People use Twitter in a number of ways, from promoting their business or carving out a personality to talking with friends and staying on top of what favorite celebs and brands are doing. Regardless of why you’re on Twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve sent out a link to a news article or blog post. In fact, 12% of tweets are just this. Pinyadda makes sharing news to Twitter easy, saving you time and giving you the most control over however you want to flavor your tweets.
Here’s why Pinyadda is the best way to share news on Twitter, including examples from our community:
Know the best articles and blog posts to share
Pinyadda is like your personal assistant for news and information. Instead of having to go site-to-site or do searches (and often dig) 
for the news and blog posts that you want to click on, Pinyadda sifts through the firehose of content for you and collects the articles and posts you’re most likely interested in. Pinyadda serves the good stuff to you in real-time, filing each article as it’s published into clean pages you can browse based on topics, sites and people you follow (click for a quick 30-sec video overview).
With Pinyadda, you know the articles you’ll be into sharing to Twitter without lifting a finger:
- Want to tweet about news on a particular topic? Go to that topic page and see articles being published about it from sites across the web on everything from your city or favorite sports team to things like celebrities, food, social media, autos or green tech.
- Want to tweet articles from your go-to sites? View a feed of what’s been published most recently from all your favorites, and if you have one site in mind go to it’s individual feed page. (Tip: Here you can even tell Pinyadda to show you only articles published from a few sections of that site. It’s great for big sites like Boston.com where you may only be interested in a couple sections, like sports and events.)
- Want to share an article that lots of people are talking about? Go to your Home feed to see what articles people you follow are sharing (we call it pinning). You can also toggle to the “All People” feed to see what’s buzzing in the whole community on Pinyadda — lots of people use Pinyadda like a digital water cooler to share and discuss articles with groups of friends and colleagues, so you can always find great stuff.
Craft engaging news-related tweets
Since people use Twitter for different reasons, we designed Pinyadda’s integration with it with flexibility top of mind. This way you stay in the drivers seat of your voice and can mold your tweets as you like. Here are examples of some of the most effective ways to share all the news goodness on Pinyadda to Twitter:
- Share a headline. This is the most basic way to share news to your Twitter followers. Just copy and paste the headline from the feed into the comment box. It’s straightforward, easy, and gets the news out quickly to your followers. (Tip: If you you want to legitimize the source of the link, include its Twitter handle, e.g. I know Boston.com is @bostonupdate.)
- Share a quote, main point, question, or data point from the article. These are great ways to shake up how you share news articles to Twitter. These often grab your followers attention better than a straight headline, and shows you’re putting some TLC into your tweets.
- Add value to the article by including your own commentary. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, opinions, or simply add some humor to the news you share with your followers.
- Direct an article to a Twitter follower. Often when we read an article we think of someone – be it an inside joke, something that will help them in their job, or is relevant to other aspects of their lives. If the person you’re thinking of isn’t as ahead of the curve as you and on Pinyadda too, include their Twitter handle at the beginning. (Better yet, invite them to Pinyadda!)
- Share a discussion to Twitter. If you’re part of or come across a great discussion on an article on Pinyadda that your followers on Twitter would like, simply enter something like “check out this great discussion about X” when sharing the link to Twitter. (Tip: Combining #4 and #5 is killer if you know someone’s really into a subject,e.g. tweeting “thought you’d want in on this convo.”)
- Promote a site you think is great. If you come across a site on Pinyadda you want your Twitter followers to know about, simply visit that site’s page and click on the big blue “share this site” button. You can even customize the message you want to tweet out with it.
- Share your profile on Pinyadda to Twitter. Want people to know what topics and sites you follow, how many followers you’ve gained, and what you’ve pinned on Pinyadda? (We like to call this your news graph.) Simply tweet out the URL to your Pinyadda profile or include it in your Twitter bio.
- Share your Yadda shwag to boost your cred on Twitter. Pinyadda’s points system allows you to compete to earn coveted spots as the “Maven” of topics or “Ambassadors” of your favorite sites. You can also unlock fun badges (some even have coupon codes attached) just for pinning the news you’re into. For example, we teamed up with the marketing gurus over at Hubspot and you can earn their Inbound Marketing Ninja badge set by pinning inbound marketing news. You can share all this cred by clicking on what you’ve earned from your profile. Want to be the Maven of Twitter? Sounds like it’s time to get your yadda on!
Connecting Pinyadda to your Twitter account is easy.
Connecting Pinyadda with your Twitter account is simple. Choose an article you want to tweet, enter text you’d like to tweet in the comment box, select the Twitter checkbox, and hit the “Pin it” button (click here for a 30-second video). If it’s your first time doing this you’ll be prompted with a pop-up to enter your Twitter username and password. Once that’s done, the text in the comment box and a unique short URL will hit your Twitter feed.
When one of your Twitter followers clicks on the link, they’ll be brought to a page with the article. If the text you entered in the comment box exceed Twitter’s 140 character limit, Pinyadda automatically truncates. Rest assured, because when your Twitter followers click the URL they’ll see your full comment.
To manage your Twitter account on Pinyadda, visit the Contacts tab of your settings. There you can even see who out of the people you follow on Twitter are also on Pinyadda.
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Do you have other examples of great ways to share news to Twitter? How can we make sharing links to Twitter better for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
This post is the continuation of a half-formed thought I posted on my personal blog a few days ago. It’s about starting to understand the ways in which the digital world has changed, and is changing, the way we think about news itself. Before starting, I did a quick search for the words ‘journalism’ and ‘commodity’ on Google. Here are a couple of excepts from what I found that I think help frame the discussion:
HTML5 is really cool. It’s going to make a whole lot of things a whole lot easier for developers, and it should lead to higher quality user experiences on the internet, no matter what device we use for access. While I’m excited about all the geeky details of the specification, which is still very much a work in progress, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at HTML5 from a news industry standpoint. For both big publishers or independent bloggers, some of the new features are likely to have a direct impact on the ways they present content going forward.