Recently I started taking the popular Twitter retweet button off of all of my blogs and replacing it with the blue tweet counter created by Twitter. I was originally concerned with all of the retweets being set back to zero, but then I realized that it doesn’t matter since over time everything will build back up anyways. After changing them out, most of the recent tweets and retweets were actually counted on the new counter and whats even better is that the icon looks better within all of my designs. After being angry and getting no customer support from the popular Twitter retweet button, I finally made the switch to the Twitter share button created by Twitter. I am completely happy that I changed share buttons and want to encourage you all to change to. Here are 5 reasons replace your current share buttons with the one by Twitter.
1. Accuracy. One of my biggest pet peeves with the other popular twitter sharing button was that it was never accurate for me with counting tweets. People would tweet and retweet blog posts, and those tweets would never be counted. To me it felt like my posts were not as worthwhile when the counts were low and other people wouldn’t trust my sites as much. It is me being paranoid because if the quality is good the trust level will be there too. However the minute I changed over to the blue twitter share button from Twitter, my counts went up and I was able to find out who more of my readers are by clicking on the number and seeing who tweeted and retweeted my posts. The accuracy of the twitter retweet button is far superior to the other popular one which is not owned by Twitter.
2. Options and tracking. One thing that I really enjoyed about switching to the blue retweet button is the amount of customization you can do with it. It combines with your accounts on almost every url shortner for tracking, you can choose multiple display options from vertical to horizontal, it’s easy to choose where it will show as well as how the post shows, what it will say, etc… A lot of these options are available on the other buttons, but not everything that the Twitter tweet button offered. There are a ton of ways to customize the Twitter version of the retweet and share icon.
3. You can set it to follow you and recommend other people to follow. If you are spending a ton of time writing your blog and creating posts that people want to share, why not also have a share button that enables your readers to follow you on Twitter? Not only can you have it recommend that the people sharing your posts follow you, but I think you can also have it recommend following a couple of other people. By doing this you can cross promote similar blog owners, sell ad space in the form of recommendations to follow and monetize your recommendations based off of your amount of shares.
4. Guest Bloggers can add their own names. If you have guest Bloggers helping to add content, they can add their own Twitter screen names to the tweet button so that when they post and the post is shared, it will show that the post is by them. Not only does this help to encourage them to post more because it gives them extra exposure to your readers, but it is also nice to be able to give them credit the minute someone enjoys their posts enough to share it.
5. It’s Twitter. Probably the best reason to switch over to the Twitter share button is that it is Twitter who offers you the service and owns the site you are interacting with. Twitter is also the one who is sending you the traffic and Twitter is the one who is giving you the backlinks. It is also Twitter users that are helping you get better rankings in the SEs. Think about it, why should you give backlinks to some company that created a counter randomly when it is Twitter who is giving you traffic, sending you sales and giving you a free place to promote your business?
After being pissed about the other popular Twitter share button and getting no customer support, no answers to my questions and inaccurate tracking, I decided to switch to the counter and share button owned by Twitter. Not only am I happy that I did it, but I highly recommend you change too. If you’ve switched as well, feel free to comment below. If you think the other counter is better and have a good reason why it is better, feel free to share that too. And as always, feel free to tweet this post out using my new Twitter counter and share button.
