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Using Shortlink to share your posts

You may have set your WordPress blog posts to go to Twitter when you publish. I noticed that the links in the tweets are long and not abbreviated the way they used to be. My last blog post looked like this on Twitter:

What’s up next? The Transcriptionist, by Amy Rowland https://t.co/T24mF5KGJw pic.twitter.com/pgebCfAhMI

— Barbara Vitelli (@BookClubMom) June 21, 2015

See how long the code is and how it’s chopped off? I don’t know how to fix that, or if it matters very much to most people, but I am a little crazy about streamlining. I recently discovered that WordPress has a button on its Edit Post page called Get Shortlink. It does the same thing as Bitly, but it’s easier because the utility is right there and it saves you a few steps.

If you want to tweet an older post, go to the Edit Post page and use the Shortlink button to copy the shortened link into your tweet.

Here’s what my tweet of the same post looked like:

What’s up next? The Transcriptionist, by Amy Rowland http://t.co/jz0B3UzzHN pic.twitter.com/JLUBxoptW0

— Barbara Vitelli (@BookClubMom) June 21, 2015

See how much better the link looks? Now I’m not sure why the book cover is bigger in the second tweet. That’s just something else to keep me obsessed!

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Twitter Tips

Here are two tips one of my resident Twitter experts gave me regarding WordPress and Twitter.

1) I often “Share” my older WordPress posts on Twitter. I used to click on the Twitter icon at the bottom of my post to tweet and it would look something like this:

It's Margaret Wise Brown's birthday! Take a look at Home for a Bunny! http://t.co/yDEprqrY3Y via @BookClubMom

— Barbara Vitelli (@BookClubMom) May 23, 2015

Notice the link plus the additional “via @BookClubMom”. It’s better not to tweet to your own Twitter account. Instead, include the link in a new tweet. And make your tweet look more professional by shortening your link. Use a website like Bitly.com, and paste it directly into your tweet. Bitly is very easy to use, so check it out.

See how much cleaner this looks?

It's Margaret Wise Brown's Birthday! Take a look at Home for a Bunny! http://t.co/m5fmWjQyWk

— Barbara Vitelli (@BookClubMom) May 24, 2015

2) A good way to take the plunge and interact with your Twitter followers is to add comment on a tweet from your feed. Here’s an example. Someone on my feed asked for a book recommendation. Rather than just tweeting out a favorite book, I responded directly by retweeting and adding my recommendation.

The person who asked for the book recommendation saw my comment and favorited it. This comment was seen by other followers who also favorited it. I could have taken it a step further by including the bitly link to my review of the book, but I didn’t think of that until later. Still learning!

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