Jan 5, 2011

Social media sharing of your posts and pages

One of the main ways to generate traffic and spread the word about your unique knowledge and ideas is through social media. I have been amazed at how much traffic is generated from Twitter and Facebook alone for the sites I have worked on.

So how do you share your blog with the world? Social media buttons on your blog posts and pages make it easy for visitors to share your work with their network and, if it hits a nerve or current trend, this type of viral sharing can attract many new visitors. Simples!

It does depend whether your blog already has the functionality to share. Some themes are good at this and sharing is easy. Others don’t provide it as standard so you need to find a plugin or other solution that is easy to install, updated regularly and works.

I needed to discover what was best for this blog so I asked my mate San Sharma from Bitsy and he came up with the ideal solution – ShareThis!

ShareThis provides a unique free service for website and blog users (WordPress, Blogger and Typepad) by providing the code or plugin for your particular situation.

The process is clear and easy to follow. If you are a beginner ignore all the technical sidelines and focus on getting the button – click the style you like next to the orange text saying ‘Get the Button‘. There is a simple 3 step process to get your code or plugin and clear specific instructions on how to add them to your blog or website.

There are many styles to choose from and you can see how it works at the bottom of this post. Feel free to try them out to see how it works in real life. For those of you who are more serious about tracking who shares your posts you can sign up and get lots of statistics. I have yet to try this so will report back later.

As always if you have anything to add please fill in any gaps.

By Andy Britnell Social Media 6 Comments Tags: Bitsy, blog posts, plugin, sharethis, social media buttons, viral sharing