Twitter has been used for a variety of concepts since its inception several years ago, but one of the best functions of the platform has been to garner attention to new websites, businesses and concepts. Chances are your blog uses WordPress, which is currently the most popular blogging and website publishing platform in the world. For those seeking to combine the versatility of WordPress with the potential market share that Twitter has to offer, there are several plugins and add ons that can be used. We have compiled a list of the five best WordPress plugins for Twitter that you can use to drive additional traffic to your site or blog.

Tweet Old Posts

This plugin works by scanning your existing archives of posts and will periodically send out status updates via Twitter for select posts. You can customize how often posts are sent out and can also specify which categories or posts you want excluded from its selection process. Setting up this plugin is simple and only takes just a few minutes and your Twitter credentials. Many webmasters have “gold mines” when it comes to past posts and a plugin like Tweet Old Post will find them and distribute them to the Twitterverse.

WP to Twitter

This plugin works very much like Tweet Old Post, except it handles all new posts as opposed to existing posts. Whenever you make a new post, WP to Twitter sends out a status update on Twitter with a link to the post in question. While you may already be pinging backlinks for your site to other sources, WP to Twitter gives you the inherent ability to do so automatically via one of the most popular social networking platforms.

Twitter Digest

After all the tweeting you will be doing with these new plugins, you may wish to reverse engineer the process and create a post with all of your latest tweets. Twitter Digest allows you to do just that; it quickly fetches all of your most recent tweets and conglomerates them into a format that can easily be inserted into a post or page. With a myriad of customizable features, you can also finely tune which specific tweets are shown and which are hidden.

WP Tweet Button

Just because you are pinging backlinks via Twitter does not mean that others cannot help you along the way. The WP Tweet Button plugin adds a ‘Tweet’ button to each of your posts, giving readers the option of tweeting your content. Most healthy websites and blogs generate more leads via Twitter through their readers than they do through using the aforementioned options, so it is vital that you develop interactive ways of spreading your message via readers.

The All-Encompassing Option

Even if your primary social networking concern is Twitter, there are still other avenues in which you can get the word out about your content. One option is Digg Digg, which adds a floating toolbar on the side of the page or post that gives the reader multiple social sharing options. Whether someone is using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, they will easily be able to share your content. This sort of viral sharing is the key to growing your audience across multiple mediums.