Social media exposure for blogs is hot-hot-hot. Adding social media share icons to blogs is essential now to making it easy for our readers. Twitter is the favorite of many for rapid exposure and an easy way for their readers to share their content with others. Twitter exposure can mean a lot “free” traffic to blogs.
Solving Share Button Headaches
Adding the share buttons for the countless networks like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, etc to WordPress can be a headache with dozens of plugin, individual plugin options, alignment options, floating issues and theme elements. Some days it makes you want to pull your hair out finding buttons that just work. While adding the functions to the thesis theme is much more light-weight and resource friendly, but not everyone wants to poke in the code.
What is Digg Digg WordPress plugin?
Fortunately there’s a great little WordPress plugin called “Digg Digg” that makes adding any of nineteen social media share buttons to your site easy! In fact, its one of my top 10 must have wordpress plugins. It makes alignment easy, preventing the buttons from floating into theme elements, and it tends to behave. It ALSO makes it possible (with a little more work) to add the floating ajax style share buttons like Mashable has on their site. Its very cool.
Digg Digg can be used to create not only the “Mashable style” floating share buttons but also a large combination of button types and alignments. The compact and standard views give you some creative flexibility.
Here’s an example of standard width, horizontal alignment, and you cant see it but this one was left float.
You can see how the icons can be easily stacked in a compact form that wont take over all your post space.
Here’s an example of standard width, horizontal align, right float:
(Don’t worry about the Facebook button being compact in this view, they like to hide your “zero” until you have a share, then it will pop up to full size and look right.)
Digg Digg: Now With Topsy!
You may have noticed in the image above is that I have both a Topsy AND Tweetmeme twitter button. One of Digg Digg’s downsides was that it used to only allow the Tweetmeme button. You do NOT have to run them both at the same time like here – but I wanted you to be able to see them.
As of this newest version, version 4.2, Digg Digg now has support for Topsy instead of only having the Tweetmeme support. There is a lot of people that do not care for Tweetmeme for various reasons, including that it requires OAuth. Also Topsy will let visitors share the tweet more than once (and have it count) whereas Tweetmeme tracks unique shares, and a visitor can not share it more than once. Tweetmeme on the other hand is preferred by some because it has a pop-up and does not open a separate page/window. So now, regardless of your preferred twitter share button, you have even more choices!
Ann also mentions, in another post here on ShoutMeLoud, how Topsy is considered a powerful tool for brand monitoring and it may be wise to pay attention to it.
Adding Topsy To Digg Digg: Settings
As you can see in this settings screen shot, Step 6 is the Tweetmeme configuration which have been included for a while and the new Step 7 is the Topsy configuration. You actually enable or disable the particular buttons up in Step 4. The configuration for Topsy is easy as all it really needs is your Twitter ID.
Summary
So now you can see that we have one more reason to love Digg Digg! The new Topsy support is awesome and allows the post to be retweeted multiple times by visitors instead of just once that TweetMeme allows. This is a great improvement on a great plugin!
Are you using social media share buttons? Which ones do you feel are essential? With all the possible social sites how do you decide which ones to show and which ones not to? Are you using Digg Digg already or are you using another plugin (or three!) to get your share buttons? Which ones are your favorites?
I look forward to reading and replying to your comments below!
This is a guest post by Kimberly who blogs at Just-ask-kim about blogging, WordPress and Social-media. If you like to write for Shoutmeloud do read: Shoutmeloud revenue sharing program.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks but I need more format to meet my blog layout.
Hey Tran,
Yeah plugins like these are really for people that don’t want to have to poke at the code! Once you start wanting sexy formatting, well then its time for coding! LOL
Kimberly
Hey Kim,
.
Glad to see you here
Really Great Post. I’m using Digg digg plugin from past 3-4 months and i think it’s one of the awesome plugin for social share.
Thanks for sharing this great Post kim.
~Dev
Hey Dev, thanks for the comment! Really appreciate it!
It’s definitely one of my Top 10 thats for sure. Makes getting them set up quickly a piece of cake. Its ashame that there are a some themes that it just doesnt agree with their CSS but fortunately those are far and few between.
Thanks again!
Kimberly
Now that’s a good news for Digg Digg lovers. Thanks for sharing this info mate.
Am using Digg Digg plugin for a long time, but I keep on thinking, whether I should replace them with direct codes..
It’s all about how are you doing on hosting/server resources? If your resource use is high, you need to start replacing things with codes. I generally start with database intensive stuff that makes lots of queries first as that tends to be the worst. Then comes bigger plugins like this one. Hope that helps!
Kimberly
Kim, Thanks for sharing this plugin
I have used it on my blog. But due to some CSS clashes with my current theme. Digg Digg is not displaying the icons properly. Will have to investigate further.
But i must admit that it is a very Good plugin!
Nihar, are you on a open GPL theme that you could share a copy? I’ve heard some reports of this but I do not have this trouble with thesis or any of the others I’ve used yet. If its shareable I’d love to get my hands on a copy and see whats going on
Kimberly
I’m using custom social share buttons..but confused about shifting to Digg Digg. I love Digg Digg but having some problems in displaying the images. Not much time to explore the problem. So left it with the custom share buttons & i’m pretty happy with it
OK I just installed it but may have went a bit overboard considering I was already using the fixed social plugin on my far right side..
btw,
To answer your question at the end of the post, I tend to use Retweet buttons alot especially on posts like this one
Aww! Thanks for the RTs Caleb! You’re awesome!
It’s real easy to go overboard on those buttons but its fun at the same time. It takes finding some balance though because visitors don’t like to have to roam their mouse very far to click stuff. The easier we can make their life, even with a little redundancy can sometimes improve click through. Now as for not creating an eyesore, that can be another matter! LOL
Wish ya the best!
Kimberly
Hey Kim,
Nice to see you here.
Btw, I am using this plugin and I would say that it’s awesome. But now I am a bit confused about which one to use…Tweetmeme or Topsy? Which one is more user friendly?
They’re both friendly but they handle different.
Tweetmeme requires a one-time OAuth connection and then does a nice little popup window. There are some visitors that dont like OAuth but most are finally getting used to it. The downside for a site-owner though is that a visitor can only RT the post once from the Tweetmeme button.
I got some first-hand experience really giving the Topsy button a workout in the ComLuv/FB challenge and being able to use the button more than once, to get the word out, was really helpful when I wasn’t in the mood to schedule a bunch of ongoing tweets. Just visit my own page and slap the button. Downside is it opens in a new tab, but Firefox is smart enough to return you to the last tab you were on after you close it so you only “sort of” leave the blog.
I was using Tweetmeme but when I changed my permalinks I lost all my counters and since switching wouldnt have counters anyways, it was a great time to switch. I wont be able to say much more for a few months until I watch performance.
Maybe I should poll my visitors next week and see what they think of the new button?
Kimberly
I am using digg digg in my travel blog (http://www.travel-bangladesh.net/) and I am using Tweetmeme button there.
I also use Tweetmeme buttons in my personal blog.
For me, the reason to choose TweetMeMe buttons is because tweetmeme buttons let the visitor stay in my site while tweeting. On the other hand topsy move the visitors to twitter site.
TweetMeme button requires oAuth and that is for only first time and I think as a lot of websites are using TweetMeme, there is a change that a visitor already authenticated tweetmeme with twitter.
Yes, i agree with you about not allowing retweeting more than once is a drawback of tweetmeme but i also doubt that a visitor will want to retweet the same article more than once.
However, I do not have experience with topsy but I wish you good luck with switching to topsy. Please Let us know what is your experience with using topsy buttons after 2/3 months.
Cheers
@Kim
Thanks for this detailed info. I am looking forward to the poll on your blog about this, because I am really interested in the results.
@Ron
That’s a very good point that very rarely would a visitor want to retweet a post more than once.
And about the OAuth, we the bloggers have already done that, and most of the retweets that I get is from bloggers. So it seems that Tweetmeme has a slight advantage for me.
Yay! Glad I was able to help. It’s a lovely plugin you’re going to enjoy it!
Kimberly
Now there’s a plugin I could do with! Another one I’ve recently started using on my blog is the Superbar plugin in. It’s pretty cool, adds a floating sidebar to the side of the post like the one on this site
This plugin will ALSO do a bar like that, only I think it tries to be closer to the post box more like the one on mashable’s site. The ajax float (what they use for that) can be used in addition to the static buttons, and about 10 of the 19 button types are supported in it. If it met what you needed you wouldn’t need both plugins
Kimberly
For now my topsy visit has had to come to a halt as I have just started setting up manual code to replace Digg Digg. I cant say that removing the plugin significantly reduced my server resources but it’s been a fun study in coding. I have some more work to do on my new buttons and may very well put Topsy back in.
However, two new pieces of news were worth sharing:
Some info on why Topsy is useful for long term stats:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/03/topsy-twitter-bit-ly-tweetmeme-retweet/
And some info on Twitters upcoming new buttons that may give both tweetmeme and topsy some competition:
http://mashable.com/2010/08/10/twitter-official-share-buttons
I need to keep an eye on twitters new buttons before I decide my next move. I’m not particularly thrilled with what I”ve read so far (or the pass through url) but we have to keep an eye on these things!
Kimberly