Go Social – How to Use the Recent Tweets Panel

As a webmaster, it is your goal to connect with as many existing and potential customers as possible. The most effective way to do this is through social media. After all, where better to communicate with your audience than on new platforms designed specifically for communication?

At JaguarPC, we recommend every customer go social and take advantage of various communication tools available across the Internet. That is why we offer support resources including knowledgebase articles that cover the wider Web, as well as your specific web hosting plan.

But as you prepare to go social, it is important not to let your website get left behind. Your site is the central hub of your online presence and a fantastic opportunity to pull together all the places you are active online into a single, convenient resource.

An easy and effective way to do this is to add a Recent Tweets panel to your website, allowing visitors to see what you have been doing on Twitter at a glance. Read on to learn more about how useful a Recent Tweets panel can be, and how to add your own in just a few minutes.

Why add a Recent Tweets panel to your website?

If you are working hard on your social media strategy, you understand that it is not enough to link to your website content. You need to use social media to start interesting conversations with potential customers, post resources from other organizations your customers may find useful, and occasionally post your own content exclusively to Twitter.

But not every customer uses social media, and you would not want any customer to miss out on what you are offering. A Recent Tweets panel bridges this gap, displaying a few of your latest tweets or other Twitter interactions on your website.

Adding a Recent Tweets panel allows you to:
* Syndicate your most important updates to your website, keeping content fresh
* Alert people to your social media presence and encourage them to connect with you
* Let people who do not use social media get an idea of what you are doing on Twitter
* Create a cohesive, integrated online presence that seamlessly ties your website to your Twitter page

You can even use a Recent Tweets panel to add content from other Twitter users to your website, collating community-generated content your visitors may find interesting.

Best of all, adding a Recent Tweets panel is quick and easy.

How to add a Recent Tweets panel in just a few minutes

If you use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you can use a range of extensions and plugins to create a Recent Tweets panel. However, the Twitter website provides a powerful interface for creating, customizing, and coding your panel.

At twitter.com/widgets, you can hit the “Create New” button to start building a Recent Tweets widget.

There are four different options to choose from:
* Recent tweets from your own timeline
* Recent tweets you have marked as favorites
* Recent tweets from a specific list
* Recent tweets that include a specific search query

In each instance, you can select the height and size of your panel, choose from a dark or light theme, and change colors to fit with your existing web design. Then, after saving your changes, you will be presented with a section of code that can be pasted anywhere into your website.

If you use a cPanel web hosting plan from JaguarPC, you can add this code using the File Manager tool. Alternatively, most desktop FTP clients make it easy to edit code without using external software.

It is that easy – visit the Twitter website, sign in, and create your Recent Tweets panel now. And remember, once you have started using Twitter to connect with your customers, be sure to connect with us at twitter.com/jaguarpc.

For more information on web hosting services from JaguarPC, visit www.jaguarpc.com.