If you run a blog then you know how hard it is sometimes to come up with ideas to blog about. Then, you finally figure out what you are going to write about and spend a bunch of time (sometimes hours) writing your blog post. Finally, you do one last read through your post editing as you go and push Publish! The traffic comes in for a few days, but then as time goes on the traffic starts to drop off. Well, I know a good way to help rejuvenate that traffic and keep the visitors coming in so all your hard work really pays off. All you need is a Twitter account with some followers and an awesome WordPress plugin called Tweet Old Post.

Tweet Old Post is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to post a random “old” post from your blog on your Twitter account. You can control which posts Tweet Old Post chooses from, but it will choose a random post and tweet it on your Twitter automatically at a given time increment that you decide. It’s automated traffic to your blog posts!

Download and Install Tweet Old Post

At this point in your blogging career you should know how to download and install a WordPress plugin, but if not a few Google searches or YouTube videos should be enough to get you through that part of the process. You can download from the Add New menu within your WordPress Plugins backend or download it from the WordPress plugin directory. Once you have downloaded and installed Tweet Old Post you should see it in your WordPress admin menu. You can click that and update your settings.

Tweet Old Post Settings

One of the best things about Tweet Old Post is the vast amount of options available in the settings. You want to use the plugin to get more traffic from your Twitter followers, but you also do not want to post so often that you annoy them and they stop reading your tweets or unfollow you. You can adjust the settings to make sure you are getting the most out of the plugin without hurting your relationships with your followers.

The settings I use for Tweet Old Post are shown to the right. Here is a breakdown of what you can do with each option to keep your followers happy.

Tweet Content

When I post a new blog article and tweet about it I begin the tweet with Fresh on LPF! so that my followers know that it’s a brand new post and not one that I’ve reposted using Tweet Old Post. The automated posts just include the title and the blog post URL. However, you can set up your Tweet Old Post to post just the beginning body of the tweet or the title and body.

I’ve mixed and matched the tweet content over the time I’ve been using Tweet Old Post to keep the automated tweets fresh and the clicks coming in.

Include Link

I am not sure why you wouldn’t want to include the link to your article, but it’s an option.

Fetch URL from custom field

You can choose what URL shortener to use when posting your link on your Twitter or if you are using a plugin to create your own custom short URL you can use this option to use that link instead. For example, if you use YOURLS then you can enter yourls_shorturl to use your YOURLS short link.

Use URL shortener?

If you already use a URL shortener when posting your blog post articles on your Twitter I suggest using the same when with your automated tweets from Tweet Old Post. They have many shortener options available.

Minimum interval between tweets

You can set the minimum time between tweets automatically made by Tweet Old Post. The default is 4 hours, which I think it way too frequent. I have my frequency set at every 48 hours, but every once in awhile I’ll choose to manually tweet an old post. You can set a frequency you’re happy with that is getting response from your followers, but not causing you to be an annoyance.

Minimum age of post to be eligible for tweet

Because I tweet about all my new articles when I publish them, I have my Tweet Old Post setup so that a post must be at least a day old before it can be tweeted automatically. If you post more frequently you can choose to wait a week, a month, or whatever interval you want before a post can be eligible to be posted automatically using Tweet Old Post.

Categories to Omit from tweets

I choose to post all of my published articles on my Twitter, but if you have certain articles you do not want to be tweeted using Tweet Old Post you can place them in a category and have Tweet Old Post ignore them.

In just a few minutes, you can literally start driving hundreds if not thousands of pageviews to your blog every month. I get about 33% of my social traffic from Tweet Old Post. Most of the people who click on the links in my Twitter feed are returning visitors to my blog. Returning visitors are more likely to subscribe to my newsletter if they haven’t already, so the returning traffic is very variable. Tweet Old Post drives that return traffic for free!

Take advantage of your social reach and monetize your traffic using Tweet Old Post. Let me know if you have any questions and let’s make some money!