When it comes to blogging, one of the hardest things to accomplish is getting people to share your links. There’s tons of plugins out there to help encourage sharing your posts, but sometimes nothing is better than a graphic that just says “Click to Tweet.” By giving simple, direct instructions like this, visitors are much more likely to click on it and share.

Why use a custom graphic instead of a “Click to Tweet” plugin?

This is an excellent point. As a matter of fact, there’s a great plugin that works for highlighting text to encourage shares. If you’re good with CSS, you can customize the way it looks to flawlessly align with your brand. If not, however, it’s pretty bland. So, if your audience needs something more visually pleasing, you can quickly create custom graphics that align with your brand in your program of choice – the more popular ones being Photoshop, PicMonkey, or Canva.

If you’re not that familiar with code, you’ll find that creating custom graphics is a much easier solution for your blog posts. In addition, it gives you a chance to have multiple styles that you can attach to your posts to add some variety. It can also allow you to have another image that you can use for other social platforms. You can share the image on Facebook or Pinterest while still encouraging others to click on it.

How to Design a Custom “Click to Tweet” Graphic Template

If this is something you are going to do for every blog post, you’ll want to design a template that you can quickly reuse, or create a handful of templates to add some variety. You’ll save yourself tons of time by having these templates ready to go when you’re designing your graphics.

If you are using the recent version of Photoshop CC, you should now have access to Artboards, and these are game changers when creating graphics for your blog posts. You can design your graphics and quickly see them all lined up together to be sure they’re cohesive.

Before You Start Designing: Grab Your Brand Style Guide

Before designing your “Click to Tweet” graphic, you need to have your brand style guide on hand so that you can reference your color codes, fonts, and any other elements that you regularly use when designing visual assets for your brand.

Determining “Click to Tweet” Graphic Size

The size that you choose to use for “click to tweet” graphics is completely up to you, but I would recommend evaluating how wide your posts are across devices and not exceed that. If you know that the desktop version of your site allows for the content block to be 800 pixels wide, then limit the width of your graphic to that. If you try using a larger graphic that will be scaled down to fit in the box, it will only increase the file size and slow down your site speed. The height that you choose to use is also up to you. I like to use 800 by 300 pixels, but you can do whatever fits the style of your brand. You want the graphics to be large enough to stop the scroll, but not overtly distracting from your content. You don’t want your readers frustrated because they have to scroll past the graphic to read more of the blog post.

Play around with size and test it across different devices. If you want to test how your site looks across different devices but don’t have them all on hand, I recommend Screenfly from QuirkTools.

Setting Up ArtBoards in PhotoShop CC

While there are other options that you can use for designing graphics, Photoshop CC is sure to save you tons of time down the road considering you’ll need to create a few for every blog post.

By utilizing artboards, you will have your basic template ready to go, so you can create multiple graphics in the same file and quickly export them with just a couple of clicks. You will no longer need to toggle back and forth between a handful of tabs to make sure everything is cohesive.

If you’re new to creating graphics, Artboards is incredibly easy to use for any of your graphic design projects. Just make sure the “artboards” box is selected when you create a new file. Also, double-check that your color code is set to RGB and your resolution is set to 72. This will keep your file size smaller and ensure you have the standard color code for web publication.

Now that you have the basics set up, dive into the file and make changes as you continue designing your “click to tweet” graphics. You can either click the “+” to add a new artboard or control click “+” to copy everything from the previous artboard.

With your new file open and the artboard selected, you can get to work designing your first “click to tweet” graphic. Yay!

Designing the “Click to Tweet” Graphics

With your brand style guide and your artboards ready to go, it’s time to design the layout of your “click to tweet” graphics. This is the most exciting part about designing custom graphics; you have complete control over how it all looks. Instead of opting for a pre-made cookie cutter graphic, you get to add your own backgrounds, any style elements you choose, and a big ole Twitter bird with specific directions: click to tweet. You can design this to really pop while scrolling through your blog post to encourage the reader to share it to their own Twitter feed. The way you go about it is completely up to you. However, it’s important to keep your graphics aligned with your brand by using elements from your brand style guide such as any recurring fonts, colors, gradients, or patterns.

You can make yours as simple or detailed as you like.

The graphics that we use here at The Creative Boss are simple, yet bright, just like our brand. They pop out of the white background and let the text fall away to really grab your attention. Some feature a gradient of our colors, a simple border, and text with the “click to tweet” directions on the graphic.

We sometimes have a few different lines that are all tweetable, so we use a handful of different versions of “click to tweet” graphics. Readers appreciate breaks from long sections of text, and the bright visuals give them that and keeps them engaged. Talk about a double whammy!

How to Choose Which Quote to Use as a “Click to Tweet”

The most difficult part of creating a custom “click to tweet” graphic is deciding what you should place on the quote card. How do you choose a single sentence that will make an impact and encourage social shares as well as clicks back to your blog post?

This needs to be a short sentence – under 100 characters – and give just enough information that others will click the link to the blog post.

This sentence needs to make a statement, so say it out loud. Does it sound like something that is worth repeating?

The easiest way to find this may be scanning your headers and subheaders to see if anything pops out at you.

Another way would be to read your whole blog post out loud. Is there something that jumps out at you, or do you find yourself reading a line over again? If there is, use it. This needs to be the bait for your social post. This needs to convey your message without giving too much away. See what I did there?

The Correct Way to Save All of the “Click to Tweet” Graphics

You’ve had your fun designing your graphics, and you’re ready to save them all. Did you know that there is a correct way to save files in Photoshop? Hint: It’s not the save option – those tricky bastards.

If you have all of your graphics ready to go, you can select all of the artboards and export them all at the same time. Say what?! Yep, you can save multiple files all at once and even make a few tweaks, such as decreasing the file size to about 60-80%, and they will automatically save to the destination of your choice.

Bonus Tip: Name your Artboard. This will keep you from having to name them while saving. saving.

Creating Your “Click To Tweet” Link

Before you create your link, you’ll want to grab a shortened version of your blog post. I love using Bitly. But however you choose to do it, create a shortened link to use on your tweet. Since you are limited to 140 characters, you’ll want to save as much space for the quote as possible.

Once you know which quote you are using on your graphic, you can copy it and take it over to Share Link Generator. Create the link that will give you the standard pre-populated box that says “Tweet.” This makes it ridiculously easy for your reader to share with their peers.

Paste in your quote, add your shortened link to the blog post, and add your Twitter handle so that you will see it in your notifications every time it is shared. This will help you keep track of how well it is doing and give you a chance to engage with those folks over on Twitter.

Share Link Generator is going to magically spit out a link for you to use in your blog posts, so be sure to copy it to a notepad for when you get to work adding the graphics to the blog post.

Using this site is super simple and it’s free. #winning

Adding the Graphic and Link to a Blog Post

Now that all of the grunt work is done with designing and getting links to use, we can move on to adding the graphics directly to the blog posts. This part should be relatively simple if you have been using graphics in your blog posts for some time.

Uploading the Graphics

The first step will be to upload your graphics to the media file of your website. You can do this directly within editing a blog post, or you can do it all in the media section; the preference is yours.

Adding the Links

Now that you have your graphics uploaded to WordPress, you can add the links or where you want a user to go when they click on them. This is where you will add the link that was given to you from Link Share Generator. You’ll want to make sure that, if you are using multiple graphics, you are using the correct link for each quote. You can add the links to the files when you upload the graphics, or you can add the links after you placed them in your blog post.

Placing Them in the Blog Post

Now you have everything ready to go, so you can quickly drop the graphics where you want them in the blog posts. Be sure to place the graphics close to where the original quote was and not have too many close together. These need to provide a break for the reader but still encourage them to continue reading on after they click to tweet it.

Creating your own custom graphics doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive, and it’s a great way to enhance your blog posts and increase engagement from your readers. There are plenty of benefits that go beyond using a plugin to increase shares, such as the visual break that you give readers and the ability to share the graphics on other social platforms.