Social Media: Supercharge Your Sites Part 2

Welcome back to “Social Media: Supercharge Your Sites.” This is the second installment of the two part series, which will cover a few ways to integrate Twitter with your website. If you missed part 1, and want to learn how to leverage your Facebook pages/posts within your website, go check it out. Like part 1, we will be implementing these examples using some example Demosphere content. Let’s get started!

Social Media Tip 1: Embedding A Single Tweet (5 mins.)

Tweeted a great photo of your team? Travel? A sunset? Showcasing tweets with engaging imagery on your site is best done by embedding a single tweet (including the photo). Before adding the tweet to your site, consider where you want to place the new content. Tweets are generally short, even if they include a photo or video. A great place to include this kind of content is in a sidebar or narrow container. In our example we will add the tweet to a sidebar.

1. Find the tweet you want to embed. 
   Twitter makes this pretty easy by having a button to choose what you would like to do with a tweet.
2. Copy the code. 
   For this example we want the imagery, so we leave “Include media” checked.
3. Add the tweet to your site. 
   Now that you have the embedded tweet code it’s time to add the content to your site. If you have a Demosphere site, then you can accomplish this easily through the rawcode content type. If you are not on the Demosphere platform, see if you can add the embedded tweet code to your site through your content management system’s editing tools.
4. View public version 
   Congratulations! You just embedded a tweet on your site for the first time.

Social Media Tip 2: Embedding A Single Video (5 mins)

If you have an exciting video of a game winning goal, buzzer-beater, or a message you want to convey to your audience through video, then you can share that content between twitter and your site. The process is very similar to embedding a normal tweet, but video content requires more room than a normal tweet. In this example we will add the video from twitter to the main content container of our page.

1. Find the video you want to embed from twitter. 
2. Copy the code. 
3. Add the video to your site. 
   Videos are not embedded with a title, so you’ll want to add a title that grabs your audience’s attention.
4. View the public version. 

Social Media Tip 3: Embedding A Timeline (10 mins)

If you want to embed your entire Twitter timeline on a section of your site, you’re in luck because Twitter has that feature. You’ll need a Twitter account and will have to sign into Twitter to use this feature. Let’s get started!

1. Head over to Twitter’s publishing tool https://publish.twitter.com
2. Add the url to the timeline that you want to embed. This is normally the url of your Twitter page. In this example we will use Demosphere’s Twitter page. 
3. Choose your display template. 
   Depending on your Twitter content, your display options will vary. Experiment with various templates at your leisure. In this example we will use the embedded timeline option.
4. Edit the display options. 
   With an embedded timeline your content will cause your page to scroll due to the length of the timeline. We’ll add a height display option to have our content scroll within it’s own section once embedded on our page.
5. Add the timeline to your site. 
   You can do this via rawcode if you are using the Demosphere platform. In our example we will hide the title for our timeline because the embedded timeline includes a title.
6. View the public version 

More On Twitter

Want to see what else Twitter can do? Explore their embedded content APIs here.

What next?

Now you have the knowledge to supercharge your websites! Like many things in life, content curating is an art that has no right or wrong answer. Always remember, “because you can does not always mean you should,” so be conscious if you are overloading your site with too much content from your social media. Have fun and continue learning!

I hope you enjoyed this introduction series to getting your sites integrated with Facebook and Twitter. Leave a comment below and check out Social Media: Supercharge Your Sites Part 1, where we go over how to integrate Facebook with your site.