First of all it is nothing complicated.  The WordPress default permalink structure is always much shorter than the pretty permalink version of your URLs and therefore I thought why not use this when adding link to Twitter.  The problem is, is that you don’t want to change your permalink structure of your site just so that you can use the links in Twitter.  The great thing is, is that you don’t have to.

Lets use this post as an example.  In the WordPress dashboard I can see that WordPress has assigned this post a post ID of 55. However the permalink of the post is “http://equalmark.net/tutorials/shorttwitterurls”.  This permalink is good as it makes sense to the reader, but it is long.  The great thing with WordPress is that if you actually use the non pretty permalink version i.e. http://equalmark.net/?p=55 it still takes you to the same post and replaces the URL with the correct ‘pretty’ version.  So the question I was trying to solve was how to generate this link for each post.

The best way was to create a PHP function that could be used in your themes function.php file and then call the function wherever it is needed in the theme template files.  I added the following to functions.php.

<?php

// simple function to get a shortened version of your posts URL for twitter.  Uses the format yourdomain.com/?p=postid
function tweeturl() {
$thispost = bloginfo('url');
$tweetmiddle = "/?p=";
global $wp_query;
$theid = $wp_query->post->ID;
echo $thispost . $tweetmiddle . $theid;
}
?>

Lets just take a look at exactly what this does.  Line 4 sets up the name of the function that you need to call in your themes template files to make use of the functions.  Line 5 gets the blogs URL (in this case http://equalmark.net) and stores this in the variable $thispost.  Line 6 builds the middle part of the URL which all your posts will have and stores this in the variable $tweetmiddle. Line 7 and 8 get the current posts ID and then the rest is a matter of stitching everything together.

So to use this in your theme you will need to add the following to your themes template files:

<?php tweeturl(); ?>

That code will output or echo the current posts URL in the shortened version.  I have used it on this site like this:

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Been reading this great article - <?php tweeturl(); ?>">Tweet this Post</a>

The only different is instead of clicking on the text “Tweet this Post” I have replaced this with an image.

The benefits of using a function like this rather than one of the more popular URL shortening services is that whenever you want to include a link in your tweets that is your domain it means that you can keep your domain name in the actual Tweet content.  This means that more people will see your domain name and therefore could increase you traffic.  Let me know how you get on and any problems or issues (hopefully not) that you may come across.

Facebook has around 300 million users.  Twitter use is growing at over 1000%.  It seems pretty clear that in order to drive traffic to your site it is important that your site utilises social media.  I mention Facebook and Twitter because it is clear that these tend to be the main players.  Ask almost anyone (under the age of around 50) do you have a Facebook account and the answer tends to be yes.

When integrating the two into your website we need to look at your website as the hub for all your goings on, on the web.  This is where you want people to be.  When they are looking at your website it means that they are viewing your products and services that you are offering and therefore there is a chance of a sale and the possibility of making more money.  So what you need to do is use these social media sites in order to help drive traffic to your website, the hub and purpose of your online presence.

Another key point to mention here is the word consistency.  By that I mean consistency in brand look and naming across the social media sites as well of course on your own site.  It is more and more important that you try and get your companies name on social networking sites, rather than something else.  Your companies name is what people will look for and what you want people to associate you with.  The good things is that there are several tools that can help you secure your ‘username’ on a wealth of social networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook.  Here are two that I have found and used:

Know Em Username Check – a site that discovers whether your username, brand or company name is available of social websites across the internet.  There is a even a paid service that lets them sign up for all the sites leaving you time to get on with your every day tasks.

Namechk – allows you to check your username availability across many different social networking sites.  It is a little simpler than Know Em but equally as effective, however there is no paid service for signing up for you.  The site tells where your name is available and you have to do the leg work.

I would recommend that you reserve your name for all the major sites, even the ones that you do not intend to use.  Importantly it will stop anyone else using the name and posting content using your companies identify.

So once you have your usernames signed up for it is a matter of getting them into one place, so that it is easy to update all your websites.  The way that I do this is to use a Facebook application called ‘Selective Twitter‘.  This means that any Twitter updates that you post that you end with ‘#fb’ will be posted as your status on Facebook.  Therefore you never really need to visit Facebook again in order to update your Facebook profile.

When it comes to updating your Twitter status, I tend to opt for TweetDeck.  This allows you to use a desktop application in order to update your statuses and it can also handle multiple accounts if you have a personal Twitter account as well.  However there are several tools which you can use in order to update your status for your WordPress Dashboard.  A search for ‘Twitter’ or ‘Social Media’ in the WordPress plugins repository will provide several plugins that will do the job, depending on the complexity of your needs.

Once you have everything working I would then recommend branding your Twitter page.  Once you have logged into Twitter from their homepage you can click on settings and design and then choose some suitable colours and perhaps even a background image that will match your website.  This will enable visitors to easily identify the brand, product or company to which the Twitter page is referring to.  A simple but important step in my point of view.

So there you have it, a quick guide to integrating social media to your website and outlining some of the benefits that it can bring to your business and your own website.