How? Using Alex King’s amazing plugin Twitter Tools. If you want to get the most out of Twitter blog-wise, you should definitely check-out this WordPress plugin. It does a lot, including Twittering your blog posts and displaying your latest Tweets.

Before we continue, install the Twitter Tools plugin, and configure your login information. If you use Twitter for personal uses, as well as for speedlinking/sideblogging, then you may want to create a secondary account. If you use the Twhirl client to post Tweets, then you’re in luck. It can easily post to more than one Twitter account.

Sideblogging With Twitter

This one is easy. Just add the <?php aktt_sidebar_tweets(); ?> template tag to to your sidebar template to display your most recent Tweets. If you use sidebar widgets, then you can just hop on over to the Widgets page and drag the Twitter Tools widget to your sidebar.

That’s it. Now you can post your sideblog entries to your Twitter account, and they will be shown in your blog’s sidebar.

Speedlinking With Twitter

Twitter Tools has a feature that can post a frequent digests of your Tweets. By setting this up correctly, you can essentially speedlink using Twitter. You lose a little control if you do this instead of compiling the list manually, but it could potentially save you a lot of time.

Just tell Twitter Tools to post digests of your Tweets, and set the post title as “Speedlinking,” or whatever you want to call your Speedlinker posts,Ā plus the date.

Personally, I prefer to do my Speedlinking manually, but you may prefer this method.

Speedlinking is a method of posting. When you Speedlink, you round-up a collection of links to other blogsā€™ posts that you think would be interesting/useful to your readers.

The question is: Which is better for you?

Sideblogs

• Sideblogs are quick to update
• Sideblogs are instantaneous. You see something, you add it to your sideblog, and it’s out there for everyone to see. With speedlinking, you round-up your links then publish them all at once every week or so.
• Sideblogs allow you to post other things besides links.

Speedlinking

• Speedlinker posts show up in you main feed. Sideblog entries generally don’t.
• Speedlinker posts tend to get a lot of views and linkbacks. Also, everyone likes a big list of links.
• Speedlinking gives you a break. It’s real easy to write a short list of links, and a few notes about them.

Personally, I like both. I speedlink and I have a sideblog. I use the sideblog for timely links that can’t wait until the end of the week, as well as for quick updates and things that can’t be expanded into a full-blown post. My speedlinker posts, known as “BlogBuzz,” handle the rest of my linking needs.

• Speedlinking – 18 October 2007
• BlogBuzz October 18, 2007

After looking at the above examples, you should have a good idea of what Speedlinking is all about.

Why should you Speedlink? It can benefit you, your blog, and other blogs as well. You save time, your blog gets traffic and comments, and other blogs get incoming links. Everybody wins, right? Here are some of the said advantages:

1. Speedlinker posts are quick and easy to write. You just throw an unordered list into the Write Post box, paste-in the links, and write a little about them. Now you have more time to spend writing “Pillar Content.”
2. You can point your readers towards some of the interesting/cool/useful things you found online. Not everyone’s going to spend an hour sifting through your Del.icio.us account, so how about making things easier for them. And here, have another smiley:
3. If someone has linked to you in the past, you can be nice and link-back to one of their better posts.
4. People like Speedlinker posts. This month, 6/10 of the most popular posts on Webmaster-Source were BlogBuzz editions. How many posts did I write in October? See for yourself. Speedlinkers tend to get decent comment counts, plenty of traffic, and bloggers that you link to often drop by to see what you said about their post. If they notice your blog, they may subscribe, and they could even link to you in the future!

Interested? In case you decide to start Speedlinking like the rest of us nice, link-giving bloggers, here is the Official Speedlinking Manual:

1. Pick a name for your Speedlinking posts. Will it be “Speedlinking,” like Darren Rowse and so many who have followed, or will you come up with a unique name? While you’re at it, come up with a guideline of how often you will publish an edition. BlogBuzz is published whenever my collection of links gets big enough, which is basically once or twice a week. Darren Rowse puts out Speedlinking editions erratically, going weeks or even months without releasing a new one. It’s your call, and dependant on how much time you spend online.
2. Start collecting links. Create a folder in your bookmarks manager, or just use a plain-old text file. Whenever you see something interesting online, save the URL to your Speedlinking collection. Once you have enough links (I’d say at least 5), publish a new Speedlinker post. Be sure to put the date (or something else) in the title so you don’t have 100 posts titled “Speedlinking.”

Give Speedlinking a try, and remember: Everyone likes a big list of links.