How to: Create a Share on Twitter link for Wordpress Blog

Sometimes when you need a marketing tool…you just have to build it yourself…I wanted to implement a way that our readers (who use twitter) could let their followers know when they were reading a great blog post on the Webgrrls International Blog…Webgrrls Wisdom.

So, I have recently created “Share on Twitter” functionality and link on the Webgrrls Wisdom blog and you can use this functionality too…for your blog and for extending your brand.

Here is how it works

When readers click on the “Share on Twitter” link after they are finished reading the post,  the following twitter entry automatically gets posted to their twitter account:

Currently reading on Webgrrls: Title of Blog Post & Shortened url to the blog post (ie. Currently reading on Webgrrls: Book Clubs for User Experience Professionals http://tinyurl.com/kmm9oy)

Now, when you do it, of course, it will have your blog name and branding information

Here is a step by step guide on how you can implement this feature on your blog:

1. Click the download button below to download the plug-in file to your computer.
   
   
   
2. Uncompress the downloaded .zip fil and Upload/FTP the tinyurl-functions.php file to your Wordpress /wp-content/plugins directory
3. Activate the TinyURL Function plug-in in your Wordpress Admin area.
4. Add the following link code to any of your theme files, where you want the “Share on Twitter” link to appear.

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading on Webgrrls: <?php the_title(); ?> <?php echo get_tiny_url(post_permalink($id)); ?>” title=”Click to share this post on Twitter”>Share on Twitter</a>

That’s It! it is a easy as 1,2,3,4…Good Luck and get blogging and of course Share it on Twitter!