How to Add A Tweet Button to Your Blogger Posts

Tweet After reading this post on Dear Crissy, I decided to figure out how to add a Tweet button to my posts so readers can share on Twitter quickly.  After a little googling and a lot of trial and error, I have it working!

My blog is on Blogger, so if you’re using Wordpress or any other blogging platform this probably won’t help you.  And I’m by no means an expert on html or blog customization – I mostly just try things out and cross my fingers!  Make sure before you make any changes to your template you save a backup copy to your computer.  Enough disclosures, here’s what worked for me!



First, log into twitter and click on the “resources” link, which is on the right side of your twitter home under all of the recommendations.



Click on “create tweet button”.



Choose how you want your button to look, then make sure your twitter handle is in the box in step 2.  You can add another handle to all your tweets if you’d like to – I didn’t.



Your code will show up in the text box on the bottom right, in step 3.



Now open up the design section of your blog and click the “Edit HTML” link at the top of the page, under the tabs.  Now click the “Expand Widget Templates” box.



Press Control+F, which will open up a little search box at the top of your page.  Type “<data:post.body/>” (without the quotes) into the Find: field, which should automatically bring up that line of code, highlighted, in the text box of your design page.  By the way, I found out where to post the code from this blog post.



You’ve backed up your template, right?  Okay then, go back to your Twitter page and copy the code that was generated for your button.  Paste it into the template for your blog right above the code we searched for on the last step.



Click the orange “Save Template” button.  View your blog and marvel at your new Tweet button!

For some reason pretty much all of my posts say they’ve been tweeted twice, which I know isn’t the case.  Hopefully it works itself out, maybe it’s just a syncing issue?

Try it out and let me know if it works for you!

Setting Goals for the New Year

Tweet This week has been a behind-the-scenes business kind of week.  I haven’t really done much on the product side – no sewing, no product photography, no listing and promoting.  Instead, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in paperwork and doing A LOT of planning.  I don’t really do the New Year’s Resolution thing, but I thought I’d share with you some of my plans so hopefully you’re inspired to put your goals in writing!



Etsy Shop Goals.  I set a goal of 50 sales for the first quarter of 2011.  I think this may be a little lofty, but I think it’s important to aim high.  I just stumbled across this great Etsy Goal Spreadsheet from Absolutely Small that I think I’ll start using for a little added motivation.



Blog Goals.  I’m planning on posting more often – look out for a new feature coming this Saturday!  Also, I tend to be a passive reader on other people’s blogs, so I’m going to try to come out of the woodwork a little more and make sure to interact with others by commenting on their blogs.  I love to hear from bobaloo! readers, so I know other bloggers feel the same way.

Along the same lines, I’ve installed DISQUS for comments (thanks to some advice from a Crafterminds tweet chat) so you guys will get an email when I respond to a comment here on bobaloo!  This is brand new to me, so if you have any trouble commenting let me know so I can look into it.  One thing I don’t like very much about Blogger is the inability to respond directly to readers’ comments, so hopefully this solves that problem.



Facebook and Twitter goals.  I know I’m not making the best use of either of these.  I don’t want to be one of those Twitter users that only tweets about products they’ve listed, but I know I can use Twitter to spread the word about my business.  I also feel like I underutilize Facebook – I post about new blog posts and occasionally product listings, but I know I can do more.  Anybody have any reading recommendations about Twitter or Facebook?



Local Sales Goals.  bobaloo! is carried in two local stores – the Irvington Iris Tea Room and the Little Green Bean Boutique.  I’d like to add one more store in the next three months.  Ideally I’d like to pick up a wholesale account, but I’m perfectly okay with consignment as well.  I’m going to ask all my mom buddies around my area if they know of any good kids’ shops and start calling buyers.

I have a few smaller goals, like finally setting up my Cargoh shop and reorganizing my sewing room yet again.  I’m planning on reviewing my goals every two weeks to keep myself on track.  This is my first time setting such specific goals, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

What about you guys?  Do you have any goals for your business or yourself?  Let’s have some inspiration!

Custom orders, big blog mention, and Twitter

Tweet I have so much new stuff to share with you guys, I don't even know where to start!

Let's see... I'm up to 8 Etsy sales, which is so great.  Two of those were custom orders, plus one was adding some embroidery to an existing item.  I didn't realize that custom orders would be such a big part of sales on Etsy - is this always the case?  I think custom orders are fun, so I don't mind.  Sometimes someone else's ideas will trigger a new idea for me, plus I get to make someone exactly what they want.

Oh, and I was mentioned on another BIG blog on Friday -  Prudent Baby!  I love this blog.  I just discovered it a few months back and spent a whole evening looking through the project archives.  I don't know if I was behind on blog reading, but I totally didn't catch the link to one of my bunnies when it came through my blog reader.  I was looking at my Etsy store on Saturday and saw that one bunny had an obscene number of views, and I couldn't figure out why.  Thanks to the people on the super-helpful Etsy forums, I tracked the views through Google Analytics and found out all that traffic was from Prudent Baby.  Crazy, right?

And speaking of Google Analytics, I was just introduced to Craftopolis thanks to the Etsy forums.  This site is so great!  You can log into Analytics and Etsy, and it produces a calendar with daily info on views, purchases, and new shop hearts.  It is so addictive!  Also, you can search to see which treasuries your stuff has been in, plus what tags people used to find your products.  I know all this information will be useful when I know how to actually do something with it!

I'm finally on Twitter, too.  I find Twitter a little... I don't know, excessive maybe?  I guess I felt the same way about Facebook a few years back, so I'm sure I'll come around.  I know it's pretty essential to business these days.  You can follow me @bobalooKids if you'd like.  I'm thinking I need to hunt down a "Follow me on Twitter" button for the blog similar to my "Like bobaloo! on Facebook" button - does anyone know if that exists?  I'm also reading the book Twitterville, which was recommended by a friend.  I'm hoping it helps me get the most out of Twitter.

I'll save the rest of the new stuff for later this week.  Tomorrow is my baby girl's first day of preschool, so I think this afternoon we're going to do something fun to celebrate.  And on a completely unrelated note, go read The Help if you haven't read it yet.  It's SO GOOD!