Blogging Tip - Making Custom Tweets

We all want our blogs to get noticed. One way that happens is by word of mouth...or chirp, as the case may be.

Today I'm going to pass on a blogging tip I learned from Ava Jae over at Writability.
Ava frequently adds a couple of custom tweet links at the bottom of her posts, and I love them because they're so easy to use. When I asked her how she makes them, she kindly obliged me with a lesson. In the spirit of 'watch one, do one, teach one,' I'm passing it on to you.

But my blog already offers a 'tweet this' option at the bottom of my posts, you say.

That's true. But does it let you customize the tweet?
As far as I know, the person tweeting can edit it, but the blog owner can't.
And it doesn't shorten the URL either.

By creating your own custom tweets and posting the links at the bottom of your blog articles, you can encourage visitors to spread the word about your post with the ease of a couple of clicks.

Here's how it works...



First, you'll need to copy the link to the blog post. (If the post has not gone live yet, get the link from the 'Permalink' section of the post when it's in edit mode.)

Next, go to a URL shortener like Google or Bitly. You can even use the one in Hootsuite if you have access to that. You don't have to shorten the link, but it will leave more of the tweet characters available to use for your message if you do.

For this post, the URL http://melissamaygrove.blogspot.com/2013/07/blogging-tip-making-custom-tweets.html became this: http://goo.gl/OHhzZ.

When you get your shortened link, copy that and go to Click to Tweet. Paste the shortened URL into the big gray box and compose your Tweet. Once you've got it the way you want it, with hashtags and all, click 'Generate Link' and copy the custom link that shows in the smaller, darker-gray box.

Come back to your post in edit mode and add the link at the bottom of the post. You can type something simple like To tweet about this post, click here, or you can use the same words you used for the custom tweet so the visitor knows what they'll be tweeting before they click the link.

Note: Clicking the link does not automatically send the tweet. Once the visitor clicks the link, they can edit the tweet if they choose.

Ava usually gives two options at the bottom of her posts, allowing visitors to tweet the one they like best. Here are my two...

Blogging Tip - Making custom tweets. 

Make it easy for visitors to tweet about your blog. (Click to tweet.)

Get your blog noticed! 

A short how-to post about making custom tweet links. (Click to tweet.)

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