As promised in one of my previous posts, I am giving away my Twitter background switching script to you for free.

I’ve got a live example running on my web site right now!

To test it, visit my Twitter profile at twitter.com/mwcreations and check out my Twitter background. After you have seen my Twitter background, visit my Maverick Twitter Background Switcher page. You’ll see a message that says something like “images/backgrounds/Singapore10.jpg has been uploaded to Twitter”. Now, go back to my Twitter profile and you’ll see a different Twitter background.

You may use a cron job to control the frequency of this script on your web host or click on a link like what I did for my installation.

The Maverick Twitter Background Switcher comes with a very easy to follow installation guide that will help you get this script up and running on your web host in minutes!

You also get a free Twitter background template in Photoshop format. This is the same background I use for my Twitter profile and you’ll be able to create your own backgrounds by modifying my template.

To get this free bonus, simply go to MaverickKeywordResearcher.com and sign up for my pre-launch list. If you are an existing subscriber to the public beta list and newsletter list, you’ll receive a link to download this bonus.

The launch preparation work for the Maverick Keyword Researcher is taking longer than expected. The first launch will always be the hardest as I am learning how to do it all and creating templates for future use. I underestimated the cost and time it would take to launch a product effectively. I didn’t want to simply launch it at the Warrior’s forum as a WSO offer and be done with it. I want to do it right and do it good.

I’m giving away this bonus as my way of saying sorry for the delays. I’ve also got more bonuses on the way to add more value to my product.

My followers have increased by 1766 in 45 days. That’s an average of 39 new followers per day. A lot of people are promoting the Twitter Traffic Machine on Twitter with an ad that goes something like “Thanks for the follow! Would you like to get 16,000 Followers in 90 days and make money? http://bit.ly/………”.

I doubt I would get 16000 followers in 90 days and I don’t really care. The “make money” portion of the Twitter Traffic Machine is to promote the eBook in your automated Twitter message to your new followers. That’s great for the author but if do not wish to promote his eBook on Twitter, you could promote something else.

Some of the tips in this eBook are pretty common knowledge for advanced Twitter users. I did learn a few new things about Twitter and Twitter tools that I have not tried. So if you think you know it all about Twitter, you may still find some gems in his eBook.

The author, Bill Cosby, demonstrates his system of automating the posting of great content to your Twitter account and other automation aspects of his system through 5 + videos. They are really easy to follow and implement. I got up and running within an hour.

The only drawbacks I see with this system is that you need to make sure your content sources are relevant to your niche. Some of the automated ways of getting content might get you a lot of unrelated posts, which may make your profile look “spammy”. I also wish the author could ellaborate more on how to make money with other products instead of just plugging his own.

All in all, for only $27, the Twitter Traffic Machine is a great buy.

Magpie is an ad network for Twitter. They’ll post tweets to your Twitter account on a predefined ratio of  tweets to ads. You could select to post ads as often as 1 ad after you post 1 Tweet or as spaced out as 1 ad after 200 Tweets. This is all done automatically for you so you don’t have to do anything.

Magpie’s ads come in pay per view, pay per click, pay per sale and pay per lead. You may choose to manually select the ads you wish to post to your Twitter account or let Magpie handle it automatically. Another great feature is to prepend the Magpie ads with a custom text like “ad:”.

2. Twittad

Twittad does not post Tweets to your Twitter account. Instead, it displays a background image to your Twitter account. Twittad calculates the estimated monthly ad cost of your Twitter account and you may edit that amount to whatever amount you think your Twitter is worth. The more targeted followers, the more money your Twitter account is worth to advertisers.

Mine’s worth only $265.71 per month with my 3000 or so followers at the time of this posting. Maybe my Twitter account would be worth $2650 per month with 30000 followers? Hmmm.. Who knows?

3. Twtad

Twtad is very similar to Magpie but it isn’t automatic. You have to click on the ads and post them to your Twitter account(s). The ads seem limited in my account. I hope the number of ads grows because I only see a few ads related to my target audience.

I have submitted a report to the Twitter API team about this issue and I hope they can tell me why it isn’t working.

My script is able to upload the background image to Twitter but it does not get displayed instantly. I end up seeing no background image and just my Twitter background colour. My Twitter account’s XML file does not display the right background file but if I click on the “save changes” button in “settings -> design”, the background magically appears.

Check out my video of this strange background image bug below. Click on the full screen button for a better view.

I hope this issue would be fixed soon because I would love to automatically update my Twitter profile’s avatar automatically with 3rd party services like Daily Mugshot and Gravatar. It would also be great to randomly update my Twitter background everyday too.

Please Retweet Me replaces your normal way of sending manual tweets. Instead of logging into Twitter.com to send your tweets, go to Please Retweet Me instead.

Please Retweet Me adds something like “http://pleasert.me/XXX” to your tweet. When someone clicks on that link, they will be forwarded to Twitter with a message with “RT @yourtwitterusername” and “http://pleasert.me/XXX”.

I find this a lot more convenient for people to retweet your tweets. Not everyone knows how to retweet yet and this could encourage them to try it.

Twollow is a really cool tool to look for people who tweet about the things that you want to target. I thought it does not work but recently I have been getting more followers out of nowhere. I am not totally sure if the new followers came from Twollow or some of the Facebook group “Twitter… You follow me… I follow you“.

If followers is what you want, then join these sites:

• Twitter… You follow me… I follow you on Facebook
• Twitter on BlogCatalog
• Follow Me On Twitter – Please Post Your Twitter URL Here on Self-Starters Weekly Tips

Combine Twollow with Tweetlater and you’ve got yourself a really cool automated follower adding machine.

Integrating Your Twitter Account with TweetLater

After you create a TweetLater account, add your Twitter account to TweetLater. You will see the following form below.

I checked on the “Auto Welcome” and “Auto Follow” fields. I think it would be better to send my new Twitter followers a private message with my welcome message. Therefore I selected “Send private direct message” for the “Message Sending Method” and entered a short welcome message into the “Send This Message” field.

Click on the “Save” button to save your Twitter account information and make sure you see your Twitter account listed like the screen shot above. During my first attempt at adding my Twitter account, I somehow did not get to the screen above so my Twitter automation services did not work.

Forward Twitter Follower Emails to TweetLater

The instructions by TweetLater are pretty straightforward and you should be able to follow them. I found that forwarding the Twitter emails to TweetLater is such a troublesome thing on my PC with my desktop software. If you do not currently use Gmail, then this is a good time to open a Gmail account to use it with your Twitter account. Let Google’s servers do the work of forwarding the Twitter emails to TweetLater so that your computer can be free to do other more important things.

Forwarding Twitter Follower Emails from Google Gmail to TweetLater

Assuming that you have at least 1 new follower, check out the “FROM” address of the sender. You should see a long Twitter email address like twitter-follow-YOURNAME=gmai...@postmaster.twitter.com.

Click on “Settings” -> “Filters” -> “Create a new filter”.

• Copy and paste the Twitter email address into the “From” field.
• Enter your email address into the “To” field.
• Enter “is now following you on Twitter” into the “Subject” field.

Click on the “Test Search” button to check if Gmail can find any existing emails that match this filter. If it works, click on the “Next Step” button to continue.

Ignore the Gmail label field if you do not wish to use them. Check on the “Foward it to” field and enter “twit...@tweetlater.com” into the text box. Check on the “Also apply filter to XX conversations below” field and click on the “Update Filter” button to complete the process. Now you’ve got yourself an automated Twitter new follower and welcome system for FREE!

Schedule Future Twitter Posts with TweetLater

I can’t find much use for this feature at the moment. Maybe I might use it when I go on holiday to automate the posting of some nice quotes. If you want to post content from your blog to Twitter, it would be better to use twitterfeed.

Here’s how Sitepoint did it…

Step 1: Newsletter

I received a free copy of their Photoshop Anthology eBook some time ago, therefore they sent me this email because I was on their list.

Step 2: Promotion Page

They bought a domain called Twitaway.com to redirect visitors to a particular page on their web site that promotes this free CSS eBook giveaway. They have a nice countdown timer, a Digg vote button, newsletter subscription box and a link to their Twitter profile on this page. You may either follow them on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletter to get the free CSS eBook. I chose to follow them on Twitter because I am already on their list.

Step 3: Digg

Sitepoint submitted a Digg submission to Digg in the Programming category. 190 digs since I last saw the page yesterday. I think they are aiming for the front page of Digg, which is more than possible within 14 days.

Step 4: Twitter

So I followed them on Twitter. About 30 minutes later, I received an email from them.

I think they used TweetLater to automate this step. I cannot imagine someone manually following all the new followers.

I was expecting a message from Sitepoint via Twitter and I got one! More clues that they used TweetLater. The message included a download link of the CSS eBook. This marketing sequence really blew me away and I now know the power of Twitter combined with other online marketing mediums.

If you know of similar online marketing campaigns, please let me know about it.

I was tempted to sign up for as many social networking accounts as possible but I prefer to keep it simple and have just a few accounts to manage. At the moment, I’m just reading up more about Twitter to learn how to use it properly. I am experiencing problems with getting my messages fit into the 140 character limit. I am also checking FriendFeed as it seems to have some great SEO benefits.

I wonder if it is just a gimmick to add as many friends and followers to make me look popular. I don’t think I can keep up posting random quotes about what I am currently doing to Twitter everyday. I don’t really see the purpose in doing so and it seems kind of boring to me. Strangely, some people love checking out what their friends are saying everyday.

Seth Godin says it is useless for small businesses. However, I see people like Joel Comm using Twitter and Facebook to promote their own products and web sites very well. I think we have to find a way to use it like Joel Comm if we want to use it to promote stuff.

I will add a box on my sidebar to display my latest Twitter status message very soon. It seems like people love these short status messages. I always get replies from my real friends about them. For now, I shall use Twitter and Facebook purely as a social tool.

For now, let’s take a look at what reddit has to offer…

reddit has a larger list of buttons than Digg. For this post, I shall use the button that looks most like the default buttons you see on reddit.com. Again, I selected this button for usability reasons because I want people who are familiar with reddit to feel comforable with the reddit buttons on my web site.

Here’s How the reddit Button Will Look on Your Web Site…

If your blog post has been submitted to reddit, you should see a reddit number and a “reddit” text in your reddit button.

If you or someone else has not submitted your blog post to reddit, you won’t see any redditnumber but you will see the option to submit your blog post to reddit.

reddit’s Integration Code

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=2"></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='[URL]'</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='[TITLE]'</script>

WordPress Default Theme’s index.php Template

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
		<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
		</div>
		<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
	</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

What We Need to Do

We need to replace reddit integration code’s [URL] and [TITLE] with WordPress’ <?php the_permalink() ?> and <?php the_title(); ?> respectively somewhere within the WordPress Loop.

Basic Example of reddit Integration with WordPress

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=2"></script>
		<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='<?php the_permalink() ?>'</script>
		<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='<?php the_title(); ?>'</script>
		<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
		<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
		</div>
		<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
	</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

This alone wouldn’t look good on your web site. We need some CSS style to spice things up!

reddit Integration with WordPress with HTML and CSS

<div class="social_news">
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=2"></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='[URL]'</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='[TITLE]'</script>
</div>

.social_news
{
	margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px;
	padding: 0px;
	float: right;
}

.social_news
{
	margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;
	padding: 0px;
	float: left;
}

Wrap the reddit code with a DIV class. You may choose to align the DIV class left or right but I think it looks better on the right.

Here’s the full source code:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<div class="social_news">
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=2"></script>
		<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='<?php the_permalink() ?>'</script>
		<script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='<?php the_title(); ?>'</script>
		</div>
		<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
		<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
		</div>
		<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
	</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

You may apply this modification to your WordPress theme’s single.php and page.php or any other template that has the WordPress Loop.

A WordPress Plugin Alternative: Digg & Reddit Me Plugin

If you don’t want to edit your WordPress theme files, try using the Digg & Reddit Me plugin. I personally think it would be too much of a hassle to manually insert the code into each post if I were to use this plugin but it really depends on your preferences and needs for your WordPress blog.