How to Add a Retweet Button Inside Your PDF Documents

Wouldn’t it be good to enable readers of your PDF files including eBooks, reports, social media guides, etc.. to be able to share this with their friends on Twitter.. with a simple retweet?

And those friends can share your PDF with their friends on Twitter.. and so on..

The great thing about this, is each retweet can have,

• your Twitter ID
• a link back to your site
• a link back to your PDF, or
• whatever you want!

Which helps to grow your Twitter following, as well as driving traffic back to your site.

Let me show you how..

Retweet Button

First of all you need a retweet button.. a graphic that will be placed inside your PDF file that people will click-on to actually retweet.

Either grab one from Google or use this one,

To save this image just right-click –> save image as..

Building the Retweet URL

The following steps will build upon each other resulting in your retweet URL.

Write Your Tweet

You need to write a tweet.

This is the tweet that will appear in Twitter when someone clicks on your retweet button.

Some things to consider include,

• try and keep your tweets to about 120 characters or less.. this allows for others to add comments to the tweet
• put your Twitter ID (eg @socialguide) in the tweet.. this will help to grow your Twitter following as your PDF starts to get retweeted
• use a #hashtag for tracking purposes.. this will help you track the retweets

The tweet that I will be using is,

How to add Retweet buttons in your PDF documents | The Social Media Guide (via @socialguide)

Create a Shortened URL

You will also want to include in your tweet a shortened URL that points back to the document’s land page.. it is from this page that your PDF file can be downloaded.

It is advisable to direct people to a landing page to give them an idea of what your document is actually about.. rather than pointing them directly to the PDF file itself (as they won’t know what they are downloading).

There are many URL shorteners that can be used including,

• bit.ly
• cli.gs
• su.pr – I personally like using this shortening service as it can expose your content to StumbleUpon’s 8 million users.. in addition to Twitter’s users.. checkout my post on Su.pr here

I will be using su.pr to shrink this URL,

http://thesocialmediaguide.com/2010/01/29/how-to-add-a-retweet-button-inside-your-pdf-documents

into,

http://su.pr/1w2YK4

Your Tweet

Now you need to merge the tweet from before with the shortened URL you have just created.. to give you something along the lines of,

How to add a Retweet button inside your PDF documents http://su.pr/1w2YK4 | The Social Media Guide (via @socialguide)

You can see I have incorporated the following components into this tweet,

• the name of this document’s landing page (ie this post)
• shortened URL
• the name of my blog
• my Twitter ID
• total characters = 118 (which leaves room for comments, etc)

Create the Retweet URL

Now for the fun part!

We want to create the actual retweet URL that invokes Twitter, via your browser, and populates it with your tweet.

We will build this up in three simple steps.

Firstly, copy this text,

• http://twitter.com/home/?status=

Secondly, append your tweet to the end of the previous step (for clarity sake I will highlight this text in pink),

• http://twitter.com/home/?status= How to add a Retweet button inside your PDF documents http://su.pr/1w2YK4 | The Social Media Guide (via @socialguide)

Finally, you need to replace all spaces with a plus (+) sign..

If you use a hashtag symbol (#) change it to %23.. (for clarity sake I will highlight this text in red),

• http://twitter.com/home/?status= How+to+add+a+Retweet+button+inside+your+PDF+documents+http://su.pr/1w2YK4+|+The+Social+Media+Guide+(via+@socialguide)

You have just created a retweet URL!

Test the Retweet URL

You will want to test this URL works before we link it to the retweet button.

It doesn’t matter if you are logged into Twitter or not when you click on the retweet URL.

If you are not logged into Twitter.. the login page will display..and once you have logged in, the tweet field will be pre-populated with your tweet.

If you are already logged into Twitter, then the tweet field will become populated with your tweet.

Test it out by clicking on the link below,

http://twitter.com/home/?status=How+to+add+a+Retweet+button+inside+your+PDF+documents+http://su.pr/1w2YK4+|+The+Social+Media+Guide+(via+@socialguide)

Create Your PDF File and Embed Retweet Button

The final step now is to put the retweet button into your document.. and then to insert the retweet URL (from the previous step), into the retweet graphic as a hyperlink.

To be able to add a hyperlink to a PDF document you will need PDF creation software such as Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader).

I use a product called PDF Converter 6 Professional,

PDF Converter 6 Professional is quite a bit cheaper than Adobe Acrobat and allows you to create, edit and manipulate industry standard PDF files. If you don’t have any PDF creation software try and find someone who does.

Open up your file in Microsoft Word.. then paste in the retweet graphic.. I would recommend doing it in more than one location within the document,

Next right-click on this retweet graphic and select hyperlink,

Paste in your retweet URL.. then click <OK>,

You have just hot-linked the Twitter retweet button with the retweet URL.. and embedded it all into your document.

Finalise the PDF File

Last but not least we need to convert this document into a PDF.

I am using PDF Converter 6 Professional,

.. so from within Microsoft Word click on the Nuance PDF tab.. then click on the <Create PDF> button,

(If you are using a different PDF creator, the process may be slightly different when creating your PDF file).

Done!

You have successfully added a retweet button inside your PDF document!

I have created this post into a PDF, so please feel free to download this from here.. share it with your friends and retweet it!!

Finally..

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Please help spread the word by becoming a fan of The Social Media Guide on Facebook,

And following me on Twitter,

Enjoy!

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7. Screenr – Instant Screencasts for Twitter