How Does This Share

October 26, 2009 · Comments

share this An important question to start asking yourself is, “how does this share?” The way these tools work best is when we can share easily. Is what you’re doing something easy to share? Have you given your ideas handles so that others can easily move it down the line? Are you equipping your information for a chance to get out there and be spread around, by using the tools that give those ideas wings?

Note at the bottom of every post on this site that there are two options. One is the Share This plug-in:

ShareThis plugin

Note also that there’s a Retweet button for Twitter.

retweet button

And that in the upper right hand corner of the blog, there are two ways to subscribe to the blog.

subscribe to the blog

There are other ways to share. Facebook has a really powerful share feature built in.

Sharing button on Facebook

Further, we talked about this with regards to Twitter when I showed you how to get more retweet action, too.

One of nine questions I came up with recently in thinking on how to help my clients with the team at New Marketing Labs, is simply this: “How does this share?” If I can answer that for my clients, I can bring them more results.

Have you built that into the projects you’re working on? How do you add more sharing to your projects?

Photo credit krooclub

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ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Thesis WordPress theme

Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.

With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.

  • Nice Article..,I know your site from Search Engine,thanks to your Article,I love your site .. thanks
  • Nice Article..,I know your site from Search Engine,thanks to your Article,I love your site .. thanks
  • neilkevin
    Truly awesome post as usual . I am fan of your charis. You are simply superb and always share something new and extra. Thanks for all this. I appreciate this.

    xmas presents
  • Chris,

    You have mentioned in other posts that for beginner bloggers the bells and whistles are not as important as Great Content and I agree with you. However, I think it is important for beginners and vets a like to be able to easily share there work with the various networks! This is great stuff! Thanks Chris!

    My opinion on Facebook Fan Pages:

    http://www.ryanhanley.com/2009/10/25/why-doesnt...
  • Right on Chris! All too often though Web publishers only use buttons for sharing to things like Facebook or Twitter (the Retweet button). While yes Facebook and Twitter do get A LOT of traffic, this is short sighted because it's only part of the pie.

    According to our (AddThis's) stats, Facebook & Twitter only make up 35% of sharing that we see on our platform. - http://addthis.com/services

    That means if you only put Facebook & Twitter buttons on your pages you're leaving potential shares on the table.

    That's why we recommend using a tool that allows you to incorporate ours. The common ones are obvious ours, ShareThis or AddToAny.

    The other thing that we see is that people don't make it obvious enough how to share. They make the share buttons blend too much into the design. We recommend that you put the share button as close to the top of the page as possible and put it in consistent spots. - http://addthis.com/help/button-placement
  • Chris, great suggestions, I'm already doing half of them.

    At the bottom of your post, how do you add:

    - The retweet

    AND right next to it the block:

    - "If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader."

    I assume you're using the TweetMeme WordPress plugin for the retweet, but how do you add the text block? It looks a bit like the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin for WordPress.

    (I too use the Thesis theme.)

    Thanks.
  • That's something custom that Chris Pearson made for my site. I'm not sure how. Ping @pearsonified on Twitter?
  • Thanks for the advice Chris. I pinged him on Twitter.
  • partywedo
    Another helpful hint that I will start using today!
    I am also going to pay more attention to the headlines (thanks Bill Streeter)
  • joebwharton
    We have used a "share this" button for some time. After reading this, we have added the retweet button. Thanks for the info.
  • Share This is nice but I haven't used it. I liked Sociable but have recently switched to Sexy Bookmarks and had some nice feedback on it. The only problem is that Sexy Bookmarks is everywhere now!
  • You're right, Sexy Bookmarks is awesome, and/or everywhere. : )
  • Absolutely. I added "Share" widgets for every conversation and group on Tweetworks awhile back for this very reason. The whole point of the social web is to socialize with others who share a common interest. Providing people an easy way to invite others to the conversation is just plain smart.
  • I've been experimenting with different places on my post to put my share and retweet buttons to see what works best. I found out that no one retweeted when they were at the top of the post (maybe they forgot about it by the time they got to the end?) I've now tried putting them both at the end of my posts in a special call out box. Will see if it works today :)
  • I have added my sharing button below my blog post. For every blog its always helpful for putting sharing button on their blog.
  • That's a great point and something that a lot of businesses are either fearful of or ignorant of. The things that seem like common sense for us new media addicts are far less than that to old school business minds.

    As for sharing content and being afraid that it will take on a life of it's own (such as music or photography), I think that it's been proven that any time content like that spreads beyond the grasp of it's originator, it winds up getting far more reach than it would on a marketing campaign alone.
  • Nice article. I realized that with my recent redesign I removed something that had worked quite well, which was a little note at the end of each post along the lines of "if you enjoyed this article, why not subscribe to our feed". That seemed to combine nicely with the overall "subscribe to RSS" option on the blog itself.

    I wish there was some slightly more selective sharing though. It's so easy to share now that so much of the stuff is shared or retweeted before people have even read it. Just trying to be the first one to retweet Chris Brogan, or ProBlogger, regardless of the content and their interest. It can end up swamping some of the really worthwhile content when everyone just tries to share everything at the same time!
  • Getting good stuff mixed in at the same time as some of the larger blogs is a problem. The trick there might be to find some off times to push it out. Know my secret time? Sunday afternoon. Best media pushes ever.
  • In the following weeks, I'm moving my blog to Wordpress to make content more shareable.

    It's a psychological hurdle, at least for me, to get to the stage of thinking you're important enough that these plugins are important.

    I mean Chris you're kind of a shareable "commodity," so you probably don't have this fear.
  • It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers.

    You'll find people will share your stuff when 1.) you make a community around your work, and 2.) you comment on their work often, and 3.) you write something so applicable and useful to others that they choose to share it.

    You're already worth it. Those other tasks will ensure you get their attention. : )
  • I find offering multiple ways to share via your RSS feed is optimal as well. Particularly where you can use Feedburner's options for email subscribers and have social sharing options in the email itself, in case your reader doesn't want to click through to the main blog post.
  • Thanks for the info. I never knew about this and after reading your post I immediately went and downloaded this to my blog. Hopefully this will help spread my word to others easily. Thanks for the great post.
  • katybeth
    I just went to your blog last week to see what "share" buttons you were using on Thesis. What a timely share!!
  • Retweet button for Twitter is not available in wordpress.com

    They SHOULD incorporate it because we are losing too much traffic!
  • Mohammed,

    The WordPress plugin you're looking for is TweetMeme:

    http://tweetmeme.com/about/plugins
  • This only works for wordpress.org NOT wordpress.com

    wordpress.com blocked Java codes :(

    Thanks Bill!
  • Sorry, didn't ready your question carefully enough.
  • I find that showing my clients stats from blog posts that were shared on Twitter or Facebook helps to convince them to break out the buttons and widgets. Many are afraid of what they'll do to their professional image.
    Sometimes though, it's not how well my stuff shares (and I hope it shares well), or how well my clients' stuff shares. I appreciate "share" or "retweet" buttons on other blogs because they're a great way to give back or reward another blogger for a thought provoking post.
  • sytaylor
    It's interesting how the subjects of trust and sharing are closely related. We will share with a website we trust quite happily. Even if they have taken the right to do whatever they want with our data (like facebook). The service is valuable, useful, and we see no negative impact from giving away that data.

    Contrast this with the entrenched corporate view that information security is so vital, that people specialise in compliance. Compliance to propriety standards enforced by gatekeepers in mature market sectors.

    There has to be a little room to hack the mould...
  • I find it's nice if headlines are written like tweets too. If the headline is a good 100 characters or less summary of the post I'm much more likely to share it on twitter. It also helps make the post more seo friendly too. I'm not as likely to share something that has a poorly written head. Sometimes I can rewrite it to share, but depending on how I share I often can't. Google reader doesn't allow heads to be rewritten before your share for instance. Often I don't want to bother. If someone shares something with a bad headline it's less likely to get read by others and less likely to get reshared. So if you make your heads 100 characters or so (to leave some room for the link and RT's) and make it a good summary of your post I'm much more likely to share that if I like it.
  • Really good point, Bill. Not only the tools, but the way the content is shaped impacts the effort.
  • i m using tell friends widget bu t i will try this gadget on another blog thanks
  • ahockley
    I work with photographers and it's always interesting to have the discussion of sharing... many of them are initially fearful of putting their work online, afraid that it will be copied and shared in violation of copyright law. I try to help them understand that as long as they're sharing web-resolution photos, perhaps with a tasteful watermark, that sharing will *help* them instead of hurting. Thanks for bringing up this topic - I think I need to expand it into a blog post for photographers.
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