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Tinkering with Tweeting from the Blog


          As readers may have noticed yesterday, I am experimenting with originating “tweets” from the blog. After a few missteps, I think I have it working.

          For this to work on as many outlets as possible, I seem to have to put the “tweet” in the headline part of the Blogger template. The tweet should look normal on Twitter, and seems perfectly readable on Facebook. It even comes up on the philly.com blog section.

          If I write an actual post, the headline should appear on all four outlets, with a link after the headline on Twitter. Apparently, there is always a link on Twitter and philly.com, but hopefully the wording of a headline versus a tweet will be obvious for those readers. Facebook should still give a brief preview of the article (no doubt with words mashed together as if I can’t edit at all; that’s a Facebook issue), and, obviously, the post will be clear on Blogger. For now, e-mail subscriptions appear to be malfunctioning for reasons unrelated to this effort.

          My replies to comments from others will appear on the format they are given.

          The idea is to get as much exposure as possible. Headlines that are just tweets may look a bit strange on Blogger, but I’m hoping this idea may actually be a bit innovative and keep the blog format alive for thoughts that actually require more than 125 characters.

          Of course, by next week it may seem like a completely stupid idea, but I’m giving it a shot.

UPDATE 5/16/12: The automated services that send blog posts to Twitter and Facebook just, well, suck. Ok, that’s probably overstated, but they are slow and unreliable enough that I’m experimenting with manually posting tweets from the blog to each service. If a tweet is more than 125 characters, I’m just using bitly to link back to the blog. If I ever make a point to actively tweet during a game, as I did during a few Eagles games last season, I’ll likely post a note on the blog and Facebook, and just tweet from Twitter. (I doubt I’ll be doing much of that.)

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