Every so often I give you links to instant tweets that, when clicked, enable you to tweet my link from your own Twitter account. Today I’m going to share the “how to” code in case you’d ever want your own customers to tweet your own link to their followers.

When would you ever want to do this?

• Let’s say you’re launching a campaign to promote an upcoming reading series and you want help spreading the word. Your tweet might say, “I have my tickets for the You Byun event on July 8. Got yours? #iheartyou [bit.ly link]”
• Or perhaps you want followers to “tweet the vote” by providing two tweetable options. The next time we’re given another Team Edward/Team Jacob opportunity, this would work beautifully.
• Or maybe you need help spreading news quickly. “Aaaaugh! The Dave Eggers event is actually 1 hour earlier at 4 pm. Click here to help us tweet the word.”

I’m going to create an instant tweet which will lead your followers back to this page. And to create it, it’s just a matter of stringing some code together in this pattern: A + B + C + D. I like words, so I’m going to walk you through the process step-by-step. But at the end of the article, I have the original instructions I received from Kenton a long time ago.

A = https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=

So this is what the string looks like with just A:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=

For B, we’re going to encode our message. For this example, I want the tweet to read, “My words. Your tweet. #tweetable”

Go to http://www.url-encode-decode.com and paste just the message without the quotation marks in the box that is labeled “text to be coded.” Press the “Url encode” button, and code is returned in the “text processed” box. That code is our B in the pattern: My+words.+Your+tweet.+%23tweetable

So this is what the string looks like with A + B:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My+words.+Your+tweet.+%23tweetable

The C in the pattern is easy. It’s just this: &url=

So A + B + C looks like this:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My+words.+Your+tweet.+%23tweetable&url=

To get D, we’re going to shorten the link for our landing page at http://bit.ly. (You’ll have to create your own account, but you’ll want to because of the great analytics.)

Here’s the page I’m shortening: http://booksandwhatnot.com/marginalia/a-tweetable-of-your-own/

And here it is as a bit.ly link: http://bit.ly/1pxnTdu

So here’s our final code of A + B + C + D:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My+words.+Your+tweet.+%23tweetable&url=http://bit.ly/1pxnTdu

When I copy it and attach it as a link to any words in my copy, here’s how it works:

Click here to see how I can put words in your mouth. #tweetable

At this point, if somebody clicks on it, they can actually replace your words with their own. The tweet is sent from their account but it has your bit.ly link.

As promised, here are the original instructions I received from Kenton:

1. write the message
2. go to http://www.url-encode-decode.com/urlencode paste JUST THE MESSAGE here
3. Shorten the link at http://bit.ly – use your own account
4. The link is made up of a pattern A + B + C + D

A = https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=
B = Encoded text from step 2
C = &url=
D = link from step 3

When done:

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=B&url=D

I know. He’s succinct, right? And I just keep talking until I have something to say.