A retweet is the act by which someone else passes/shares your information via a tweet through Twitter.

By including a retweet inside your document, straight away the reader will have:

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

This will help grow your Twitter followers, 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 - right-click on the image –> 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:
• keep your tweets to about 120 characters or less.. this allows for others to add comments to the tweet
• put your Twitter ID (eg @sociallywiredno) 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 @sociallywirednow)

Create a Shortened URL
You will also want to include in your tweet a shortened URL that points back to the document’s landing 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
• tiny.url
• su.pr – This shortening service exposes your content to StumbleUpon’s 8 million users - in addition to Twitter’s users

http://thisisthemightlylongurlintheinternetexplorerbar/2010/how-to-add-a-retweet-button-inside-your-pdf-documents
into: http://su.pr/1adj34

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/1adj34| The Social Media Guide (via @sociallywirednow)

You can see I have incorporated the following components into this tweet,
• the name of this document’s landing page
• shortened URL
• the name of my blog
• my Twitter ID
• total characters = 125 (which leaves room for comments, etc)

Create the Retweet URL
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.
1. Copy this text
• http://twitter.com/home/?status=

2. Append your tweet to the end of the previous step

• http://twitter.com/home/?status= How to add a Retweet button inside your PDF documents http://su.pr/1adj34| The Social Media Guide (via @sociallywirednow)

3. Replace all spaces with a plus (+) sign

If you use a hashtag symbol (#) change it to %23

http://twitter.com/home/?status= How+to+add+a+Retweet+button+inside+your+PDF+documents+http://su.pr/1adj34+|+The +Social+Media+Guide+(via+@sociallywirednow)

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, after logging 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.

Create Your PDF File and Embed Retweet Button
The final step now is to put the retweet button into your document and 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).

1. 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.

2. Right-click on this retweet graphic and select hyperlink

3. Paste in your retweet URL then click

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 convert this document into a PDF.


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