Social Media 09 is coming and TweetMeme is getting excited! Social Media ‘09 is a half-day conference that will be bringing together over 200 people to provide marketing, advertising, PR and corporate communications executives with the know-how necessary to develop, execute and manage a social media strategy that delivers value. It should be a great event, with a hot line-up of speakers and demos.

Sarah Blow, the TweetMeme Community Manager, and myself, will be attending the event to talk all thing TweetMeme and will also be taking the opportunity to show off the new TweetMeme Analytics

If you are interested in social media, marketing and/or PR, this is an event that is not worth missing! Head over to Social Media 09 to sign-up now!  And if you’re a start up, sole trader or charity then please go here!

What’s more, mention that you heard about Social Media 09 through TweetMeme, and get 20% off your ticket!!

Further to the TweetMeme Blogger Gadget introduced last week, we are increasing our support for Blogger users with a new template editor.

We realise that the positioning of the Gadget in the Sidebar isn’t ideal, as many would prefer it inline with their posts, so to overcome this you can use our new tool to insert the button directly into your blog template. The editor is also good news for bloggers using “Classic” templates to whom gadgets aren’t available.

To get your template code for editing, simply go to Layout then Edit HTML in your dashboard, and copy your complete template from within the textarea ([Ctrl+A] then [Ctrl+C] works well). If you are using advanced templates, please ensure the Expand Widget Templates box is ticked, though our editor will tell you if you forgot!

Once you’ve found and copied your template code you can start using the TweetMeme Blogger Template Editor.

With the addition of the editor, we’ve decided to bundle Blogger support in to a new Blogger menu page from which you can find the Gadget, the Template Editor, and a guide for manual editing.

Two in one day?  Monsieur, with these plugins you are really spoiling us!

Hot on the heels of the TypePad Widget we now bring you a Blogger Gadget.  This is a simple way to add the TweetMeme retweet button to your blog and place the button where you want it on your blog page without the need for editing your templates, all using the native Page Elements interface.

To get started just make your way over to the How to add the TweetMeme Gadget to Blogger page and follow the steps.

Ever wished it was a little simpler to add our retweet button to your blog?  Well in continuing our steps to making your lives easier we’re pleased to announce the TweetMeme TypePad Widget!  There is now a new page in the plugins section of the site which has all the great options to customise your button and how it retweets, and even has a live preview so you can see how it will all look before it’s added to your TypePad blog.

Unfortunately TypePad’s API only allows widgets to be added to those blogs using Drag-and-Drop Design Templates so if you are using Advanced Templates you will, for the moment at least, need to continue using the manual insert method described in our help page How to Add a TweetMeme Button to your TypePad Blog.

Head over to the TweetMeme TypePad Widget page to customise your button and get it added to your blog!
By default, the widget will be installed at the bottom of your side-bar but you are free to re-organise if you wish through the Organize Content section of your Design tab.

Support for many more sites is on the way.

Since the initial creation of the TweetMeme button we’ve been looking for interesting, useful & innovative ways to update it and to make it easier for you all to update your Twitter accounts with the most interesting content that you find on the internet and to share your own content with your followers. As such we’ve extended and slightly altered the way that the TweetMeme button now works.

Before I go on and show you how this will work and what it will look like please note that this functionality has not yet been put live and a such the images shown below may look slightly different to the final version but with no significant changes to the basic functionality.

We will have two different variants of our button. One for on our TweetMeme website, which we call our internal button. And one for on external websites. I explain this first because I don’t want anyone getting confused that they act very slightly differently.

The TweetMeme Button on the TweetMeme site

The image above is what you will see when you try to connect to TweetMeme for the first time. It is basically setting you up to connect us to TweetMeme using Twitter’s Oauth access. It will take you to Twitter and ask you to log in just like in the image below. It’s a bit like Facebook connect really but for Twitter.

Once you’ve done this you’ll then be able to re-tweet any content from our site by pressing the green part of our TweetMeme button without having to log into TweetMeme if you are already logged into Twitter. Instead you’ll just get an image like the one below! Note that you can now edit the content of the message to whatever you choose. What you cannot do is remove or replace the URL with a different one. This is to ensure that the content sent does really relate back to the original source. After all we wouldn’t want it to misguide people.

Now for on your own site!

External TweetMeme Buttons!

To ensure consistency and simplicity we use a very similar system to the internal one. So for the first time you log into the TweetMeme button you will see the following:

Once again it connects with Twitter just like Facebook connect for the first time. If you aren’t logged into Twitter you’ll be asked to log in as usual and then get passed back to the button. Where you can edit the content (excluding the URL) and read even more interesting content on the site. We don’t take you away from the site that you are reading to update your users.

If at any point you don’t like or want this functionality you can always log into TweetMeme and change your preferences so that all buttons act as they currently do with no content editing for your account and automatic retweeting of content when you press then button and are logged in. If for any reason you say no the the initial connection on an external site we will automatically revert back to the original log in and allow manual tweeting & editing of your tweet on your own Twitter account on Twitter.

We hope you enjoy the new functionality and if you are press and would like to find out more about the button or require additional information please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

TweetMeme is very excited to announce the launch of TweetMeme Analytics. We have always known how effective our retweet button is at driving traction for publishers/blogs, and that providing a retweet count can be very useful, but how do you track these retweets further? How and why does a story perform well?

The TweetMeme Analytics enables report generation for any story on Twitter. Our reports help to analyze the spread of content on Twitter, and provide data on the tweets, retweets, clicks, domains, users and locations with the ability to export this information. Companies, brands and agencies are under increasing pressure to provide proof of ROIs when it comes to social media. What our Analytics provide is a way to compare your campaigns with competitor campaigns, and to help improve strategies for future campaigns.

So if you would like to monitor the performance of the content on your blog/website, know how far your content has spread virally through Twitter and which path it took, then the TweetMeme Analytics are for you!

Sign-up is EASY and involves 2 simple steps!

Step 1. On Twitter? Sign-in to our Analytics pages.
Step 2. Get started- Generate your first report!

What’s more TweetMeme is offering the first month completely FREE. This means you will be able to generate unlimited reports across all stories on one domain for FREE!

We have  also added updates to our WordPress Plugin. This is now integrated with our analytics, which means you can take advantage of our FREE trial directly from the plugin, as well as being able to access basic analytics for any story served by the retweet button.

Coverage -

• TechCrunch – “TweetMeme Adds Analytics to Make Sense of Twitter Links”

• Mashable – “TweetMeme Analytics Show You How Retweets Spread on Twitter”

The Blog World Expo is coming and TweetMeme is getting excited! The 2009 BlogWorld will take place this year at the Las Vegas Convention Centre, and is the first and only ‘industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of new media including: Blogging, Podcasting, Social Media, Online Video, Music, TV, Radio, Gaming, Entertainment and Communities.’

Nick Halstead, the TweetMeme CEO, will be speaking and attending the event to talk all things TweetMeme. He will also be handing out exclusive TweetMeme t-shirts. If you want to get your hands on one of these head over to http://www.blogworldexpo.com/ and register with your TweetMeme promotion code – TM20; what’s more you will also get 20% off when using this code!!

If you are interested in blogging, or any other form of new media this is an event that is not worth missing! With over 50 seminars, panel discussions, key-speakers and top industry exhibitors this will be the biggest (and possibly the best) new media event of the year. And remember to head over to http://www.blogworldexpo.com with your TweetMeme promo code – TM20 – to get 20% off!!