Putting a &quot;follow me on Twitter&quot; button onto your blog

This article explains how to put an official "Follow me on Twitter" button onto your blog.

"Follow-me" VS "Look-what-s/he said"

Previously, I explained the diferent approaches to linking your blog and the social media. In particular, I looked at the difference between "follow me" and "look what s/he said over there".

If your blog has a Twitter account, you may want to offer your readers a quick way to follow your tweets rom their own twitter accounts. This is an example of the "follow-me" approach, and is what this article is about.

How to add Follow Me on Twitter

1 Go to Twitter
If you don't already have a Twitter account for your blog (or for yourself, if you blog is a personal one), you may need to sign-up with one. Or if you do have one, then just log on.

2 Look at the buttons they offer
Today, you get to this by clicking on the Resources link, which is in the panel at the bottom of the left-hand-sidebar.

This takes you to: http://twitter.com/about/resources: where you can find lots of useful things including Follow button options.

(Last time I updated this article, you had to click Profile on the top menu bar, then click Resources which was near the bottom of the right-hand panel. Twitter seem move this to a different place on their page fairly often, so do have a good look around for it - or for Buttons or something similar if you can't find the resources link.)

3 Choose Follow, and set the options you want:

Check that your Twitter account name is correctly in the User box (it should be, if you're logged in to the right twitter account at the time)

Choose whether or not to show your Twitter account name

Choose a button size (large or not)

Choose what language to show the button words ("follow ... on") om/

4 Copy the HTML

5 Go to your dashboard in Blogger, and add the code to your blog.

There are several ways to add 3rd party HTML to your blog, depending on where you want to put it. A "follow me on" button is probably more appropriate in a gadget (option one in that article) than in a place in your template where it relates to individual posts.

What your readers see

If you use a new style follow tool:

A reader who is not logged in to Twitter when they click your button is asked to log in.
After they have logged in to Twitter, they are added to your Twitter followers list, and the icon-label displayed on your blog changed from "follow" to "following".

If you use the old style button, then:

When a reader clicks your Follow-me on Twitter button, Twitter loads in the current window.

If they are already logged in to Twitter, they're shown a summary of your profile, with Follow, Add to List and Block buttons.

If they are not logged in to Twitter, they're shown a welcome message that describes Twitter and invites them to sign-up or to log in.

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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Putting a "follow me on Twitter" button onto your blog

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