Stop Twitter's "follow-me" spam in its tracks

This article is about how to stop the annoying email messages that Twitter sends when an acquaintance joins Twitter and decides that they think you should follow them there too.

What happens if a "friend" invites to you follow then on Twitter.

A few weeks ago, I got an email message saying that Helen Someone had just signed up to Twitter, and had provided my email address as someone who followed her elsewhere, and who she thought should follow her here too.

But I'm already on Twitter, and my account there is linked to a different email address than the one which Ms Someone "generously" chose to share with Twitter. And frankly, I get enough email from her already, the last thing I want her doing is bugging me on Twitter too.

So what did I do? Like any sensible person, I deleted the email.

But now, every few days, I get an email message like this :

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Helen Someone is still waiting for you to join Twitter...
From: "Twitter"
Date: Fri, March 29, 2013 4:26 am
To: me@email.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen Someone is still waiting for you to join Twitter...

Twitter helps you stay connected with what's happening right now and with the people and organizations you care about.

Accept invitation     https://twitter.com/i/535c9c20b....5487e4f01449c029

------------------------

This message was sent by Twitter on behalf of Twitter users who entered your email address to invite you to Twitter.
Unsubscribe: https://twitter.com/i/o?t=1&iid=05f4a3...d=68+26+20130328

Need help?
https://support.twitter.com

Or like this, if I look at it an email client that shows the graphics - notice that the "how to unsubscribe" message is in very small print, down the bottom of the page.

How to stop these messages

At first I just ignored these messages: I figured that Twitter would give up and leave me alone after one or two reminders. But that hasn't happened: they keep reminding me, and I'm getting sick of deleting the same message over and over again.

So today I went looking for how to stop the reminders from happening.   Basically there are two options:

Option 1:  Sign up to Twitter

Accept the invitation, sign up for a new twitter account, turn off all email notifications for this account - and never uses the account again.

Advantage: this stops the annoying messages - and makes sure you won't get them from any other "friends" who give Twitter the same address.

Disadvantage: other friends (who maybe you do want to follow in Twitter) may enter the same email address, and Twitter may connect them to this same Twitter-account that you never use.   You won't get a notification.

Option 2:  Use the un-subscribe link that's provided

If you look at the email contents, there is actually an unsubscribe link near the bottom of the message - f your email client shows the graphic version of the message it's right down in the ultra-small print at the bottom.

Click the link provided - or copy-and-paste it to a web-browser.

This will turn off the annoying messages from this person - and it will also stop your email address from getting messages if other people join Twitter and suggest you should follow them there.

Is this Ok?

Which option would you recommend?

More importantly - do you think it's ok to share other people's addresses with social networking sites that you sign up to, in the way that Ms Someone gave my address to Twitter?

---

Related Articles:

Put a "follow me on Twitter" link into your blog

Showing an email address in Blogger

Tools for linking your blog to social sharing websites

Read more > Stop Twitter's "follow-me" spam in its tracks

Pinterest Twitter friend notification email messages

A while ago, Pinterest removed the need to request an invitation to sign up:  you can now go to www.Pinterest.com and register immediately.

It now looks like there are three options for signing up:

• Using your Facebook account
• Using your Twitter account
• Using an email address.

(However I can't confirm that the email address works or not - it didn't the last time I tried.)


Now, if you sign up via Twitter, there'a a question at the end of the registration process about whether you want your Twitter followers to be notified that you've joined Pinterest.  I'm pretty sure that this wasn't there the last time I signed up for a Pinterest account using a Twitter account.   But I ticked it - expecting that people might get some type of notification inside Pinterest.

However what actually happens is that an email message is sent to the email account of any Twitter followers who are already on Pinterest, telling them that you have just joined and inviting them to "make you welcome" - presumably by following you on Pinterest too.

The message reads

"Hi <<recipient's Twitter account name>>
Your Twitter friend <<your Twitter account name>> just joined Pinterest.   Help welcome <<your Pinterest account name>> to the community."

I'm fairly sure that the message is only sent to Twitter followers who are already registered in Pinterest themselves - not all your Twitter followers.

But I was a little surprised by this.

Sending an email is a little more invasive than I'd expected (and maybe shows that Pinterest is looking to do things with the linking data it collected when forcing us to sign up via our existing Twitter or Facebook accounts)####

Really I don't expect my Twitter followers to be following me on Pinterest.   I'm looking for a different target audience on Pinterest, not more of the same people who are following me already.  

And I'm a little worried that Twitter followers might think I've spammed them by telling them that I've joined Pinterest.

Read more > Pinterest Twitter friend notification email messages

How to put a working Twitter message into your blog

This article shows how you can embed a fully-featured message from Twitter, right inside your blog, which lets visitors re-tweet, favour it - and follow you in Twitter.

Showing Twitter messages: copied text vs full-featured tweets

If you're reading Twitter, and see a tweet that you want to blog about, it's easy to copy-and-paste the content into a blog post or a gadget.  This brings the text and the links (and photos etc) that are part of it - like this:

California drowning out the window side. instagr.am/p/LLXlAexc3m

But the embedable-tweets feature makes it almost as easy to show the actual tweet inside a post (or in a gadget in your header, footer or sidebar).   And if you use this feature, your readers will be able to use the Twitter features that go with a tweet:

• View photos / videos, in the same way that they can in Twitter
• Reply, retweet or favor the Tweet
• Follow the tweet's author with a single click
• Click on the author’s @username to see their Twitter profile page,
• See the date in the lower left corner of the Tweet
• See replies, retweets and favorites on the tweet's Details page.

To do this, you just need to get the HTML-embed code for the tweet from Twitter, and install it into your blog.

How to get the code to display the embeddable Tweet:

Open the expanded view of of the tweet, by clicking on either the word "expand" immediately under it, or the time-indicator on the right hand side if you can't see "expand".

Go to the perma-link page for the message, by clicking on Details in the extended view.

On the webpage that opens, click Embed this Tweet, which you can find at the bottom of the page.  (Notice that the URL for the tweet is showing in the address bar at the top of the screen.

Copy the code from the HTML tab of the box that opens.  At the moment, I recommend choosing an alignment, because without it, the code hasn't been working - hopefully this will change soon).  It will look something like this:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center"><p>These buttons dont fly-in, hover, shine, zoom, slide, pop out of egg-shells, sing songs or wash dishes.<a href="http://t.co/MAKJPf5X" title="http://bit.ly/JPNn04">bit.ly/JPNn04</a> via@BloggerHAT</p>&mdash; Blogger HintsAndTips (@BloggerHAT) <a href="https://twitter.com/BloggerHAT/status/202068733534011392" data-datetime="2012-05-14T16:11:54+00:00">May 14, 2012</a></blockquote>

<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

If you have other Twitter widgets etc anywhere else on your blog, then you need to leave out the last line, ie

<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

How to put the embeddable Tweet into your blog:

Write the rest of your blog post.   (Maybe put in some marker text to show where it's going to go).

Put this code into your blog in the same way as any other external HTML.

Hint:  When putting HTML into a post, I usually write the post first, then put something like "XXXXX" where I want the tweet to go.   Then I switch to the HTML view, use Ctrl/F to search for XXXXX (or whatever I used), so I know where to put the code.

If you've put it into a post, then you need to publish the post immediately from the HTML view:

• Do not go back to Compose mode.
• Do not Preview the post before you publish it

What you accidentally Preview or use Compose-mode - or edit the post again?

If you go back to the WYSIYIG / Compose mode, or if you use Blogger's preview function, then the <p> and </p> tags around the tweet-contents are removed - this is a feature of how Blogger's post-editor works.

If this happens (or if you edit the post again after publishing it) you need to go back to Edit HTML mode, and add them in again.

Just to be clear where these tags go, I've highlighted them in this code example:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center"><p>These buttons dont fly-in, hover, shine, zoom, slide, pop out of egg-shells, sing songs or wash dishes.<a href="http://t.co/MAKJPf5X" title="http://bit.ly/JPNn04">bit.ly/JPNn04</a> via@BloggerHAT</p>&mdash; Blogger HintsAndTips (@BloggerHAT) <a href="https://twitter.com/BloggerHAT/status/202068733534011392" data-datetime="2012-05-14T16:11:54+00:00">May 14, 2012</a></blockquote>

If you use a test-blog to get your posts right before you publish them in your blog, then you should also double-check the <p> </p> tags in Edit HTML mode as the last thing you do before publishing the  post in your for-real blog.

What your readers will see

Web-browser visitors:

While the message that you have embedded is still in Twitter, then visitors to your blog on a web-browser see it (the tweet) displayed along with the date it was posted, the author's Twitter ID, and links for replying, re-tweeting and favouring the message - like this:

These buttons dont fly-in, hover, shine, zoom, slide, pop out of egg-shells, sing songs or wash dishes.bit.ly/JPNn04 via@BloggerHAT

— Blogger HintsAndTips (@BloggerHAT) May 14, 2012

However if the message has been deleted from Twitter, your readers will see this instead:

What happens when an embedded tweet is deleted?I guess this is the best way to find out:-)
— Blogger HintsAndTips (@BloggerHAT) May 30, 2012

Effectively, if the message not in Twitter any more, the content is still shown, but the extra features aren't available.

RSS-feed readers:

Visitors who read your blog through an RSS-subscription will see .... coming soon, when I've seen what this post looks like in my reader!

Email subscribers:

Readers who see your blog via email subscription  .... coming soon, when I've seen what this post looks like in my email

---

Related Articles:

Installing 3rd party HTML into Blogger

Other Twitter gadgets

What is RSS / Subscribe to Posts

Giving your blog an email subscription option

Getting your posts right before you show them to your readers

Read more > How to put a working Twitter message into your blog

Putting a Tweet-this-quote link in blog posts

This article shows you how to apply a "tweet this" label to a specific quote in a blog-post, and how this works for your readers.

What are "tweet this" links 

Male Blackbird - By Malene Thyssen (User:Malene)
[GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or
CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)]
via Wikimedia Commons

Previously I've described how to put a "tweet this" button into your blog.

This can be set up to let readers  share the specific post they're reading, or your entire blog (but not both at the same time).

It's an example of   the "look what he said" approach to social networking.

Recently, it's become popular to invite readers to tweet a specific sentence or section of a post, by putting a "tweet this" link at the end of the section, like this

Here is a cool quote from me, which I think you should share.    [tweet this]

Blogger-Tyrant has described how to do this, and suggested Click to Tweet, a 3rd party tool which makes it a tiny bit easier by generating the HTML code for you.

However I'm not fond of 3rd party tools that give you code that refers back to their own servers (eg Click to Tweet gives back a link likethis:   http://clicktotweet.com/wa95i):   if C2T goes out of business, there would be broken links on my blog, even if it and Twitter were both working normally.  So I'm not recommending Click-to-Tweet.  

But this feature has a lot of potential, if we use it properly.   It's not hard, as I've explained below.   But it does have certain things to be aware of - including a need to stay well away from quote marks - see the Troubleshooting notes for more about this.


How to set up a "tweet this" link:

1  Copy this code:

TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED <a href="http://twitter.com/home/?status= TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED. via@YOUR-BLOGGER-ACCOUNT " target="_blank"> [tweet this].</a>

2  Edit your post or page, and go to the edit HTML view.


3  Find the place where you want to put the link.
(Hint: in compose-mode, put in some text that wouldn't otherwise be used, eg XXXX. Then use the browser search feature to find that text in Edit HTML mode.)


4  Paste in the code.


5  Replace both instances of TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED with the words that you are inviting your readers to share on Twitter.
See the Troubleshooting section below, for things to be aware of as you do this.


6  Replace YOUR-BLOGGER-ACCOUNT with your own Twitter account-name.
If you don't have an account, or don't want it associated with the tweet, remove all of  via @YOUR-BLOGGER-ACCOUNT


7   If you want tweeting to take readers away from your blog, remove the  target="_blank"  part of the code.   Otherwise leave it alone:  with it there, Twitter will open in a new tab or window.


8  Make any other changes, including indenting or formatting the part you want quoted.
You can change the "[tweet this]" phrase that's just before the </a> to any other words you would like to use, eg "[share on twitter]", "[tweet me]", "[tweet this quote]", "[cheep, cheep]" etc.  The square brackets are optional - I like them because they make the bit-to-quote look different from the action instruction.


9  When you are ready, publish the post, and test the tweet-this link, just to be sure it's working.

Troubleshooting:

• Don't mess with the quote marks around the text:  replace just TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED - not the stuff around it.

• You cannot have ANY quote marks (single or double, ' or " ) or apostrophe's or hashes ("#/"'s) inside the text-you-want-tweeted.   Some other punctuation seems to be ok (though I haven't tested every option)

• Make sure there are no spaces between  "status=" and "TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED"

• Don't try using #hashtags.   They don't break the code, but they do seem to truncate what gets put into your suggested message.

• If you use quotes or apostrophe's in by accident, and publish or go back to compose mode before you realise, the best way to fix it is to remove the whole section and start again:  quotes inside quotes make Blogger's post-editor very confused. 

What happens for your readers:

When a visitor reads sees your post, they see

TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED [tweet this].

with whatever formatting you used (eg, I put in the indenting and coloured background on the quote above).

The [Tweet this] part will also have whatever formatting is applied to links in your template.


When they click on the [Tweet this] link:

• If they are logged in to Twitter at the time, then they will go to Twitter's status-update option in a new window or tab, and your suggested message will there, waiting for them to press the Tweet button.

• If they are not logged in to Twitter at the time, a new window or tab will open, and they will be asked to log in to www.twitter.com.
  After they have logged in,  they will go to Twitter's status-update option, and your suggested message will there, waiting for them to press the Tweet button.

They have the option of editing the message, and adding hashtags, before sending it.

Once they've clicked the Tweet button, they are returned to Twitter's main window.   (The target="_blank" in the code means they will still have your blog open in another window too.)

Over in the Twitter-stream, their followers will see a message with your suggested text, saying that it came via your Twitter account (unless you removed the "via" bit).


A final thought:  watch what you tweet.

Notice that there are two places where you had to change TEXT-YOU-WANT-TWEETED.  Most people will follow the instructions and, changed both of them to the same thing.

But there's no way to enforce this, and it's not immediately obvious if a blogger hasn't. Look at this example:

Happy St Patricks Day [tweet this]

It looks harmless enough. But if you click the [Tweet this quote] link, the text that is suggested is

Im a plastic paddy.

which might not be quite the message your readers want to send.   Some will notice, and not send the tweet.   But others will just hit the Tweet button without properly looking at what you've suggested that they quote.   This could be embarrassing, at least, and could be an excellent way to lose your audience.

Suggestions:

• If you've a Blogger who has worked hard to earn your reader's trust, don't lose it by trying to fool them like this.

• If you click the a tweet-this-quote link anywhere, make sure you double-check what is suggested, before hitting the Tweet button over in Twitter.

What else?

I have a feeling that the tweet-this-quote feature, which is based on suggesting a value to Twitter via the URL it is called with, could be used in some interesting ways - keen to hear any suggestions that you might have.

---

Related Articles:



Adding an official Tweet this button to your blog

How to link blogs and the social networks

Foormatting your links

Read more > Putting a Tweet-this-quote link in blog posts

Add Flash Twitter Follow Me Buttons to Blogger Blogs / Websites

Twitter is a social networking sites popular in the world of bloggers to promote their blogs. So here I am very cool Twitter Blogger widget, now it shows me how to add flash buttons to your twitter blogs and websites. These are the widgets based on Flash animations and have some nice effects.These buttons can help Twitter Flash Spice up your blogs, Webssites and can help you gain more followers on Twitter. These are designed and developed by twitterflash.net. I'm taking all the 15 types of one-click install to your blog.

How to Install Flash Animated Twitter Follow Me Widget To Blogger / Blog / Websites





I have to write two set of instructions for each steps, as some of you are using the default layout, and some of you are using the new layout. So, let's see how to install this cool widget in your blog..

Step 1:


If you're using the old Blogger interface: Go to Dashboard - Design - Page Elements - Add a Gadget.

Add a Gadget of HTML/JavaScript type.

If you're using the new Blogger interface: Go to Dashboard - Layout - Add a Gadget

2.Click on 'Add a Gadget' on the sidebar.

3.Select 'HTML/Javascript' and add the one of code given below

4. Now Click On Save 'JavaScript' You are done.

<a href="http://24work.blogspot.com" target="_blank" title="Blogger Widgets"><img src="http://safir85.ucoz.com/24work-blogspot/cursor-24work-10.png" border="0" alt="Blogger Widgets" style="position:absolute; top: 0px; right: 0px;" /></a><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON4/twitbutton.swf" width="150" height="150"><param name="movie" value="http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON4/twitbutton.swf"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="menu" value="false"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="flashvars" value="username=rohul786"></param><a href="http://24work.blogspot.com/" title="Blogger Widgets">Blogger Widgets</a><embed src="http://www.buzzbuttons.com/BUTTON4/twitbutton.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" width="150" height="150" menu="false" wmode="transparent" flashvars="username=rohul786"></embed></object>

And now click Save

How to Install Flash Twitter Follow Me Buttons on Your Blog?

1. Choose Any Flash Follow Me Button As You Want

2. Replace rohul786 With Your Twitter User Name

3. Customize Width And Height as You Need

4. Click on Generate Button and Finally Click on Add to Blogger Button to add this widget on your blog.



OR

5. Click on Get Code Button and Copy the code to use it.

Read more > Add Flash Twitter Follow Me Buttons to Blogger Blogs / Websites

Putting a "follow me on Twitter" 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.

---

Related Articles:



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

Adding a "Tweet" button (ie look what s/he said) to your blog

Putting a "share this on XXX" button into your blog

Adding 3rd party HTML to your blog

Giving a Share this on LinkedIn option on your blog

Options for linking your blog and the social networks

Read more > Putting a "follow me on Twitter" button onto your blog

Send posts to Twitter with Feedburner's socialize service

This article is about using Feedburner's Socialize feature to ensure that all your blog posts are sent to Twitter.

Overview:

Once you have made a feed for your blog using Feedburner, you can use Feedburner's Socialise option to automatically send new Posts to Twitter.

Advantages of using this service include:

• Hashtags can be automatically generated based on the Labels you have applied to your post:   Feedburner is a Google product, so it understands and can access all the data-structures that Blogger uses to organise your posts.
• You can control various other options, including excluding some categories of post from your twitter-feed
• You can add some standard text to either the beginning or end of each twitter-message
• If you display a counter of the number of times a post has been tweeted, then each post will automatically have at least one tweet.
• It saves you time, because you don't have to manually tweet your posts.

A word about Accounts:

Using this feature can involve up to three different accounts:

• The Google account that writes the post (may be an author or an administrator - of if you're using mail2Post, it could be neither)
• The Google account that owns the feed (because you can burn a feed of a blog-site that you don't own)
• The Twitter account that tweets the message about the blog post.

Think carefully about what Twitter account to use:  if your blog is personal, then your personal Twitter account is obvious.   In other cases, it depends on your niche, and the relationship between the blog and the rest of your life.   If the blog isn't tied to your individual identity, or you don't want to bother most of your personal friends with it, then it may be best to set up a spearate account for it, like I have for @BloggerHAT. 

As a general rule, if Facebook's rules say that you need to set up a Page rather than a Profile for what you are writing about, then you should probably have a separate Twitter account for it..

Currently the Socialise service only allows sending a feed to one Twitter account.   It looks like you should be able to change the Twitter account by clicking Add a Twitter account, and having the new Twitter account replace the current one. but currently this is failing.   This means that there is no way to remove a twitter account from your Feedburner / Socialise set-up.   If you need to stop the auto-tweets, deactivate the service, or perhaps just delete the whole feed or Twitter account.

How to set up auto-tweeting:

Log in to Feedburner, using the Google account that owns the feed

Click on the name of the feed you want to work with.

Choose the Publicize tab

Choose Socialise (currently from the left side of the screen)

Click Add a Twitter account,.

This opens a official Twitter screen where you enter the name and password of the Twitter account that you want to use for tweeting your posts. 
(If you are already logged in to Twitter, it defaults to the current account, but there is a Sign-out option on the screen that lets you change accounts.)

Clicking Allow gives permission for Google (ie Feedburner) to post to this account, and returns to you the Feedburner options screen.

Each twitter message can only be 140 characters long, so the service will need to automatically summarise your post.  There are options for you to choose whether this is done from the title along, or from the title+content.

There are some other options too

• Include a link to the post or not (I can't think of a good reason not to do this)
• Use hashtags (created from Labels) or not (this depends on how Labels have been used in your blog:  I have it turned on for this blog, but not for one of my other blogs where I have used Labels mainly for internal administration purposes)
• Adding some standard text and the start or end of each tweet
• Leaving space for re-tweets (ie making the original less than 140 characters long):  I'd suggest selecting this, as a lot of the value of Twitter comes from people sharing what you have said.
• A maximum number of items (meaning Posts, I think) to include in each tweet: I think this only applies if you post more than once per day, and for BloggerHAT I've set it to 1.

Check the the Sample Item Preview section at the the bottom of the page:  this shows you how your recent Posts would look in twitter with the options you have selected.

When you are happy with the options selected, click Activate to start the service.

You will know that the change has been made because the word Socialise (in the left navigation bar) has a small tick beside it.   Check for this - it's very easy to miss the Activate button because it's at the bottom of the screen and you have to scroll to get to it.

What your readers see:

People who read your blog through the browser or via email subscription will not notice any difference.

People who are following your Twitter account will start to see regular tweets each time that you make a new Post, or that an existing Posts is re-sent though your blog's Feed.

Twitter users who don't follow your blog, but who happen to search for either the hashtags or keywords that are in your tweets may see your message in their search results.   If it's helpful, they may click on the link to your post, and hopefully will become regular readers or subscribers.

(Remember Pages do not go through the feed, so will not be tweeted.)

Post-title == twitter-message

Once your posts are being auto-tweeted, the contents of the twitter-message depends on the title of your post.   So you need to really focus on the keywords in the title, to make sure that you get a sensible 140 character message sent in your twitter-stream.

---

Related Articles:

Making a Feedburner feed for your blog

Adding a Tweet button to your blog

Linking your blog and the social networks

Putting a Follow Me on Twitter button into your blog

Using mail2Post to update your blog

Tools for applying copyright protection to your blog

Copying all posts from one blog to another.

Read more > Send posts to Twitter with Feedburner's socialize service

Adding a Tweet button to your Blog

This article is about Twitter's tweet-this button, and how you can use it to let your readers tweet your posts.  

It's aimed at Google Blogger users, but most of it applies to other blogging (eg Wordpress, TypePad, etc) and website tools.

Background

Often bloggers want to give readers a tool to share the blog-post that they are reading via Twitter, on the readers own Twitter account.   I call this way of linking your blog to the social networking sites "Look what s/he said" (ref:  Linking your Blog and the Social Networks).

Your readers could just copy-and-paste a hyperlink to your page, but it's clunky:  they have to start up Twitter, themselves, and some won't know that Twitter automatically shortens links.

There are various 3rd-party widgets to put a "twitter-ish" icon on your blog, set up so that when a reader clicks it, the current page it is automatically tweeted.   But I've explained before why I don't like third party gadgets for Facebook, from both a security and maintainability point-of-view, and the same reasons apply to Twitter.

Google have social-media buttons which can be shown at the bottom of each post.   They're an improvement on the 3rd party gadgets, but I don't like the way they look, and the lack of options to customize them, so I usually turn off.

A better approach: Twitter's official Tweet button
Twitter now offer a share button on their resources page.   (You don't need to be logged in to twitter - or even have a Twitter account yourself - to use it.)

This lets you customise the layout and (optionally) suggest two Twitter accounts that your readers might like to follow in future.   You install HTML code provided anywhere in your blog (etc).

You can see an example of this gadget at the top and bottom of this article, in my custom social sharing bar.


Follow these steps install a Tweet button on your Blog as a gadget:

1  Go to the Twitter resources page.
(You don't have to be logged in to Twitter to do this - in fact, you don't even have to have a Twitter account.)

2  Select Tweet Button

3  Set the options you want.  Currently there are separate (horiztontal) tabs for

• Counter: none, horizontal or vertical.

• Tweet-text:  either the title of the page the gadget is on (by default) or some other text that you enter.

• URL:  The page that the button is on, or some other URL that you enter.
  Important:  If you want readers to tweet about individual posts, not your whole blog, then put some text that you will find and change later (eg FIX-UP-URL) here.    See the section below about Twittering Posts vs your Whole Blog for more information about this.  

• Language:  the language that the button is in on your website

4  Recommend people (Twitter accounts) to follow - if you enter a Twitter account here, then it will be suggested to readers who click on your gadget.  You can suggest up to two accounts.   If you are logged in to Twitter when you make this gadget, then your account will be automatically filled in here, but you can change it.

5  Preview your button  (don't click anything, just check it out in the bottom left of the window - notice that it tells you the size, in pixels, of the button you've selected)

6  Copy the HTML from the box.

7  Go to Blogger, and add the HTML to your blog, using one of the standard options for adding externally-sourced HTML to your blog.  

Except - if  you chosen the post-specific-URL option in step 3,  you must

Change:    data-url='FIX-UP-URL'      to     expr:data-url='data:post.url'

and make sure you add the code to a post-specific place in your blog.

8  Save the change and the view your blog.   Test the new gadget (does it look right, does the right thing happen when you click it).


Twittering a post vs your whole blog:

If you put a Tweet button into your own blog as a gadget, then what is shared is your whole blog, not the particular Post that is being read.   

For example   http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com   (this blog)

instead of      http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/04/tools-for-linking-blogger-and-social.html  (a post)

But if you want your readers to tweet individual posts, you need the Tweet-button to appear with EVERY post.  This is because some screens show multiple Posts, and unless the button is linked to a specific post it doesn't have a specific URL to share.   Unfortunately it's true even if you have your blog set up so that only one Post shows at a time.   It is a bit harder than adding it as a gadget, because you need to edit your template and put the code into a post specific location.   This article explains the options for locations that are inside posts, and where to put the code.

What your readers see


When a reader clicks the NUMBER in your Tweet gadget:

They are taken to a screen showing the results of searching for your post/blog in Twitter:  if other people have Tweeted the same post, they will be able to see who tweeted it, and what replies were generated.

When a reader clicks the BUTTON in your Tweet gadget:

They'll be asked to log in to Twitter, unless they're already logged in.

Then they see a window where they can

• see the shortened link and text that they're going to be sharing, and
• change it, and 
• choose whether to follow the recommended Twitter account(s)
  
  

The shortened link is to either the page that they were viewing when they clicked the button, or another URL (if you chose Custom URL when you were setting up the gadget).  The text is the title of the post, or some other text if you entered some when you were settin gup the gadget.

Both the text and the shortened-URL can be changed by the reader before they share the Tweet.

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Related Articles:



Linking your Blog and the Social Networks

Why I don't like third party gadgets for Facebook

Options for putting third-party HTML into your blog

Putting a Share this on WHATEVER button into Blogger - includes info re post-specific locations

Read more > Adding a Tweet button to your Blog

Tools for Linking Blogger and Social Network sites

Previously I've described the approaches for linking your blog and the social networks. This article is about specific tools that can be used for each approach.

"Follow-me"

Inviting readers to connect your account to theirs on ...

• Facebook: 
  Adding a Facebook personal account badge to your blog
  Putting a Facebook Page badge into your blog
  

• Twitter:     Put a Following Me on Twitter button into your blog

• LinkedIn:  There must be a way - not found it yet.

"Look at This"

Giving readers a tool to talk about or recommend your blog-post in their account in:

• Facebook   Put the Post 2 Profile gadget, in your blog, inviting people to share your post

• Twitter   Put the Tweet button into your blog, inviting readers to share either your whole blog, or a specific post

• LinkedIn   Put a Share this to LinkedIn button onto your blog.

• Google:     Put a customised +1 button into your blog

• Email-this-post:
  Turn this on using Design > Page Elements > Blog Posts - tick the Show Email Post Links button.  You have some options deciding where in the post it goes.  

A Word about Third Party Tools:

Untill recently, a common approach has been to use a 3rd party tool, eg AddThis.

But there have been some less than well-behaved tools which are effectively hackerware (eg the TweetMe widget) - so it's been hard to work out what to trust.

Personally, I almost jumped out of my skin the day I first used an AddThis button on a newspaper site to put a link to an article about me onto my Google blog:  half-an-hour later I suddenly realised that I'd just given my main google account password to a 3rd party that I knew nothing about.  I couldn't get to a computer to change it fast enough!.

I don't recommend installing any tool that asks a reader to enter their password for a social networking site anywhere except on that social networking site.

"Look-what-I-wrote"

Showing content from your blog on ...

• Facebook:  Automatically updating Facebook every time you publish your Blog (coming soon)

• Twitter:  One approach is to use Feedburner's Socialise your Feed option

• LinkedIn  Automatically updating LinkedIn every time you publish your Blog (coming soon)

"Look what I said over there"

This options is about updating your blog with content from your social media site(s), and has a few possible approaches.

1 Use an RSS feed:

Burn (or just get the address of) a feed from your Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn etc account, than then:

• Display it in an RSS Gadget in your blog, or
• Use a service like feed2js.org to convert the feed into Javascript, and put the resulting Javascript into the post.

2 For Facebook, use a page badge:

Make a badge for your Facebook Page choosing to show the stream but hide the Faces and Header - this will show what was posted in the Page on your blog.    It's especially useful if you can put it in a place (eg a post or page) where the badge can be quite wide.

3 Manual update:

This won't be a popular approach.

But personally I've found that different networking tools respond best to different messages, so generally I try to do cross-platform promotion (ie from Blogs to Social Networks ad back again) in a way that customises the message for the platform - and manual is the only realistic way to do this at the moment.

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Related Articles:

Approaches for linking your blog and the social networks

Using the Post 2 Profile gadget,

Making a Facebook personal account badge

Making a Facebook Page badge 

Putting the tweet button into your blog.

Read more > Tools for Linking Blogger and Social Network sites