Sitelinks in Google other than to help a user navigate more directly to content they might want to see. But I believe one of the unspoken benefits is purely psychological. If a site has Sitelinks, then I believe people will think there is more to the site than others on the search results page. Thus, driving up search traffic.
- I can capture all my Tweetings. I tweet quite a bit, and interact with many, many people on there. One thing I’ve noticed is that if I tweet a link for something I found back in May, I’ll have a hard time finding it again. It’s my hope that by capturing my tweets, I might also be able to recall things I need to recall more easily.
- The people I interact with on Twitter will now have an added benefit to communicating with me. If I tweet their links, those links will now show up on my Twitter blog as well. If my Twitter blog begins to gain rank and traffic, well, you know where I’m going with that… I think it adds more value to those that are interacting with me.
- Find new followers and friends and help to grow my presence on Twitter
Some decisions I’ve made, and why I made them
To give even more insight into my thought processes and explain a little bit of why I created this subdomain blog, here are some of the design decisions I’ve made.
- I decided to keep the same theme. Consistency, in my opinion, would be better than having a completely different looking theme. I thought perhaps this might confuse people at first, but then, I could always change the theme later should I find that to be true.
- The major links in the header point back to my www site. No need to have a secondary contact form to support right?
- Ads are shown from the get-go, and on the homepage. I don’t do that on my www site in favor of giving my regular readers an ad free experience. However, on my Twitter blog I decided that it doesn’t matter when the site begins to display ads.
- The sidebars on my Twitter blog are filled with Twitter widgets. You can see what I’ve recently tweeted, who has recently visited from Twitter, and see how many people are following me there. As a bonus, I added a widget that display my recent posts on my www site, and a little explanation of what my Twitter blog is all about.
- I created the site to keep my www site clutter-free. If I didn’t create the site, but still integrated Twitter, you’d see more in the sidebar here, and I’m trying to avoid creating the clutter that I had in the old theme and blog system.
I’ve written this post not only to announce the new blog, but to also give a little insight to those of you who might also want to do something similar. I think the benefits of this site will start to show, if they are even going to, within the first month or so.
I also have a few other subdomains in development that I’ll share with you when they are ready. I believe I’m on the right track with this stuff and can’t wait for a few months to pass to do a review and see where this all takes my site, my traffic, my follower counts and my sanity.
Hope you like it, and please feel free to contact me about your own site if you feel this is something you’d also like to do.
Namaste!
25 Responses
DeadRooster
July 20th, 2009 at 4:44 am
1This is a great idea, Wayne! I’m definitely going to put this on the back burner for Dead Rooster. I don’t really tweet enough to justify it yet, but I can see it happening in the near future.
I’m really loving your articles lately! Keep ‘em coming!
DeadRooster´s last blog ..Am I Way Hotter than John Stamos or What?
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 5:57 am
2Twitter Comment…
A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog #twitter via @waynejohn [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 6:19 am
3FriendFeed Comment…
A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog. Great blog post by @waynejohn – This is a great idea! [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 8:19 am
4Twitter Comment…
@waynejohn A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Wayne
July 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am
5William, I’d say even if you don’t tweet very much, it would still be worth it. I see you do maybe 5-10 tweets every now and then, and that is really all you need. You don’t have to be a blabber-mouth like myself, hahaha. I say go for it!
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
6Twitter Comment…
RT @Terry_Allison: RT @waynejohn: A Non-Intrusive Way 2 Integrate twttr w/ yr Blog [link to post] – cn I get an amen & RT?
– Posted using Chat Catcher …
Joni Solis
July 20th, 2009 at 11:53 am
7I am interested in doing a twitter blog. Is it possible to set up a blog on a free blogging site, like blogger, to do this?
Joni Solis´s last blog ..Rare horse breed needs your help
Wayne
July 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
8Joni, there are ways you can make this happen, but not on blogger. You’d need to get a hosting account and install WP on it. Once that is done, you add twitter.alove4horses.com to your domain DNS settings so you can access it via that URL.
I’d be happy to do this for you, and the host I’d recommend would give you unlimited hosting for as many domain names that you want. I’ll be putting together a post to describe the “how to” part, but if you want to do something like this now, just let me know and I’ll contact you offline.
Of course, this will cost some money for the host, but if you went with my host, I’d get a kickback and give the labor for free. Your theme may be problematic to carry over however.
Anyway, if you’re interested, just let me know and we’ll discuss it in more detail.
Cheers!
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
9Twitter Comment…
RT @problogger: Reading: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] – A must to read! – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
10Twitter Comment…
Reading: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] (via @problogger) – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
11Twitter Comment…
RT @problogger: Reading: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
12Twitter Comment…
A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] @problogger – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
13Twitter Comment…
Reading: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 20th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
14Twitter Comment…
RT @problogger Reading: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Beniaminus
July 20th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
15Excellent idea Wayne! I’ve often thought that my tweets disappear into the void of the twitterverse, and keeping them in a tidy package without cluttering your main platform really makes sense. Looking forward to the how-to post.
Beniaminus´s last blog ..John Chen in Concert
Anonymous
July 21st, 2009 at 1:35 am
16Twitter Comment…
RT @CraneFactory: A Non-Intrusive Way To Integrate Twitter With Your Blog – [link to post] @problogger – Posted using Chat Catcher …
gadgets
July 27th, 2009 at 6:14 am
17this is a great post,Looking forward to the how-to post.
Anonymous
July 27th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
18Twitter Comment…
Thanks for the RT,Wayne! Saving ur blog [link to post] to get a grip on integrating twitter w blog @waynejohn – Posted using Chat Catcher …
Anonymous
July 29th, 2009 at 5:59 am
19Twitter Comment…
@WayneJohn has a killer idea to use Twitter on your blog [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
lindsayanng
July 29th, 2009 at 10:11 am
20very cool idea. I am considering doing this for the new blog that I created.. I have a blog that is basically for my dog.. but its not a typical THIS IS MY DOG blog, we are starting a non profit to help handicapped pets (my dog has a peg leg) and I was thinking i’d like to create a twitter account for the pooch, tweet a few times a day with other pet lovers.. and then what?? I really wanted to somehow work it with my blog..
So you instead of integrating it into your existing blog, created a new install of wordpress and use that just for twittering? Do you use the same or a different database?
p.s. here is my new website if you care
http://powernubby.com
lindsayanng´s last blog ..Spoil Your Pooch Sundays!
Wayne
July 29th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
21What an awesome site! Looks great!
Yes, completely separate site and db. I felt that would be easier than trying to integrate it…
Cheers Lindsay!
Ross
August 1st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
22I’m personally a big fan of TwiBadge as you can see here
http://twitterlover.blogspot.com/2009/02/twitter-plugintwibadge.html
or on my site, which is http://www.riddledphantasms.com/
It is a flash based plugin and looks and feels like it belongs, sometimes it will not update, but the goods far outweigh the bad if you are going for a more professional, very easy to read and follow twitter plugin.
Harsh Agrawal
August 2nd, 2009 at 6:18 am
23Hey Wayne
this is seriously out of box thinking and one of its kind. More over this can be easily turn into money making system as well.
Based on your idea I will write a detailed post on it and will give a linkbac to you for sure.
More over I will be happy to know how did you integrate twitter with your twitter blog.
I hope you used the available plugins only??
Some more insight will be helpful for many…
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog ..Shoutmeloud Top commentator Award for July 2009
Wayne
August 4th, 2009 at 8:34 am
24Harsh, I’m trying to get a post built to help others do the same. This month has been hell trying to keep up with all the real life stuff that’s been happening.
I did use existing tools, and everything I did can be done by anyone that knows how to put together a WordPress blog.
I’ll admit though, I will be tweaking the plugins I’m using to fine tune it for something better.
More to come!
Anonymous
August 14th, 2009 at 9:18 am
25Twitter Comment…
Finally, don’t forget to integrate Twitter with your blog: [link to post] – Posted using Chat Catcher …
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