When you post on Facebook and Twitter, do you sit by and watch as the crickets play their tune (meaning you typically receive no shares and maybe a few likes)? It’s time you give your posts a boost to jump-start the organic share and interaction process and see some fruit from your labor.

One way to give your social media a marketing push is to make it extremely easy for your followers and clients to share your posts. Say you’re sending out an email newsletter that highlights a recent Facebook post or Tweet. Instead of the reader having to go through multiple steps to share your post, simplify the process by adding a “Share” button directly in your email, webpage, or PDF that provides a 1-click solution to open the social media’s share function for that specific post. Let’s get started!

Navigate to the method you want to learn about:

  1. Create a direct-to-share link to a Facebook post
  2. Create a direct-to-share link to Twitter
  3. Create a direct-to-retweet link for Twitter

1) Create a 1-Click Link to Share a Facebook Post

 STEP 1 – Find the Facebook Embed feature

Browse Facebook for the post you’d like to create a share link. When you get to the post, click the three dots (ellipses) located at the top right of every Facebook post  and select “Embed”.

STEP 2 – Get the Facebook Post URL

Clicking the embed link will take you to the Embed page for that post. At the very top of that page, there will be a field labeled “URL of post”. Copy the entire URL within that field.

Step 3 – Build the Facebook Share Link

Paste the Facebook post URL to the end of this link (after the “u=”):

https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=

The URL should look similar to this:

https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://www.facebook.com/footlevelers/posts/10164081750210332

Make sure there are no spaces in the link. Copy this entire URL and use in your emails, websites, PDFs, or even within other Social Network posts! When someone clicks on this link, it will open Facebook as if they clicked on the “Share” button on that post within Facebook!

2) Create Direct-to-Share Link for Twitter

If you want a one-click method that allows your audience to share an article to Twitter from your website, email, or PDF document, use the following instructions.

The Twitter URL to share is:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=

After the “text=”, you can add your message, hashtags, and URL that will make up the Twitter post. For example, a Twitter link that will share this article is as follows,

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=A few great ways to create direct-to-share links for Facebook and Twitter. shorturl.at/mpwMU %23SocialMediaMarketing %23Marketing %23DigitalMarketing %23SocialShare @FootLevelers

Notice the ‘%23‘ before some of the words. That is the URL encoded characters for a hashtag. I also included @FootLevelers to add a mention to the post. Once you build your link as above, paste in into your browser and hit return/enter.

Your browser will load the page, but before you can use this link in emails or on your website and PDFs, you first need to copy it from the browser URL field. The reason is because your browser took the original link with spaces and converted it to a complete URL encoded link, as such:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=A%20few%20great%20ways%20to%20create%20direct-to-share%20links%20for%20Facebook%20and%20Twitter.%20shorturl.at/mpwMU%20%23SocialMediaMarketing%20%23Marketing%20%23DigitalMarketing%20%23SocialShare%20@FootLevelers

Use the copied URL (from your browser) to create an image or text link:
Click here to share this article on Twitter.

3) Create a 1-Click Retweet Link for Twitter

Is anyone retweeting your Tweets? Having quality Tweets that people WANT to retweet is the most important characteristic for producing a plethora of retweets. However, you can improve retweets by adding the retweet function directly within emails, websites, and even PDFs.

STEP 1 – Find the Twitter Embed feature

STEP 2 – Find the Tweet ID

In the top-right corner of your Tweet, click on the downward arrow and then click “Embed Tweet”. This will take you to the following page:

In the browser URL field, copy the number after the word “status”. Copy only the numbers and not any characters before or after the number.

STEP 3 – Build the retweet URL

Take that Tweet ID and add it to the end of this URL (in bold):

https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=

The full link with added Tweet ID should look similar to this:

https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=1308548897678209027

Use this URL in emails, on websites, within PDFs, or on other social networks to link directly to the retweet feature for that Tweet.

Conclusion

Creating these short and retweet links are easy, right? Remember to use these share links on text links, buttons, photos, custom graphics, and within PDF documents. For example, you could take a screenshot of your Facebook post or Tweet, add that image to your email newsletter, flyer, website, or PDF document, and link directly from that image. Be creative and accelerate your social shares!