Tag: Social media sharing

Click to tweet

“Click To Tweet” – Are you using it?

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click tweetYou may have noticed on some blogs you’ve been reading, a ‘click to tweet’ box or birdie within the blog post. You can add these to your posts by highlighting a sentence or quote from within your blog post, and placing it in the ‘click to tweet’ generator. You will also have to copy and paste in the permalink URL to that blog post, plus your Twitter handle, then click ‘generate new URL’. You can then embed the newly generated link into your post to make it a tweetable Twitter share.

 Readers will now be able to click an eye-catching sentence to be tweeted into the Twitterverse and be shared, bringing you more traffic to your blog. It also enables your name to remain attached to the tweet, no matter how many times it gets shared from others, again to redirect readers to your blog when clicked on. So don’t forget to add your Twitter name.

Try it here:  Click to tweet

Alternatively, you can add a #clicktotweet plugin, which will install the little ‘birdie’ in your editing tool bar. You  click on the birdie in your editor when creating a post, after placing the box in the spot you’d like it to show in your post, and add the highlighted quote or words you want to go inside the box to tweet,  then click on the generate button  and the link is automatically installed in coded text. Then ‘save’ draft, and hit ‘preview’ and click on it to test it out.

 

Plugins are available in your ‘Plugins’  widget of your dashboard. Just type in the search box ‘click to tweet’ and you’ll find several plugins available. Read the details before installing to make sure that particular plugin is compatible with your blog.

Note: For WordPress.com users, who need more info about the Click to Tweet plugin, here’s a helpful link  http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-click-to-tweet-boxes-in-your-wordpress-posts/

 

Try it here:  [bctt tweet=”Are you using Click to Tweet?” username=”pokercubster”]

 

This little beauty can also be used to add links to your books and more with the link generator. The possibilities are endless.

 

Okay, so I’m still playing around with it, but  you can read this informative article here from Savvy Bookwriters, to get more tips and you will see a short demo video in that post by Kim at YourWritersPlatform for a quick view about how to generate a “click to tweet” link without the plugin.

Are you using Click to Tweet?

Share

SHOUT OUTS and Social Sharing

Published on by 12 Comments

Shout Outs and Sharing

share me

I’ve been thinking about the share buttons on our blogs. When I first started blogging I wasn’t aware of the importance of these buttons—other than the fact that most of us have them at the bottom of our posts, I felt like they are there merely  for someone to click if they wanted to ‘like’ what they had read.

like me

 

In my earlier blogging days, if I enjoyed a post I always felt that I was letting the writer know so by hitting ‘like’. I didn’t realize the importance of the other ‘share’ buttons until I became a published author. Now, I’m not saying we have to be published authors in order to have our writing appreciated and shared, but this was when I learned to understand the concept of social sharing and the importance of using these buttons.

When writers spend the time writing articles and posting helpful information that can benefit others, isn’t that worth sharing? It’s  especially nice for the newcomers to blogging who are always eager to learn new things about their trade. On the same token, those buttons are very precious to help promote the writer’s website. After all, if we didn’t share things, many writers miss out on the chance of having their writing exposed to more readers and followers, not to mention, potential sales for their books.

 

These buttons offer a chance for someone else to discover the writer’s page, and by sharing on all the various sites, it creates a chain reaction of other readers to enjoy the posts and continue to have these posts ‘shared’ again from the new pages and blogs the original shares are posted in. It’s essentially cyber advertising, FREE advertising.

When I realized how important all the sharing was, I made it a part of my blogging to hit ‘like’ if I enjoyed a post and click share on all the other social media buttons that I have accounts with if I felt a post was newsworthy and especially if I read about a promotion a fellow author was offering at the time to help spread the word for them. It doesn’t cost me anything to do those things and gives my followers who read my tweets, google page, linkedin or facebook, a chance to read something they may not have discovered or a book they may be interested in.

share

I think there may be a lot of bloggers who may be prolific writers but not so well-versed in the techniques of social media; I know I sure was at the beginning of my writing journey. I didn’t realize that when we click on share with twitter etc., that the post I had just read gets posted to my own accounts for others to view, enjoy and pass along. And so I wanted to share what I have learned along this path and perhaps make others aware of the importance of using the social share buttons at the end of our posts.

Now, don’t forget to share! 🙂