Flaunt Your Feed: How to Embed Your Twitter Feed on WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less

You’ve got a blog. And you’ve got a Twitter account. Are you ready to learn how to embed your Twitter feed in WordPress for a better match than you’ve seen since the latest season of The Bachelor?

All humor aside, Twitter is an important platform for bloggers and business owners. It’s great for sharing your own content, other people’s content, finding your target audience, and doing market research.

There are over 300 million active users on Twitter each month. And 50% of those users are following brands. Yes, unlike Facebook or Pinterest, Twitter users are happily following their favorite brands and 74% expect to see product updates from those brands.

This is an opportunity for you, as a business owner, to get on your customer’s radar by providing interesting and share-worthy content.

How does embedding your feed in your WordPress blog help you?

You want to entice your Twitter followers back to your blog, but you also want your blog readers to follow you on Twitter. Embedding your feed draws immediate attention to the fact that YES, you are on Twitter, and shows that your tweets are worthy of following.

Twitter is a fast moving platform, the average half-life of a tweet is only around 18 minutes. Embedding your feed on your site showcases your tweets for your readers. It allows users to engage with you differently than they would on your website – you don’t necessarily want to just cross-post the same content on your Twitter feed as on your site, so the conversation is going to be different than the ones you are having there.

Posting campaigns, re-tweeting industry-related news, or even a silly meme will get your users thinking about and connecting with your brand on a cross-platform level, and that’s always good.

How to Embed Your Feed on WordPress

There are two ways to embed your feed on WordPress. You can do it manually using the native Twitter widget or via a plugin. Either way is quick, easy, and will have you up and running in five minutes or less.

Are you ready to flaunt your feed?

Creating a Twitter Widget (the manual way)

If you’re not comfortable with code, you might be tempted to skip over this section. But it’s actually incredibly easy to embed your Twitter feed manually. And there’s no risk to your site either–you can’t break anything.

Why would you want to embed your feed manually?
The main reason to manually embed your feed is to avoid adding yet another plugin to your site. It’s recommended to use as few plugins as possible on your site for site speed, and embedding your feed can easily be accomplished manually.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign in to Twitter.
2. Go to your Settings and select Widgets.
3. Click Create New.
4. Select Profile to embed your Twitter feed.
5. Enter the Twitter URL of your profile in the box and hit the Enter key.



6. Choose Embedded Timeline to display your feed.



7. Click Set Customization Options and you’ll be able to set the height, theme (light or dark), and link color to match your website. Click Update once you’re finished customizing.
8. Click the Copy Code button to grab the code.
9. Paste the code into a text widget or into the HTML section of your post or page.

Insert Feed via Plugins

If you’re more comfortable using a plugin, there are plenty to choose from! Some plugins are incredibly simple and easy to set up, while others are more complex and come with a variety of customization options.

We’ve handpicked a selection of plugins that run the range of setup difficulty and customizability so you’ll be able to choose the right one for you.

Here are our five top picks to try:

EASY TWITTER FEED WIDGET PLUGIN

This is a very simple and no-frills free plugin. It does what it says on the box – it’s a plugin that creates a Twitter feed widget. It gives you similar customization options to the native Twitter widget.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Navigate to Widgets and drag and drop Twitter Timeline (Easy Twitter Feed Widget) into one of the widget areas of your theme.
3. Change the settings to your liking – you can change the height and width, number of tweets, theme (light or dark), colors of the links and borders and make changes to the layout.

Time Taken: about a minute from start to finish.

Here’s what it looks like as a sidebar widget:

TWITTER FEED FOR WORDPRESS

This plugin is slightly more complicated to set up. You’ll need to create an application in the developer section of Twitter. Sound intimidating? It’s not actually difficult!

Here’s how to get started:

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Navigate to AccessPress Twitter Feed on the menu.
3. You’ll need to create an app on Twitter to fill out the API Settings – click here to jump or scroll down the page for the instructions.
4. Customize the plugin settings to your liking – choose how often you want your feed to update, how many tweets to display and choose from three display format options.
5. To add your feed to your site, you can either grab the shortcode to place it anywhere or use the widget.

Time Taken: About 5 minutes.

Here’s what it looks like:

CUSTOM TWITTER FEEDS

If you’re a fan of tweaking your site to get things just the way you like them, this one’s for you! As an added bonus it’s also quite quick and easy to get started with. If you want even more options, there’s also a Pro version.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Navigate to Twitter Feeds in the menu.
3. Click the Log in to Twitter and get my Access Token and Secret button.
4. This will take you to a screen where you can authorize Smash Balloon (the plugin creator) to access your Twitter account.
5. Customize the settings to your liking – you’ve got the ability to change the number of tweets to display, whether to display your own timeline, your home timeline or tweets by hashtag. You can also customize the width, what information is displayed and even add your own CSS. Plus, you can change the colors and appearance of almost every part of your feed.
6. To add your feed, you can either grab the shortcode to display your feed anywhere or head over to Widgets and use the installed widget.

Time Taken: 3 minutes (longer if you dig into the customization options!)

Here’s what it looks like:

FEED THEM SOCIAL

This plugin’s main appeal is that it works for multiple social platforms. It’s another plugin that requires you to create a Twitter Application.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Install and activate.
2. Navigate to Feed Them on the menu.
3. Select Twitter Options.
4. You’ll need to create an app on Twitter to fill out the API Settings – click here or scroll down for how to do it.
5. Now that you’ve done that, click on over to Settingsin Feed Them Social.
6. Select Twitter Feed from the drop down menu.
7. Choose User feed.
8. Add your Twitter name and customize the options to your liking.
9. Click Generate Shortcode and copy the code that appears.
10. Paste this code wherever you want to display your Twitter feed.

Time Taken: 4 minutes

Here’s what it looks like:

KEBO TWITTER FEED

This is another free and simple plugin that gives you a Twitter feed that adopts the styling of your site. It’s very easy to install – no need to worry about generating access tokens – you simply authorize Kebo to access your Twitter account.

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Navigate to Settings >> Kebo – Twitter Feed in the menu.
3. Click the Connect to Twitter button.
4. Authorize Kebo to access your Twitter account.
5. Navigate to Appearance > Widgets and you’ll find the Kebo – Twitter Feed widget in the list.
6. Drag and drop the widget into the position you want.
7. You have a few customization options to choose from – light or dark theme, number of tweets to display, and slider or list style.

Time Taken: about a minute

Here’s what it looks like:

How to Generate a Twitter Access Token

Twitter Feed for WordPress and Feed Them Social require you to create a Twitter Application and generate access tokens to be able to use their plugins.

Sound difficult? It’s actually pretty simple!

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Click here to go to Twitter Application Management. (You’ll need to log in to Twitter if you aren’t already.)
2. Click Create New App.
3. Fill out the name, description and website fields and tick the box to say that you’ve read the Twitter Developer Agreement.
4. Click Create Your Twitter Application.
5. Click on Keys and Access Tokens.
6. Copy and paste the Consumer Key (API Key) and Consumer Secret (API Secret) into the respective fields in the plugin.
7. Scroll down to Your Access Token. Click on Create my access token.
8. Copy and paste the Access Token and the Access Token Secret into the respective fields in the plugin.

Comparing the List

Now that you’ve had a chance to look at all the different options, which one should you choose? Here’s a comparison table to help you!

Wrapping it up

Now it’s time for you to go forth and flaunt that Twitter feed of yours!

If you’re feeling confident you can manage the coding, try manually adding your feed to your WordPress site using the Twitter widget generator. Or, if you want both ease of use (no coding or access token creation required) and customizability, choose Custom Twitter Feeds. If you need to display media in your feed, consider Easy Twitter Feed Widget Plugin.

Have you embedded your Twitter feed? What is your favorite way to accomplish this?