For the past few weeks, I’ve had Google Analytics installed on this very blog to track how people are discovering it.
In the beginning, most visitors came in by directly entering the URL into their address bar. As it became more popular, referral traffic and search engines played a bigger role.
Over the past few days though, I noticed 500% spike of new visitors coming from Twitter.
Light bulb went on in my head of course. It ocurred to me that the reason was a stupid little post I did a few days ago which had a picture of my crazy book shelf. For whatever reason, that was interesting enough that a few of my Twitter pals re-Tweeted to their pals who then discovered the blog.
Anyway, so I decided to ditch the other social bookmarking plugin I was using with wordpress and get another called TweetMeme. It’s pretty simple to install and activate and makes it easy for visitors to share on Twitter any of this blog’s posts. Simply genius.
Only thing I didn’t like was that it posted the little sharing box EITHER at the top or the bottom of a post but not both. I wanted it both at the top where it’s easy to spot…and at the bottom where it’s convenient to share a post when someone is done reading it.
So i jumped in to my wordpress plugin editor and modified it as I do with any plugin that needs minor tweaks to suit my uses. I was going to leave it at that…but I thought you guys might want to try to modify it on your blogs too.
- Save yourself the effort, just download the modified Tweetmeme from here.
- Upload to your wp-content/plugins directory.
- Activate the plugin.
- Click Settings on the left of your WordPress interface.
- Choose Before AND After option
- Save Changes
Now you’re set to go. Enjoy
UPDATE: The creators of Tweetmeme have seen my modification and adopted it in all new versions of the plugin. Therefore, I recommend you download Tweetmeme directly from the WordPress “Codex” plugin repository as that will be the latest version. A lot of cool and useful new features have been added since i wrote this post.
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Thanks Jim,
This is so Cool – I’ll be installing this on my blog right away !!
Your the Man !!!
Now that is just flat out COOL
Thank you for sharing, dude
Ben
Nice Blog but You gotta change the Font…it’s Huge!
Peace
Thanks for the suggestion, we have now added the ability you suggested to the wordpress plugin, go download the new version from the repository.
Hey Thanks Jim,
Awesome way for your best blog comments to go viral and get additional traffic from people who like it! Of course, the basis is ALWAYS good content.
Kurt
As always Jim great information and awesome ideas. Love your blog. Keep up the great work!
Nice plug-in. Getting it right now. Thanks, Jim.
Jim,
Timely, very timely. I’m developing a new WP blog as I type and I’m going to use what you’ve offered here. Thank you. Smart.
Hey girls and boys!
Thanks a lot for all your positive comments and your re-tweets. I’m glad that so many of you found this useful i wasn’t sure you’d all be into my idea!
It’s going to be interesting to find out if this is gonna reduce comment activity or maybe split it to twitter. We’ll see and you’ll all be the first to know
your friend in coffee,
Jim
Jim -
Your true character is in full display and it’s a compliment. I was talking to Declan Dunn about how you and I (and a few others) actually “met” in social media and became friends that way. Value is appreciate on or offline. Thanks again. When are you coming to the US so we can put together the interview? I was told that the podcasting network on which my show will be placed is in negotiation to be on networked TV! How crazy is that huh? Jim Yaghi and Jerry Chen on TV eating eggplants.
Nice work Jim – and thanks for posting the modified version for us.
I’ve noticed too that my second highest traffic source outside of direct traffic is from Twitter, and this will make it that much better.
Thanks again.
Steve
I haven’t installed wordpress yet but I appreciate your advice that you gave me through twitter about wordpress. You are always a great help. I am working on achieving just a smidge of the brain function you got! Great suggestion. I gotta dig my heals in and getter moving! Thanks again Jim! Fabulous!
Rebecca
i just added tweetmeme to my blog a few days ago. thanks for all the great content you provide. God bless.