April 7, 2011 91 Comments

Cut to Grow

I love the Road Warriorette blog. She travels a lot and I get lots of ideas from her. The other day, she wrote a post about a cool travel water bag that packs flat. I thought it was cool so decided to tweet about it. I pushed the little share button at the bottom of the post and got a surprise.

Sharing Options

Frankly, I got lost. I tried scrolling down to Twitter, gave up, and just copied the link myself, switched to Twitter, and hit share. I’m not sure who else would go through that effort. A lot of people? I don’t know. Would your audience go through that? (Note: I’m not crapping on Road Warriorette’s blog in specific. LOTS of you have the same sharing buttons. And I started by saying that I love her blog. So there.)

Make Sharing Dead Simple

On my own site, I have two major options and one smaller option. I have a Facebook “Like” button at the top and bottom of my post, plus I have a TweetThis button. I also use a sharing list similar to Road Warriorette, but with fewer options.

sharing options

The reason is simple. I want to guide you to hit either “Like” or “Tweet.” Everything else is gravy. Now, my friend Ed Shahzade says that StumbleUpon is also big potatoes. I haven’t gotten there yet. But I listen to everything Ed tells me, at least a bit, and so I’ll give it a bit of a look-see over time.

The simpler you make sharing, the more the tools get used.

And You?

Where do you share the most? Where do you see the most traction? What’s your site doing for social sharing?

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Genesis Framework

Genesis Theme Framework

The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Whether you're a novice or advanced developer, Genesis provides you with the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go.

With automatic theme updates and world-class support included, Genesis is the smart choice for your WordPress website or blog.

Become a StudioPress Affiliate

← Older Comments
  • Scott Wendling

    A analytic nut friend of mine says stumble is huge. He advertises on Facebook to people that have stumble upon in their profile. He claims it increases sharing b/c stumble people are more likely to share which reverbs back to your blog & other networks.

    • http://www.solobizcoach.com SoloBizCoach

      That is a great idea Scott. What kind of advertising is this person doing on Facebook? I would love to hear more about this.

  • http://www.solobizcoach.com SoloBizCoach

    Great advice Chris. Getting people to share your content is so hard to begin with. You can’t afford to put obstacles that discourage sharing.

  • http://twitter.com/RizzoTees Chris Reimer

    I’ve been guilty of this in the past. I had Sexy Bookmarks on my blog, and just couldn’t bring myself to eliminate some of the sharing options. I feared alienating that one person that likes that obscure XYZ sharing service.

  • Pingback: viralsocialmarketing.com » Copyblogger Weekly Wrap

  • http://ariherzog.com Ari Herzog

    Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon are the only social buttons you will (currently) see on my blog, both at the top and bottom of each article. And they are used, moreso that they are calls to action for people to click.

    Analytics of traffic sources confirms.

    • Anonymous

      Hi Ari, do you get much traffic from the Linkedin share button? I’ve not used that but my audience is B2B.

      • http://ariherzog.com Ari Herzog

        While inbound traffic is minimal with LinkedIn, blog articles are clearly manually shared on LinkedIn. When I wrote about unfriending Facebook friends last month, that saw 54 shares, for instance.

  • Anonymous

    Hi Chris, I have recently come to the same conclusion and deactivated the Sexy Bookmarks plugin for exactly the same reason. I’m going for the Tweet and Share approach with the option to clip to Evernote.

  • Anonymous

    Hi Chris, I have recently come to the same conclusion and deactivated the Sexy Bookmarks plugin for exactly the same reason. I’m going for the Tweet and Share approach with the option to clip to Evernote.

  • http://www.evomantra.com EvoMantra

    In user perspective, I have also removed sexy bookmarks from our wordpress blog and added AddThis plugin which shows facebook and twitter as separate options.

  • http://twitter.com/belizehub BelizeHub!

    interesting post! i need to fix my share buttons on my blog.

  • Anonymous

    This article reminds of K.I.S.S. and for those who don’t recall, Keep It Simple Stupid. I’m not trying to call anyone stupid, because most of the time I take the cake. I’m just saying that sometimes people are trying to put themselves everywhere in this social media craziness. Start small and be HUGE at it

  • Pingback: What I'm Reading This Week: Respectability, Rob Bell, & More | Goins, Writer

  • Pingback: Copyblogger Weekly Wrap: Week of April 4, 2011 - Blogging tips

  • Pingback: Push Push Push | CheckIt Smart

← Older Comments