How to create and embed a Twitter widget

Anyone surfing the internet today knows it’s easy to be over­whelmed by the flood of in­for­ma­tion available. So tying all of the relevant in­for­ma­tion together and con­nect­ing it smoothly is becoming more and more important. In both our working and leisure time, we spend hours each day flitting between news portals and social networks, from Twitter to Facebook or Instagram to Pinterest, all the while still feeling like we’ve probably missed some relevant in­for­ma­tion. This is why social networks have these so-called news feeds, to feed us all the most relevant in­for­ma­tion we want to see each day in one handy place; the aim being to keep us on the site for as long as possible.

Younger readers in par­tic­u­lar value these col­lec­tions, reducing their need to search and giving them all the top stories they want. And because many have grown up on Facebook or Twitter, they trust these sites more than tra­di­tion­al news outlets. As a result, your social media channels and the posts you make are playing an in­creas­ing­ly important role in how suc­cess­ful you are as a company. Imagine if your website or blog was shown on the 10 o’clock news every evening, on display to a global audience. This is the way you should view social networks – a chance to have your updates displayed on news feeds to your entire target audience every day.

Whether we’re talking about actors, sports stars, companies, news portals, or political parties: every tweet sent in the past decade has provided fans, teammates, en­thu­si­asts and customers with up-to-the-minute in­for­ma­tion. Twitter cel­e­brat­ed its 10^th launch date an­niver­sary on July 15^th 2016, and at the start of the year it had surpassed the 320 million mark for reg­is­tered active users. So if you want to be a topic of daily con­ver­sa­tion, you can’t afford to overlook the tweeting service. And once you’re active on Twitter, you can actually go one step further and embed content from your Twitter account so it can be presented on your website, blog, or online shop. To make it easier for users to integrate a Twitter feed, also known as a timeline, into their own web presences, the social network has created a widget. This can be used to create a specific code snippet that is then simply copied and pasted into the cor­re­spond­ing position within your website’s HTML document - usually as a sidebar. Depending on the aim of your Twitter feed, you can choose one of the following sources for your timeline:

• Profile: displays all public tweets and retweets from selected Twitter users.

• Likes: shows all ‘favorited’ tweets from selected users.

• List: displays all public tweets and retweets from selected public lists on Twitter, either ones you own or ones you subscribe to.

• Search: shows the results of all user defined searches like hashtags (#IONOS), URLs (ionos.com), retweets to par­tic­u­lar Twitter users (to:IONOS) or user mentions (@IONOS)

• Col­lec­tion: displays all selected tweets that are first put together to form a col­lec­tion using an external program like TweetDeck.

If you want to embed a Twitter feed into your website in order to display your own tweets or even the tweets of others, it goes without saying that the first step is to create your own personal Twitter account. So if you still haven’t signed up to the message sharing service, you’ll need to do so before moving onto step one of our guide below. You can register for Twitter quickly and easily using their sign-up page. All you’ll need is your name, an email address or telephone number, and a personal password. After this, you’ll be asked to create your unique Twitter name. We recommend you use one that looks pro­fes­sion­al and rep­re­sents your company or brand. Upon com­ple­tion, your new Twitter account will be created au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and you can set about creating a Twitter widget:

Whether you’re running your own blog, in­tro­duc­ing your company online, or pre­sent­ing news from around the world, it’s likely that you’re already active on social networks. The stronger you link your in­di­vid­ual social media channels with your website, the easier it’ll be to lock your audience in and create an online brand identity. Embedding a Twitter feed using a Twitter widget can help you increase the awareness of your blog or website, increase your Twitter followers, and ensure that customers make the con­nec­tion between what you say on social media and what you offer on your homepage.

If you choose to add other people’s entries to your website’s Twitter feed, your project will receive an ad­di­tion­al bonus free of charge. Your site visitors have the option not only of reading your in­di­vid­u­al­ly created feed, but also fa­vorit­ing, replying, or retweet­ing your tweets on your homepage: in effect, you will be creating your own, localized twit­ter­verse. Unlike other, less complex social media buttons that just act as a link to your Twitter account, the Twitter widget gives your users the chance to explore your Twitter feed while enjoying your homepage – creating a strong link between the two. All you need to do is create a well-organized Twitter account rep­re­sent­ing your brand identity, make sure it matches your web project in ap­pear­ance and style, and then simply embed the feed and reap the benefits.