Our theming of Magento does not have to stop at changing the way it looks. We can also add aspects of social media to it, such as:
- Integrating your Magento store with Twitter
- Improving your store's customer service
- Using social bookmarking tools such as AddThis to help your customers spread the word about your store across the Internet
With so many e-commerce stores on the Internet, using social media can make a huge difference to your store's fortunes. It can also increase your potential customers and ensure that customers continue to come back.
Twitter (http://twitter.com) is a micro-blogging service, which allows its users to send short messages to their followers, answering the question "what are you doing now?"
After registering a Twitter account, you can begin to follow other Twitter users. When they update their status, you will see it in your timeline of what people you follow say.
If you look at other businesses on Twitter, you'll see that there are a number of ways to promote your store on Twitter without losing followers by being too "spammy".
Twitter can be a powerful tool for your store on its own, but you can integrate Twitter with your Magento store to drive existing customers to your Twitter account, which can help to generate repeat customers.
There are a few ways Twitter can be used with Magento, the most versatile of which is the LazzyMonks Twitter module.
To install the LazzyMonks module, visit its page on the Magento Commerce web site (http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/482/lazzymonks-twitter), and retrieve the extension key, after agreeing to the terms and conditions. Log in to your Magento store's administration panel, and open the Magento Connect Manager in the Magento Connect option under the System tab.
Once this has loaded, paste the extension key in to the text box next to the Paste extension key to install label, as shown in the following screenshot:
This will install the module for you. Return to your Magento store's administration panel, and you will see a Twitter option in the navigation. The View Tweets option allows you to view updates made to your Twitter account. The Post Update option allows you to update Twitter from your store's administration panel.
Firstly, you will need to configure the module's settings, which can be found under the Twitter option of the Configuration section of your store's administration panel, under the System tab.
The Twitter Login options are of particular interest. Here you will need to enter your Twitter account's username and password.
Once this has been saved, you can post a status update to your Twitter account through Magento's administration panel:
This then appears on your Twitter account:
Your tweets will also be displayed on your store, as a block beneath other content and can be styled with CSS in your Magento theme by addressing div.twitter.
The other way to integrate your Twitter feed with Magento is by embedding Twitter's widgets into your site. To use these, log in to your Twitter account, and go to http://twitter.com/widgets. You can then use the HTML provided within the Magento templates to insert your Twitter updates into your store.
Alternatively, you can insert your Twitter account's updates into any page managed through Magento's Content Management System. In Magento's administration panel, select CMS | Manage Pages, and select the page that you want your Twitter stream to appear in. Within your page, simply paste the code that Twitter produces when you select the type of Twitter "badge", which you want to display on your store.