Building an audience and increasing brand awareness can feel like an uphill battle. Even with all the ways you have to spread the word – website, social media, etc. – getting people’s attention is no easy task. You need an effective way to engage your visitors.
There’s one powerful marketing tool that you definitely shouldn’t overlook: Twitter, now known as X. As a vibrant community with millions of active users, Twitter offers immense potential for reaching a broader audience, and you can harness this using RSS feeds.
RSS feeds deliver content from third-party sources to your website in a constantly updating content feed. While these are usually used to curate news posts and blog articles, you can also curate real-time social media posts – your own and others.
Let’s explore how you can leverage Twitter RSS feeds to grow engagement and brand awareness on your website.
But first, what are the potential benefits of using Twitter RSS feeds?
The Potential Benefits Of Twitter RSS Feeds
Besides increasing engagement by exposing you and your audience to interesting new content, there are several benefits to adding Twitter RSS feeds to your website. Here’s an overview:
- Keep website content fresh – It’s a great idea to add dynamic elements to your website. Every time someone visits, they’ll have plenty of new Twitter posts to catch up on. It’s a continuous flow of new information that keeps your site relevant and encourages people to return.
- Increase dwell time – Dwell time is how long people collectively spend browsing your website, and dynamic RSS feeds are a great way to increase it. The longer visitors stay, the more likely they are to explore other parts of your website, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and engagement with your content.
- Encourage social media interaction – Showcasing your Twitter activity on your website can prompt visitors to engage with your social media channels. They might follow your Twitter account, retweet your posts, or start a conversation in the comments. Besides building a community, the increased engagement with your account is great for the algorithm and your posts may be shown to more people.
- SEO benefits – Google’s SEO algorithm prefers to promote fresh new content and websites that are always updated. An RSS feed is one way to get your site indexed more often and potentially be ranked as more relevant.
- Real-time updates – A Twitter RSS feed ensures that your audience gets the latest news and updates from your social media accounts. Website visitors will never miss a post and your engagement will shoot up.
That’s just a few of the benefits of incorporating Twitter RSS feeds.
Can Twitter RSS Feeds Help Grow Engagement?
If you’re not familiar with RSS feeds, they offer a way for websites to share their latest content, like articles or blog posts, in a standardized format. They allow users to subscribe and receive updates automatically, without having to visit the website each time. Think of it as a digital news ticker that delivers fresh content straight to you.
In terms of growing engagement, RSS feeds allow you to keep track of conversations and accounts on Twitter. With this, you significantly enhance your site’s engagement by continuously delivering fresh, relevant content to your visitors without requiring constant manual updates.
Imagine you run a blog about digital marketing. By integrating RSS feeds from leading Twitter accounts in the digital marketing space, you can automatically pull in the latest tweets and discussions from experts like Moz, and HubSpot.
Whenever these experts tweet about new trends, tips, or articles, your site will display this fresh content in real-time. This continuous stream of up-to-date information keeps your visitors coming back for more, as they know they can always find the latest insights on your blog without needing to search manually.
You could create a feed of your tweets and filter out hashtags associated with your brand. Or you could add a feed to your site filled with high-quality, curated content from respected voices in your industry.
Furthermore, you can use it as a personal content curation tool, helping you follow industry influencers and thought leaders. With this, you’ll be exposed to new audiences, learn new things, and stay up to date with what’s happening in your industry.
This can position you as a knowledgeable source of info, and you can include your own commentary or analysis to provide extra value to your audience. Interested visitors will click over to your Twitter to join the conversation, increasing engagement and bringing more attention to your brand.
All this encourages regular visits to your website and can even foster a sense of community.
How to Use Twitter RSS Feeds Effectively
Ready to make your own Twitter RSS feed? This can be done quickly, easily, and inexpensively with our own plugin, WP RSS Aggregator. You’ll need a WordPress website and the free version of WP RSS Aggregator.
You may wish to upgrade to the premium version for extra features like feed to post, but the free version will allow you to curate Twitter feeds. Let’s give you an idea of how to use WP RSS Aggregator for your own Twitter RSS feeds.
Generating a Twitter RSS Feed
The first thing you need to do is create an RSS feed of your Twitter account, or whatever accounts you want to add to your feed.
Twitter used to offer this functionality natively, but now you’ll need to use third-party RSS feed generator tools. Some examples include RSS.app and OpenRSS.
Just put in the Twitter handle you want to follow and the service will create an RSS feed URL for you. Some of these services also support generating a feed for particular search queries and hashtags.
For a more in-depth explanation, check out our full guide to creating Twitter RSS feeds.
Once you have your feeds, you’re ready to integrate them into your website.
Integrating the Feed into Your Website
Now it’s time to add your Twitter feeds to your website with WP RSS Aggregator. The first thing you’ll need to do is log in to your WordPress dashboard, then navigate to Plugins > Add New and install WP RSS Aggregator.
Once you activate the plugin, you’ll be brought to the introduction screen. Here you can add your first Twitter RSS feed. You can also go to RSS Aggregator > Feed Sources and click Add New to set up a new feed.
Here you can put the RSS feed into the URL box, and configure various feed settings like the update interval or when the feed items should start appearing.
Once you click Publish, you’ll see a shortcode you can use to publish your feed on your site. You can also use the RSS feed Gutenberg block to drop a feed anywhere. You can find this while editing any post or page – just click the plus symbol and search for WP RSS Aggregator Feeds.
Don’t forget to visit RSS Aggregator > Templates to set up how your feed will display on your website. You can customize each template with CSS, or you can use the templates feature to further customize how each feed looks.
Optimizing the Feed for Engagement
Now that you have the Twitter RSS feed working on your website, it’s time to optimize it to enhance engagement. Here are a few tips.
- Curate relevant content – Pick out Twitter accounts, search terms, and hashtags that align with your website’s theme and your visitors’ interests. More content isn’t always better; pick high-quality, interesting feeds your visitors will want to engage with.
- Use calls to action – Encourage interaction by incorporating CTAs alongside the displayed tweets. Ask people to retweet, follow, and join the conversation.
- Integrate social media buttons – Adding social media buttons near the feed allows visitors to easily share content, follow your Twitter account, or retweet posts directly from your website.
- Display user-generated content – A great way to increase engagement is to run marketing campaigns that encourage user interaction while using a particular hashtag. You can also showcase mentions of your brand and use filtering rules to control what gets displayed.
With these tips, you can encourage user interaction and engagement, both on your website and your social media accounts.
Wrapping Up
Twitter RSS feeds are a great way to significantly enhance user engagement on your site. You can create a feed of your own posts and hashtags, curate Twitter posts from influencers in your field, or target specific hashtags and searches that are relevant to your audience.
Getting a Twitter RSS feed on your website is simple with WP RSS Aggregator. With our user-friendly interface and powerful features, curating and aggregating Twitter feeds is super easy and straightforward.
