As a part of my WordPress Free Setup program, I was helping one of ShoutMeLoud reader Kunal to get started with a professional WordPress blog. He took care of theme itself and did almost everything when it comes to WordPress Theme setup.
So last night I was reviewing his blog and one thing in particular caught my eyes and that is number of social bookmarking icons he was using:
As you can see he has put almost all popular social bookmarking icons which are good but also bad in a way.
When I started blogging, I also started putting every possible social bookmarking icon hoping someone to share my post on any of these social bookmarking sites, but this approach was wrong.
Imagine which is easy for you:
- Selecting the best out of best
- Selecting the best out of all
For me it’s the first one. It’s easier to select one which is popular and fits your niche. Why would you like to put icons of site which is being used by handful of people?
More over keeping lots of social bookmarking icons might confuse your readers and they will skip it. Try to recall when was the last time you shared an article and why you did it? (Apart from being a good content).
For a blog like Blogging, I would prefer keeping sharing icons for Twitter share, Facebook share/facebook like, Stumble upon, Delicious, SPHINN, SERPD, Email and print.
More over putting social bookmarking icons with counter increase the chances of sharing. As people love to see counter growing and feel safe to share articles which already got good number of share. Also prefer to keep social bookmarking icons at the prominent position like at the top or below article so that when reader is done reading your blog, he might like to share your article. In my case I have put social bookmarking icons at the top and put Email subscription box at the bottom.
Must read: 5 useful social media bookmarking WordPress Plugin
Do let us know what do you prefer? Keeping all social bookmarking icons or keeping selected one?
Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 972 articles.
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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Well! Everything seems fine but of the location you have placed your icons at. Look, at shoutmeloud, you are putting your icons top right corner of the post where exactly you are adding an advertisement and the title of the post.
Most of the regular readers ignore your the ad and the title (since they are already aware about the title), they never pay attention at those buttons either.
Though they are good to keep at right corner, but putting them beneath the post may make them more eye catching.
Hey Chetan
Thanks for feedback..I will try to do a split testing on this and will see which placement works the best for me..
I agree with you. Keeping selected icons will be helpful for readers and increase blog speed.
Also, we can monitor the social networking traffic to make sure readers are using them.
I don’t use much since I don’t get more traffic from them
I agree with your statement on Speed and helpful for readers..
I couldn’t understand the last part Dinesh ” I don’t use much since I don’t get much traffic from them”
Do you mean social networking site or social bookmarking icons?
I am using of on my one blog…but only facebook works..i think facebook is must for every blog…and also twitter…
Thanks Ajeet for your comment and no doubt Fb & twitter are most imp followed by other buttons like SU & others…
I agree with you Harsh, now I only put Facebook and Twitter share button on my blog posts.
Gojeg also try adding Su button..
And in case if you write detailed tutorial and listified posts… Delicious could be useful too….
I decided to remove those small icons from my blog to speed up my loading time, and cache.
I replace them with a normal text, and i guess it will decrease people to bookmark my post, etc, but i am pretty confidence with it.
If my post is really helpful for them, i am sure they will bookmark it without an icon.
Thanks for sharing Harsh!
Kimi That’s true…but a visually appealing icon helps a lot..Try to add Tweetmeme button and see if it helps in user participation and if you see major difference better keep it..
Thanks for sharing this Harsh, even i am also doing the same mistake by adding all the socialnetworks icons, i am going to remove it and make it look clean and clear.
Thanks for your comment Bharath and do let us know if you see any difference in social media engagement after removing it…
I go with your opinion Harsh. Keeping all the bookmarking icons neither look good nor it gives good impressing to the reader. Instead one can go for a multi share icon, for eg. ‘Share This’, using which a reader can share the article to any bookmarking service if needed.
Namit I like Share this but sometime I find it’s confusing..And again it depends on what kind of traffic you are getting…
SML traffic is mostly consist of Bloggers and Webmasters so Twitter/FB/Delicious works the best..
I’m also planning to add Google buzz button back..as many webmaster like it too..
Hey Harsh, Today I got my invitation to about.me, check out my page about.me/namitgupta
I agree with you from starting (when i blog first) i’m using few like fb share fb like, tweet, delicious in my articles.
I just focus only on two social media: facebook and twitter,
Very cool post. I prefer Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and stumble buttons. I will make my post social buttons neat & tidy
I am kind of experimenting with this, right now, Harsh. On one of my blogs, I have always used just Facebook and Twitter buttons at the top of each post. On TaB, I am not using any social media buttons, at all.
I occasionally use the Tweet button on a site, but usually I make my own link in Hootsuite.
Roy atleast add fb like butto on TaB, it might help..Since Facebook is global platform and people might not share it on Twitter but they might like to share on Facebook abt some interesting article..!!
hey bro.. pretty interesting observation.. So how to do rate the buttons in my techgyo.com?
nice post,social sharing buttons should be at the end,but every one use to put them at the top[you and me too],for that the reader have to scroll up to share,that thing reduces the percentage of possibilities of sharing the post on social networking sites.
Thanks for letting me know about this Jagan, I have added one button at the bottom and lets see how it performs…
nice post harsh. whenever i set up a blog this question arises often. this aticle will really help new ones.
I just went and looked at my site and I have the long row of social media icons. It just went on when I launched my site and was thinking about 1,000,000 other things. But now that I read this post I think you’re totally right. It’s too much and it probably detracts from sharing more than encourages it.
True.
Btw, do you think, Harsh, is it still necessary to have the traditional print and email buttons. Aren’t they just a mere waste?
I removed all from my blog.
Hi Harsh, I will entirely agree with this post. The list of icons you have mentioned for a blog which comes under blogging niche is a must. Thanks for sharing an useful article.
Hi Harsh .. Thanks for the valuable suggestion.
Your suggestions are always worthy to this guy.
I have removed all the many social bookmarking icons. Keeping only facebook like and share, tweet button, stumble upon, digg and reddit.
Do have a review again and get back to me.
And thanks to your free WP services. For setting up my blog so well.
Relevant post…
Previously everyone use to include Digg also in the list, but after the latest digg version, digg has gone down…So now it is StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit…in my opinion
I did remember having positive feedback when I put the ones with the counter in. It makes them easy to rate with a click compared to the icons. Or perhaps it’s just something that encourage more clicks
Unfortunately I’m not a CSS expert so it’s hard to make these compact buttons with counters look nicely formatted
Well said dude, Some bloggers having 15 or 20 icons which are utterly waste.
We are currently using only Twitter and Facebook but may add a few more in future. I think 4 or 5 are more than enough!
Hi , I will entirely agree with this post.
cheers
i find it very smart and absolutely correct the fact that putting many choices is not a good idea , that will definitely make people confused a lot about which one they will share or click on , so they skip it !! good point !!
It is better to AddThis Share button which decides randomly based on the blog’s content and usage. However Facebook and Twitter are must I believe in most of the case.
Thnx harsh,after this comment i m going straight away to my blog settings to remove few unnecessary buttons…