How To Add Click To Tweet Buttons In WordPress
Do you want to learn how to add click to tweet buttons in WordPress?
Click to tweet buttons are a great way to encourage social sharing and increase traffic to your blog.
In this post, I will show you two ways to add click to tweet buttons in WordPress.
First, I’ll cover the free option. Then, I’ll cover the paid method.
The paid method means using a full WordPress social sharing plugin. You get more customization options and a slew of other features to grow your WordPress site.
Let’s get started:
How to add Click to Tweet buttons to your posts for free
When it comes to free click to tweet plugins, one of the best plugins is Better Click to Tweet. It’s small and lightweight and it started as a complete retool of the “Click To Tweet” plugin by Todaymade.
The main reason for the change was removing the Powered by CoSchedule which was placed at the bottom of Todaymade’s plugin. Shortly thereafter, Todaymade removed that line from the Click To Tweet plugin.
In addition to the change above, other changes in Better Click to Tweet include correct character counting when dealing with non-Roman characters, translation-readiness, and use of the official shortcode API which means the plugin is more secure and forward-compatible.
You can install the plugin either by downloading it from the official repository, and the uploading the zip file in your dashboard; or you can search for it directly in your WordPress dashboard and install it from there.
Whichever method you choose, after the plugin is installed, you need to activate it.
The settings panel is pretty straightforward with only 2 settings: your Twitter handle and the option to use the short URL.
Better Click to Tweet adds a handy icon to WordPress post editor so all you have to do is click on the little blue bird to create your custom Tweet.
The options are pretty simple: enter your tweetable quote and optionally include a Twitter username.
Once you have composed your Tweet, the plugin will automatically add it to your post. Unfortunately, unless you know CSS, you can’t do much in the way of customization. The Click to Tweet box still looks good on the front-end though:
Better Click to Tweet is a simple plugin that does what it says: adds good-looking Click to Tweet buttons to your WordPress posts and makes sharing them on Twitter very easy.
The only downside to it is that it’s a separate plugin to install if you already have a sharing plugin in place.
If you’d like to minimize the amount of installed plugins and are looking for something a bit more robust, then keep on reading.
How to add Click to Tweet buttons with a premium plugin
In the world of social sharing plugins, one that is quickly rising to the top is Social Warfare. It’s one of the fastest social sharing plugins on the market with plenty of features – Click to Tweet Buttons included.
Social Warfare was developed by a team of professional content creators, designers and developers who have a huge interest in social media marketing. They developed the plugin after not being satisfied with all the other social sharing plugins. And they did a fantastic job.
The Click to Tweet buttons that are included in Social Warfare offer slightly more than Better Click to Tweet when it comes to visual display. You can choose between 6 different color schemes as well as create a custom style if you are familiar with CSS.
Similarly to Better Click to Tweet, Social Warfare adds a button to your post editor screen which makes composing a tweetable quote a breeze.
The difference is that you can create a custom Tweet and have complete control over how that message appears in your post.
Once your Tweet is composed, Social Warfare will insert it into your post.
The design of the Click to Tweet box depends on the theme you have selected.
Like Better Click to Tweet, your Twitter handle and the post URL is automatically inserted, and you can see exactly how many characters you have remaining for your message.
As we mentioned before, Social Warfare is a premium plugin available for $24/year for a single site license. You might be wondering why you should choose Social Warfare over a free plugin like Better Click to Tweet, especially if you’re satisfied with your current social sharing plugin.
However, there’s more to Social Warfare than better visual styles for Click to Tweet buttons.
Social Warfare lets you have complete control over the display of your social sharing buttons but also the way your content is shared on social media networks.
With 5 different button styles, and 10 different color schemes, as well as the ability to choose a custom color, you can make Social Warfare blend seamlessly with the rest of your branding.
On top of that, Social Warfare has custom post options which allow you to create a custom image optimized for sharing on Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You can also compose a custom title for when your post is shared on social media and write a compelling custom post description.
Another benefit of using Social Warfare is the ability to optimize your posts for Pinterest without disrupting the flow of your post with a tall image.
You can upload a Pinterest-specific image and write a description tailored for Pinterest and Social Warfare will pull the correct image and your Pin description.
The biggest advantage of using Social Warfare is that it eliminates the need for an extra plugin which is always a good thing as too many plugins can slow down your site.
Which one should you choose?
The decision is ultimately yours, but here are some pros and cons of both plugins to consider before making the final decision.
Better Click to Tweet
Better Click to Tweet is small and lightweight, does one thing and it does it well. It allows you to easily insert Click to Tweet buttons into your posts. By doing so, it makes it extremely easy for your visitors to share your content with a customized message and boost your Twitter engagement rate. Best of all, the plugin is free.
The downsides of Better Click to Tweet is the lack of customization options unless you are familiar with CSS and the fact that you have to install a separate plugin to add this functionality to your WordPress posts.
However, if you don’t have too many plugins already installed, Better Click to Tweet is definitely a worthy contender.
Social Warfare
While Click to Tweet buttons aren’t the primary focus of Social Warfare, the plugin is the perfect solution if you want more control over the appearance of the Click to Tweet buttons. It has enough themes to choose from which will make your custom Tweets stand out even more from the rest of the post.
On top of that, it’s a social sharing plugin which not only adds social media sharing buttons to your site, but also gives you post-specific options to control the appearance of your content when shared on social media.
What’s more, the plugin is very fast and causes no extra load on your website, and it’s responsive which means the social sharing buttons will look good on mobile devices as well.
The downside of Social Warfare is the fact that you have to pay for a yearly license if you want continued support and updates. Still, $24/year is more than a fair price for everything Social Warfare has to offer.
We use Social Warfare here on WP Superstars to power our click to tweet buttons and regular social sharing buttons.
Final words
Adding Click to Tweet buttons to your WordPress posts can greatly boost your Twitter engagement rate, and help to drive more traffic to your website.
While you can certainly forego the option entirely and opt for just a regular Tweet button at the end of the post, using custom tweetable quotes has a two-fold benefit: it gives you more control over the tweet shared, and it eliminates the need to come up with something clever to say from your visitors.
Better Click to Tweet and Social Warfare are two great options to add Click to Tweet buttons to your posts.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means we may make a small commission if you make a purchase.
