Comments on: Why Tweetmeme Sucks For Marketers

By: dental_implants_Southampton

dental_implants_Southampton — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:52:10 +0000

I have never tried this button before. The Fav.o.r.i.t team has good work to follow up this post.

By: AndyBeard

AndyBeard — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:19:20 +0000

On this site I am not tracking specifically, because you can't using Tweetmeme – adding a lot of tracking parameters to a URL would mean it isn't the same canonical URL, what this post was about.

However when using a service such as Bit.ly or Cli.gs, and you see 2000 clicks, and in Google Analytics you see 600 visits from Twitter and 1300 direct (just a made up example), then you know it is from people using various applications/clients.

Or just look at your tweet stream and see how many are using web compared to various twitter apps

By: AndyBeard

AndyBeard — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:19:20 +0000

On this site I am not tracking specifically, because you can't using Tweetmeme – adding a lot of tracking parameters to a URL would mean it isn't the same canonical URL, what this post was about.

Or just look at your tweet stream and see how many are using web compared to various twitter apps

By: authorityseo

authorityseo — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:27:20 +0000

That makes sense. How are you tracking the Twitter traffic to know that it
comes up as direct?

By: AndyBeard

AndyBeard — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:44:30 +0000

You can't see the real traffic in Google Analytics without including tracking links, and most Twitter traffic will be listed as direct.

Maybe you want to split test different calls to action, different twitter accounts etc.

Maybe you want to identify users who send the most traffic, even if they don't receive affiliate compensation

By: AndyBeard

AndyBeard — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:38:15 +0000

Most of the retweet plugins will use bit.ly or other shorteners, and it doesn't take much tinkering in the ocde to use a different shortener if you require.
They can also use authorization keys so it is attributed to your account.

Most also include additional analytics tracking links for Google analytics

Tweetmeme however is my current favorite for social proof as they seem to be able to count lots of tweets from different sources.

By: edbisquera

edbisquera — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:17:44 +0000

I see the benefits of either retweet method, but what are the advantages over one?

I like the idea of a Wordpress plugin, branding with my user account, and having analytics, but does the plugin automatically create short links via bit.ly?

I'm still a newbie Twitter/blogger, so I'm investigating options to retweet.

Thanks,

Ed

By: authorityseo

authorityseo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:39:22 +0000

The wordpress plugin allowed me to brand the tweetme with my user account instead of tweetme it says authorityseo.

I can see how many people tweet me or retweet me for each post which it counts. I can see the traffic I get from Twitter and what the landing pages are from my analytics. This tells me what articles people like and what posts followers like that tweeted me.

I am not sure what other stats would be necessary especially if it would slow done the load time.

By: AndyBeard

AndyBeard — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:32:03 +0000

I can see the benefits of a static link, plus it is quite easy to program a clickable link automatically and end up with something like [tweetlink] that pulls from the permalink, creates a short link using API, uses blog post title or custom field (or a custom field in Headspace 2), or even split test them.

However I can also see the benefit of a standard button that visitors are trained to click, and that provides social proof

I am a greedy marketer looking for the flexibility of one method, combined with the social proof of another

I am not looking to create a "fake" viral effect or social proof, but just one that can be nudged by incentives.

By: Paul Hancox (.com)

Paul Hancox (.com) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:53:39 +0000

Andy, I prefer to create my own retweet links within the text of the post, so that they also appear within RSS feeds. (For some blogs, the majority of subscribers may not even see a plug-in button in their RSS feed!)

I wrote a blog post about how to create a text retweet link, but it boils down to 3 fairly quick steps...

1. After publishing, get your blog post's URL and shorten it if necessary (using something like Bit.ly)

2. Go to RetweetLink.com, pop in the retweet message and get the retweet link.

3. Add a message to the bottom of your blog post, ie. "Twitter users, click here to retweet Andy's post."

It does take a few extra minutes, but if you've spent an hour or more writing a blog post, an extra 2 minutes is nothing to give it that extra viral reach - along with complete control over the message, and your RSS subscribers being able to use it, too!

Plus, an extra bonus tip: You can also use these text retweet links in email, on static web pages, in PDF documents... :)