Get More Retweets with These Plugins, Apps, and Services

There is a lot of information about how to get more retweets for your content, the most popular being the Science of Retweets with Dan Zarrella of Hubspot.

But the simplest way to get retweets is to make your content easy to retweet. Amazingly, I still see lots of sites that neglect to have any form of retweet button on their blog posts or pages. Here are some simple plugins, apps, and services to help your content find it’s way to Twitter with ease.

Tweetmeme

The Tweetmeme retweet button is my personal favorite – not the official Tweet button, but the well known Tweetmeme button itself. It allows you to configure different options, such as style, @username source, and shortening service used with the custom code.

You can also get official plugins for WordPress, TypePad, and Blogger as well as community created plugins for Joomla, Drupal, Windows Live Writer, and B2Evolution. The Tweetmeme button is also mobile friendly. You can see this retweet button in action at the top of this post!

Topsy

The Topsy retweet button has a few more customizable features than the Tweetmeme Retweet button, and can be installed using the code or as a plugin for WordPress. One feature that is particularly appealing for designers is color themes for the buttons to match the website’s layout.

Similarly to the Tweetmeme button, you can configure the @username source, URL shortener service used, and other options. The Topsy retweet button also shows (based on your preferences) when your post or page makes it to the top 10k, 5k, 1k, and 100 tweets.

Whether or not you use the Topsy button, you should at least install the Topsy trackback bookmarklet – this will give you Twitter sharing data about any page that you are on, including the number of tweets and the most influential Twitter users who have shared it. This information can help you learn what content gets the most retweets.

Twitter

Twitter’s own retweet button is the “official” new retweet button popping up on websites, and uses the new http://t.co/ shortening URL. Unfortunately, you cannot change to your desired shortener like you can with Tweetmeme and Topsy using this button.

Clicktotweet

Another innovative way to make specific links in your text tweetable. You can easily stick tweetable links throughout your blog posts and pages using Clicktotweet, an easy to use, free web application.

For example, clicking on the this link will take you right to Twitter to tweet this post using the text I entered above. You can use this site to make quotes within a post tweetable, and also share within emails, instant messages, and forums to help others retweet you without even going to your site.

Your Favorite Plugins to Get Retweets

The above are some of the most well known plugins and unique applications to get retweets. What plugins, buttons, widgets, etc. do you use to get retweets of your own content and why?