Adding “ReTweet” Buttons To Your Lens
The TweetMeme retweet button is for website and blog publishers who want to encourage their audience to tweet their content on Twitter. The button shows a live count of the number of times your webpage or blog post has been tweeted. You may have already seen buttons like this one appearing on this and other blogs all over the ‘net:
« Here’s a working example. Give it a try…
Now, you can have it on your Squidoo lens too. Best of all, you don’t even need an account on Twitter, but you can help your visitors spread the word about your lens for you. This looks great in either the Guestbook module, or the Lens Love widget, or anywhere else you like.
And here’s the code you need (edit as required):
<a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=URL of lens&source=username" target="_blank" title="retweet"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=URL of lens" alt="retweet" width="51" height="61" align="left" /></a>
Notes:
- You must put in complete URL of your lens, for example: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo. Don’t forget to put in both places, once for the link and again for the image.
- If you have a twitter account, then put your username after &source=, so that you get credit when others do a retweet. Otherwise, leave it blank.
- The code above will display the button on the left, with any following content wrapping around it. You can change it to be align=”right” if you prefer, or remove the alignment altogether.
- If you get a big question mark after adding it to your lens, you should double-check your code. Make sure there aren’t any spaces or blank lines were there shouldn’t be.
- Login to TweetMeme.com with your Twitter account, and see stats for all of your the lenses that have been tweeted.
- Don’t feel you have to add this to every single lens you own – start with just the few that get decent traffic and a semi-technical audience.
I just placed this button on my Lenses. I use it on my blog and love the attention it gets and the retweets I get!
Thanks for the instructions on how to install to DSquidoo.
much appreciated!
Frank
Great tool, Fluff!
Can I do this on each of my blog posts, just using the URL of the blog itself (rather than the individual post) or is that a bad idea? I’d love to know your opinion on that and if it would even work or not.
Sounds like a great idea. Is there any way to replace the actual url of the lens by a parameter, so it picks it up automatically from the page?
I do see a problem…. Now Squidoo is making each lens address into a shortened url (when sent from a lens page) so when someone tweets from the button it is then tweeted or re-tweeted under that shortened URL.
At least you could get traffic from the shortened url link but your RT number count will be incorrect. Does this make sense?
Teddi
http://twitter.com/Teddi14
@Susan52 – for blogs, you want to use the TweetMeme plugin – this will add the button automatically to each post. Also, it’s probably best to tweet the links to individual posts and not the blog’s home page.
@Tony – can’t use a parameter, sorry; not on Squidoo.
@Teddi14 – yes, the button will be inaccurate, but I’m guessing most people will use the retweet button anyway.
This is wonderful tool – Fluff! – I’m really enjoying your Squidutils Toolbar as well.
This is great information. I’ve had the tweetmeme button on my blog for quite a while and love it, I had no idea we could use it on our lenses too. I just added it to one of my busiest lenses. I like how it sees the retweets that were out there before I put the button up.
Thanks for the code. I really appreciate it.
Jackie
I am just off to add this to my lenses now, hoping to see an increase in traffic, or at least Twitter popularity.
Ok, I’m not sure why you need this. You can already tweet your lens.
The social buttons are at the top and bottom.
What would be the advantage of using this, and where do you get the button. It isn’t part of the code.
@Bob – it’s true that a lens already has the social buttons, but this Retweet button is a more visible, plus you can put it any where you like.
Excited about the potential. Thanks for the tutorial.