Analytics, Code, Plugins, Strategy, Twitter, Web Tools, Wordpress
17

BackType Tweetcount + Su.pr = My Retweet Button of Choice

Posted by John Saddington on Aug 12, 2009

retweet

rt_ccI’ve been experimenting for the last few weeks with a new Retweet button combination on both this blog and my other one and so far I think it’s proven to be the best one I’ve used to date.

I’m using a combination of two WordPress plugins to achieve this: Backtype Tweetcount and Su.pr WordPress Plugin.

rt_h3Backtype, which has another plugin for robust social media commenting, has knocked it out of the park with their Tweetcount plugin; it’s one of the most customizable retweet button on the market today.

Your other option, of course, is Tweetmeme’s button and WordPress plugin which does a good job as well.

Not only can I stylize it the way I’d like it, I can obviously put it anywhere I want (manually) and choose a host of other options in terms of what shortening service I’d like to use, what I’d like to have as leading text, and more.

You can see that I’ve chosen the simply white version on ChurchCrunch and gave it a small orange feel on Human3rror. They have a large and small version to play with.

Check out the options and read more goodness after the jump:

backtype_admin

What I picked was Su.pr as my shortener of choice, for a number of reasons:

su_bar1. I can host the URLs on my own blog. Previously I had been using the ?p= way of doing things and it was just getting a big ugly to look at. In addition, I still wanted to be able to have that brand name recognition in the link. I’ve outlined my reasoning behind that here.

2. The chance at getting more traffic through StumbleUpon is too good to pass up. As you can see from this post, one of the most significant traffic days came from SU. I’ll be honest though, that was the end of my SU traffic-love so far; I haven’t seen much of a return since, but Su.pr offers more than just traffic. See #3.

su_back

3. Analytics. As you can see by the screenshot above and below I can track clickthroughs and traffic generated by direct and organic SU’s. Not only that I can get recommendations on best time to post. That’s pretty good stuff:

su_analytics

4. Customization settings are generous. Just like Backtype’s I get a lot of options:

supr_options

Now, I’ve gone ahead and combined the two plugins and their functionality to achieve a happy mix of reporting and URL shortening with added bonuses of potential new eyes (traffic) and hosting them on my own blog (brand awareness).

So far I’m really happy with my choice and I love the flexibility and customization options that these two give me. There’s almost nothing more that I’d like to see from the two as it stands today (which is saying a lot) so bravo to the developers behind the tech. It’s not perfect but it’s very reasonable.

Finally, to cap it all off, with the recent news of Tr.im going prehistoric (and then pulling a savior-like resurrection) it reminds many that putting your faith (literally) in a URL shortener is a big deal; I don’t see StumbleUpon going anywhere, so I feel safe using their product long-term.

What are you using for your URL shortening and why?

[Image from Deb]

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John Saddington

John is the Chief Editor @ The 8BIT Network and Senior Blog Junkie here at ChurchCrunch. He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, developing Wordpress Themes, and a few other Random Things.

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17 Responses to “BackType Tweetcount + Su.pr = My Retweet Button of Choice”

  1. CoffeeWithChris
    Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Been trying to make this work since yesterday morning… Su.pr just isn't synchronizing with my plugin settings. I've tried it with the plugin and with the php file and .htaccess changes. Hmmm…

    Reply
  2. human3rror
    Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    r u trying to host on your own blog?

    Reply
    • CoffeeWithChris
      Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 12:44 pm

      yeah

      Reply
      • human3rror
        Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 1:04 pm

        There's a small line of code at the very end of the code in the plugin that you have to \”uncomment\”.

        Reply
        • CoffeeWithChris
          Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 1:46 pm

          I guess I need some more coffee, can't find what I need to change.

          Reply
          • Kevin Bowers
            Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 5:20 pm

            You need to uncomment a line in the Back Type plugin, not the Supr plugin…Search for "uncomment" in there. ;)

            Reply
            • human3rror
              Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 5:33 pm

              throw this in the forums. we'll talk.

              Reply
  3. stephenbateman
    Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    Yes! This is exactly what I need. Su.pr is great, but I've been copy/pasting links into Su.pr, which just feels a little too 20th century.

    Thanks

    Reply
  4. Steven Rossi
    Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    I've been a big fan of Supr since it was released, but I haven't really used it all that much. That plugin seems like it'll come in handy.

    Reply
  5. Jim
    Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    adding this to the list

    Reply
  6. rodlie
    Friday, September 4, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    So glad you posted on this! I was just going to ask you. I have a su.pr account, and I like it. What I don't like is the ugly toolbar at the top. Because of this I've been using tr.im. It's clean. I get good analytics. Do you know how I can remove the su.pr toolbar? Is there a good reason for not doing so?

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Friday, September 4, 2009 at 5:26 pm

      yeah, you can on the settings.

      Reply
  7. Calum Henderson
    Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 8:59 pm

    su.pr is great!

    Custom short URLs are amazing.

    What are your thoughts on using the Stumble Upon toolbar, do you think it will alienate some readers?

    Reply
    • John Saddington
      Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 9:31 pm

      i used it for a while but it didn’t bring much extra traffic and the bar was annoying long term.

      Reply

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