How to Add a Twitter Button to Your Blog: All Possible Options

Twitter is recognized as one of the best viral marketing tools. So if you have a good post you think might go viral

 Twitter is your best bet to attract people’s and ‘linkers’ attention to it.

One of the most important steps in turning Twitter into an effective viral marketing tool is to make the sharing process “smooth” – and a good Twitter button inviting nicely to spread the word can be highly effective.

Buttons That Encourage Readers to Tweet Your Posts

WordPress Plugins

Tweet this! is a fairly popular WordPress plugin that lets users easily Tweet each post of the blog. It works like any social bookmarking button that allows to share a story with two clicks. It re-directs you to your Twitter home page and redirects a Tweet containing the post title and link; all you have to do is to click “Update”:

It also includes support for Plurk, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Ping.fm, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

Referrer Detector (not a button, but should be mentioned here) identifies users coming from Twitter (as well as other platforms) and shows them a personalized message to encourage to Tweet this post:

“Hello fellow Twitter user! If you find this page useful, why not share it on Twitter?”

Create the Button Yourself:

All you need is this code:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading <?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”Click to send this page to Twitter!” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>Share on Twitter</a>

And use Photoshop or other editor to create the button image.

Add Tweetmeme Button

Tweetmeme offers cool buttons that invite to retweet the post. It generates a tweet that addresses @tweetmeme – this allows the service to rate the story and also to display the retweet count. It also automatically shortens the post URL via Bit.ly

Buttons that Increase Your “Followship”

Twitter Counter is the button that shows how many people are already following you on Twitter and invites the visitor to join them. The psychology is similar to revealing your blog RSS subscription: if your blog has a lot of subscribers, it must be really useful and high-quality and chances are, many people will feel inclined to subscribe too. So if you have a solid followship on Twitter, revealing the stats will encourage more people to follow.

Another third-party service to consider is ‘Twit this‘ – but it seems to require registration.

Cool collections of Twitter buttons:

• Vincentabry.com
• SiahDesign.com
• Randaclay.com
• TwitterButtons.com
• TwitButtons
• Twittericon

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Using Pinterest to Grow Your Business

?What is Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site. Each pin on the virtual pinboard or corkboard links to an external website. People share, discover, and comment on others Pinterests. You can create boards based on a theme or topic. For me that might be social media news, cooking, and non-fiction books. Followers can choose just to follow my marketing or social media pins without having to get updates on my workout plans, for example. When marketers pin things that their customers would be interested in, they can drive traffic. You can also allow others to pin onto your board.

But it’s more than that. Like any social media tool, like attending a party, you can’t just walk out there and start talking about how great you are. To make Pinterest work for you, for your business, you need to build a following, know your customers, find out what they’re interested in and have a strategic plan. Just like at a party, spend some time observing. Find out who you know, who you’d like to know, what’s being talked about. Put in your time listening and slowly build your following. The content should start at a slow pace, until you get the rhythm of the network.

Driving Traffic to your Website or Blog

Big brands have already been using Pinterest. You’ll find Land’s End and Etsy have tens of thousands of followers. The site is heavily skewed to the female demographic at present, but this is expected to level out. There are nearly 500 million users and the site is growing fast. Users are averaging about 15 minutes each visit.

Make it easy for Pinterest users to pin by including a graphic with every blog or article you write. You can get badges from Pinterest to add to your site. Creating a catchy graphic, encourage your visitors to pin their favorite things. Pin images of your own products on pinboards. Use infographics to showcase less visually-oriented services or ideas. Try Linky. The widget used in your blog collects links from your readers. Follow Land’s End’s lead. There “Pin It to Win It” contest generated a huge amount of interest. Fans pinned products they liked and Land’s End got exposure on boards all over the site.

Using Pinterest for Market Research

You can see where pins came from on a specific web domain. What a great way to discover what people are pinning from your website. Simply go to http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” to see what visitors to your website find relevant and interesting.

Remember that perception is reality. Whatever your customers say your brand is, that is what your brand is. Look at the name of the boards you’re pinned to. Is it Products I Love? Home Décor? I Want? How many followers is there on any boards your site is pinned to? You’ll also want to pay attention to the influencers. When you identify influencers, you can increase sales.

Are you on Pinterest? Let us know what you’re doing in the comments.

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A Million Ways To Say I Love You for St. Valentine’s Day

There are a million ways to say “I love you.” For example …

… taking a beautiful shot



Photo by takuya miyamoto*

… touching tenderly



Photo by Martyn @ Negaro

… leaving an “I love you” note in the morning



Photo by jessica.diamond



… writing a love poem



Photo by Tayrawr Fortune

… letting everyone know how deep your love is




Photo by pizzodisevo

… lighting a love fire



Photo by @ly$ in wonderland

… giving a small gift or token of your love




Photo by HafsaN00



… using your hands



Photo by le vent le cri

… sharing your love with people around you




Photo by SteveMcN

… creating something for the one you love




Photo by bfraz

… giving your love to the whole world



Photo by davidwallace

… loving your pets



Photo by zenera

… giving a field of beautiful flowers as a gift



Photo by aftab.

… wearing your love on your skin



Photo by joshDubya

… sharing affection with unlikely companions




Photo by Paphio

… making a small hand-made heart



Photo by Jeff Kubina

… helping others read the writing on the wall




Photo by SteveMcN

… kicking off the morning commute with your love





Photo by mr • p

… writing in the sand



Photo by jodigreen

… making something very special



Photo by aquila460

… becoming a love photographer



Photo by cdedbdme

… making things different



Photo by smudie

… engraving your love in wood




Photo by John Chevier™

.. writing it in the snow





Photo by Camilla Ferrari

… giving a flower




Photo by zenera

… seeing hearts all around



Photo by applescented

… seeing love in everything



Photo by ~K~

… lighting a candle



Photo by ~Xu

… touching each other tenderly





Photo by kretyen

… letting your love grow with Mother Nature






Photo by kharied

… making something unique




Photo by bdfuller1





… making something sweet



Photo by ♫ alma

… seeing more than black and white






Photo by Shutter Daddy

… taking an “I love you” photo

Photo by Bert Heymans

… showing how beautiful the world around you is



Photo by harold.lloyd

… cooking something yummy



Photo by txkimmers

… sharing secrets



Photo by recubejim

… being spontaneous




Photo by FUNKYAH

… just saying “I love you”



Photo by MacJewell

… inflating a love balloon



Photo by byte

… protecting your beloved



Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

… creating something extraordinary



Photo by lepiaf.geo

… giving a piece of your heart



Photo by Parvin ♣

… making life beautiful and full of love every day



Photo by harold.lloyd

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Artificial Matters: New Sensations through Texture, Geometry, Coloration, and Finish

Rather than taking the “true” or literal approach to materials, this project designed by Dave Bantz andMichael Gross attempts to adopt techniques mastered by artists and apply them at an architectural scale. Material in art is used as a representational device for effects and a gateway to sensation. The”Artificial Matters” studio, run by SCI-arc professor Elena Manferdini, aims to provoke new sensations through texture, geometry, coloration, and finish. The studio began by 3D scanning literal materials (in this case a sliced peach) and modifying the raw data to produce a synthetic material with the potential to create new sensations.

The project footnotes artists such as Murakami for his use of distortion through an object in the landscape, while the attempt here is to implement distortion and blurring of context and figuration. The conceptual pavilion proposal for the Milan 2015 Expo takes massing, which has traditionally been absolute and legible, and makes it simultaneously illusory and viscerally evocative. This is where fact and fiction coexist. The exterior causes a distortion and blurring of reality through refraction and density, blurring the figure. While the indexical cut reveals the interior materiality of the pavilion and is concerned with more visceral and immediate sublime sensations.

via suckerPUNCH

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TMW Technical Museum Entrance Foyer / Querkraft Architects

Querkraft Architects, together with the Technical Museum of Vienna, designed a new entrance foyer and shop for the existing building. Older museum buildings are challenged to expand and modernize whilst remaining attached to their existing historical structures. In the 90s the technical museum faced precisely this difficulty as it tried to gain more space for a larger entrance foyer, a new museum shop and café as well as sufficient amenities, cloakroom space and ticketing capacity. The architectural solution that was chosen in the 90s was a steel-glass box placed in front of the existing historical structure. This solution proved problematic on a few levels shortly after the opening in 1999. The foyer was dominated by large temperature fluctuations, poor acoustics and ventilation, as well as less than optimal visitor circulation.

The creation of a clear master plan and visitor circulation with an accompanying welcoming emotional atmosphere improved the overall experience of the building. At the middle of their design solution are multifunctional pieces of furniture made of glass-fiber reinforced plastic and fabric. These ‘trees’ provide seating, shade and acoustic absorption and at night they serve as an illuminate bodies which fill the room with white or blue glowing light. The objects, which resemble trees and can be perceived as a innuendo to the relationship between technology and nature, formally envelope the steel columns and allow a view through the glass ceiling and on to the historical façade.

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Using Photoshop, Photographer Creates Mind-Boggling Buildings

Using Photoshop, Spanish photographer Victor Enrich has manipulated his own images of buildings to create surreal structures that border on the whimsical.

Stripping buildings of science and logic, Enrich makes towers unzip, roads go upward, even a “fries” building and other mind-boggling distortions.

Yet, the parallel universe that Enrich has created appears somewhat plausible.

According to Enrich, he tries to inject “realism” into his work, by editing existing, real-world building blocks.

Enrich spends up to a month digitally editing each shot.

“Most architects respect the law ‘form follows function’ … my ‘buildings’ definitely don’t have an architectonic function … but they DO have other functions,” writes Enrich.

One wonders what that might be, perhaps a cultural commentary laced with Enrich’s own sense of humor?

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