Radium

Get credit for your Retweets

Friday, 15th January , 2010

If you’re like most bloggers your probably rely on a Retweet button to help push your content out to others. But if you simply installed the default code, you may not be getting the credit you deserve. To make sure that you’re not missing out on potential followers take a minute to ensure your buttons are configured correctly.

This post will cover four of the more popular Retweet buttons; tweetmeme, Retweet, Topsy and the tweetcount widget by backtype.

The problem
A lot of people rely on retweets from others to find new twitter friends to follow, so when they see an insightful thought passed on from one of their followers (credibility) they’re more apt to check out that person’s profile. But if you have the default code installed, the retweets will say @tweetmeme and not @yourusername, which won’t do much to bolster your popularity.

Proper Tweetmeme button configuration
The following code is the default tweetmeme script with one small addition. The parameter ‘tweetmeme_source’ has been added which allows customization of the twitter user name. To add your user name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper Retweet button configuration
The following code is the default Retweet script with the parameter ‘username’ added. Similar to tweetmeme this allows customization of the twitter user name. To add your twitter name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper Topsy button configuration
The following code is the default Topsy script. In this case the parameter you need to change is ‘var topsy_nick’. To add your user name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper tweetcount button configuration
And last but not least, the following code is the default tweetcount script with the parameter ‘tweetcount_src’ added. By now you probably now what to do with this but just in case, to add your twitter name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Additional customization
All of the buttons above offer further customizations (configuring the look, changing the link shortening service, etc.) so check out their websites for more options.

And before I end this post I have to give credit to one of our friends who graciously pointed out we had overrode this setting when we redesigned our website. Thanks @mikecatlett for catching what we missed!

What are you waiting for? Retweet this post!

Thumbnail image by Le Petit Poulailler