Twitter can drive tons of visitors towards your website, everyone knows that. But that is something that doesn’t just happen by itself. You should carefully integrate some Twitter magic into your website design to make sure people are still interacting with this social network while browsing your website.
There are many different things you can do to make your visitors wander back and forth between your website and Twitter, inviting their friends to jump in and check your site. Yet the biggest problem with most of the widgets that can be added to your website is that they look ugly and may completely crush the precious design of your website.
So today I want to present you a few handpicked Twitter plugins that will enhance the performance of your website on Twitter, while looking absolutely great with your website design.
1. Twitter Alligator WordPress Plugin
I’m starting this list with a premium plugin, but that’s really the sleekest option for adding a feed of tweets to your website.
With a set of cool skins to pick from, Twitter Alligator WordPress Plugin will fit nicely into any possible website design and entertain your visitors.
You can use it to display who’s talking about you on Twitter or just aggregate tweets from different people in your sidebar. I think that’s a great option for some social proof.
For those looking for a super minimalistic twitter feed I suggest taking a look at the Recent Tweets Widget – it has perfect minimalistic design.
2. Social Sidebar for WordPress
If you want your content to be shared on Twitter, you should make sure that there’s a tweet button always available whenever your visitors will feel the urge to tweet.
Unfortunately most people won’t bother tweeting about your website if that requires them to take some extra step. So you have to make it easy for them to make a tweet.
My personal favourite is the solution, when all social buttons are floating somewhere on the page so they are always available, no matter how far you scroll. And Social Sidebar for WordPress can create a super stylish floating bar with lots of customization options.
Since I’m talking about the premium plugin yet again, I’m going to offer you a free alternative – Digg Digg – many of you already know this plugin and it works really well. But unfortunately it doesn’t look as awesome as Social Sidebar for WordPress.
3. TweetDis
If you’ve ever been at some conference, you’ve probably noticed that many people will tweet out takeaways from every speech they hear. They will catch small valuable sound bites from a speaker and share them with their twitter following.
Just recently many people started using the same trick on their websites. Whenever they write an article, they will fill it with short tweetable statements that readers can tweet with a click. This strategy was called “tweetable quotes”.
And TweetDis is an awesome plugin for WordPress that can create those tweetable quotes out of your sound bites. You have a number of design templates to choose from and all of them look amazing and catch attention of your readers.
This time I’m going to offer you two alternatives. The first is ClickToTweet WordPress plugin, which also looks nice, but doesn’t have that many customization options and features. And another one is actually an online service that has the same name – ClickToTweet. You can use it to create tweetable links and use them in your articles.
4. Nextend Twitter Connect
In case your website requires authentication at some point, you should consider giving your visitors an option to authenticate via Twitter. This will be much more convenient for many people, so you will easily increase the amount of sign ups.
With Nextend Twitter Connect you can create good looking social authentication buttons and add them to your login page. Many people hate to fill registration forms, so they will be endlessly grateful to you.
This plugin is absolutely free and they even state that they provide free support. Definitely worth a try.
5. Twitter Like Box
Many webmasters have added Facebook Like Box to their sites since the day it was released. And this small widget appeared to work really well in attracting new fans, since the faces of other people on that widget worked as a social proof.
I don’t really know why Twitter themselves don’t offer webmasters anything like that, but I’m glad someone decided to create such widget on his own.
There is absolutely no doubt that a familiar style of this widget will catch the attention of your website visitors and you’ll end up getting more Twitter followers.
6. Rotating Tweets
We’ve already talked about embedding twitter feed into your sidebar and placing tweetable quotes within the content of your articles. And how do you like the idea of rotating your latest tweets somewhere on your page?
With Rotating Tweets plugin you can easily embed rotating tweets into your article with a simple short code. It will look like this:
In my opinion that is yet another great way to showcase your Twitter profile and get some new twitter followers.
7. JM Twitter Cards
Twitter cards is a brand new feature that Twitter has announced just recently. With twitter cards you can basically embed tweets with all kinds of media onto the pages of your website. And JM Twitter Cards plugin will just make it more convenient for you.
See how much content you can fit into a single twitter card? Well now your visitors will be able to tweet or retweet all of that to their followers. And I’m sure a tweet with so much media in it won’t stay unnoticed.
8. Hashcore
Another great way to make your readers interact with the content on your website is by using twitter hashtags and letting people browse them right on your website.
Hashcore will turn the hashtags in your article into links. By clicking on those links your visitors will see a popup with the latest tweets using this hashtag.
So with this neat plugin you’re giving your readers some extra content without making them leave your website. What a great tool.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of good looking Twitter plugins and now you can easily get some Twitter buzz going on your website without breaking its stylish appearance.
In case you know any other good looking plugins for seamless Twitter integration – please share them in comments.