Twestimonials: how to use your tweets as testimonials

Written by Karen Skidmore on - 14 Comments
Categories: Cool Tools, Gadgets & Widgets, Marketing Small Business, More stuff, Social Media

The problem with tweets is that they only last about 3 or 4 hours at best. Once tweeted, they disappear down the Twitter feed, never to be seen again.

Yes, using the Favourites feature is a great way of highlighting your favourite tweets – both tweets from others that you find useful, plus tweets of your own.

But after a few days or weeks, they too disappear down the list.

Since launching my Web Tech Club, I’ve been getting some lovely tweets from my club members. And it just didn’t seem right to let these disappear in to the Twitterverse. So I thought I would share a simple little copy and paste job that I have done on these tweets.

Here’s what I have been doing and if you want to give it a go, then give it a go!

I’ve been screen grabbing a copy of the lovely tweet, using them as an image and then adding them to newsletters, web pages and even to my Facebook Page welcome note.

Each tweet has its own unique web link. Click on the time/date link to open up the tweet in a new browser window and then use a screen grab tool such as Snagit or Jing to create a jpeg image.

This jpeg image can then be used in any document, webpage or HTML email format you like – just as you would any image or photo.

Have a look at my Facebook Page as an example. Or here are a few below.

So, don’t let your lovely tweets go to waste. Save them as an image and use them in your marketing material.

UPDATE 7th November: I’ve just checked out the latest update for the wordpress plugin “Twitter blackbird pie” which allows you to embed a tweet in to your wordpress blog posts and pages. tI didn’t work well a few months ago, but now it seems to work rather nicely now. Here’s an example below:

[blackbirdpie id="1302049895485440"]

If you are using the new Twitter interface, just make sure the “#!” in the url link is removed as it doesn’t work with this – best to use the ID of each tweet which is the big long number you see in the url after the word “status”.

The other benefit of this plugin is that it gives your readers a direct link to the tweeter you’ve credited (although I do note, the link doesn’t give you an option to open in a new window which is something I would prefer to offer).

I still think the safest and best way to keep your most favourite tweets is to screen grab though. Tweets do disappear over time and although this is a fun, quick and easy way of adding a tweet to your wordpress site, it only works whilst the tweet stays alive. And for those of you not converted to WordPress yet, then this plugin obviously won’t help you ;o)

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14 Responses to “Twestimonials: how to use your tweets as testimonials”

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Amanda Alexander

November 22, 2011 at 11:43 am

Great tip Karen. I’m unsure as to how to grab the tweet using Jing though. Just tried and Jing doesn’t enable me to define a square.. it always drags a crossbar across the screen so that I’d be capturing not only the tweet but everything above and to the left of it. What am I not getting?!

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 6:55 pm
If you can only capture your whole screen, that’s OK. Just edit the image in your photo editor – use the crop feature. The screen grab I am using now is Awesome Screenshot as it allows me to add arrows, text and other images before saving. It works really on Chrome, although I haven’t tested it on other web browsers.

[Reply]
chris johnson

September 13, 2011 at 3:46 am

Have you ever considered writing an e-book or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog centered on the same information you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my subscribers would value your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail. Also, please check out my site http://www.myfitlive.com/Sieclas

[Reply]
Nicolas

June 16, 2011 at 2:12 pm

We’ve just launched a solution that many of you will like. The tool is called dialogfeed – and it allows you to select the tweets and facebook messages to be published through a widget on your website.

More that just “publishing twestimonials”, we also link back to the conversations on the social networks, and we allow for interaction on your site.

We have a free trial at the moment – so just go to dialogfeed.com, register and try it out! I’m looking forward to your feedback!

[Reply]
sue ritchie

June 5, 2011 at 2:45 pm

Wow
I’ve just tried this using the snipping tool, and it has worked a treat ! Thanks for sharing this Karen, what a great idea. Just one question; do you think you would have to check with the tweeter concerned that’s it’s ok to use them as part of your marketing/FB page etc..?
sue

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
June 6th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
It’s a good question Sue and if you are unsure, it’s always best to ask (great excuse to be in touch again with someone!). But tweets (if they haven’t been tweeted from a protected account) are in the public domain so it is a pretty safe assumption to make that you can use them. I recommend you do the same with your recommendations from LinkedIn too.

[Reply]
Bindi Shah

November 5, 2010 at 5:10 pm

Brilliant idea – just downloading Jing now – thanks for all the great tips Karen.
Bindi

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Nicky Kriel

November 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm

Hi Karen, love this simple and do-able solution! I was expecting the more technical advice of bookmarking your Twestimonials as “favourites” and then using them in a RSS feed on your website.

Most people have a snipping tool on their computer that they can use for capturing screen shots. I only realised this a few months ago and have been using it ever since!

Great advice!

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
November 5th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
I love using good old fashioned, simple stuff :O)

[Reply]
Graham Armfield

November 5, 2010 at 11:48 am

Great idea Karen. The real lesson is that it’s a huge mistake to assume that Twitter will keep anything – let alone people being able to find it. Twitter recently ditched all my old mentions that had some really useful stuff in. Apparently it’s a known issue but I’m still no closer to getting them back.

Your screen shot idea is a good one, but maybe there’s another. I use Tweetdeck to handle all my Twitter accounts and searches etc. This is pretty good but imagine if there was the functionality to click on useful tweets and store them locally on your PC, or if you could set up to copy all your mentions and direct messages straight to your PC – a kind of an automatic divert. You could then dip into this repository whenever you needed.

Do you know of any Twitter clients that do that? What about Hoot Suite which I believe that you use?

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
November 5th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
There are a few Twitter gadgets out there that could do this for you. I remember trying out this a while ago: http://www.tweetbook.in/index.php

It creates a pdf of your tweets plus your favourites. There are a few more – I just found http://mytwebo.com/ too so not sure how that works.

But you are absolutely right, Graham. A tweet is not around for ever and trying to find one from a while ago can be a pain. I would be very interested to know if anyone else has ideas on this.

[Reply]
Paul Gorman

November 5, 2010 at 9:29 am

Sometimes the simplest of ideas can turn out to be some of the best!
I like this one !!
Paul

[Reply]
Karen Skidmore Reply:
November 5th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Simples as the Meerkats like to say

[Reply]
Bev

November 5, 2010 at 8:45 am

Karen this is such a fantastic idea, I’ve started already (over my Rice Krispies lol) – thank you so much!

[Reply]