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Friday, March 11, 2011

Mashable! - HOW TO: Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Website

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

If you run a blog or website of any kind, chances are you’re always trying to encourage more people to talk about and share your pages and posts through a variety of channels, including social media and e-mail.

For many sites, adding social sharing buttons is a simple and effective way to quickly boost pageviews and sharing stats. Unfortunately, it can also be a way to clutter up your pages, confuse your users, and cause massive bugs and layout issues.

Here’s a quick guide to best practices for adding social sharing buttons to your site or blog.


1. Use a Catchall Service


One way of getting a streamlined row of similarly styled buttons on your pages is using a catchall service like ShareThis or AddToAny. These services will generate a tidy interface — just a few lines of code — for you to place on your site.

The downside is that these buttons may not have the big, call-to-action impact of a Twitter or Facebook stand-alone button. And they may not give you a count of the number of shares. The upside is that you can’t really screw them up too much. If your site is prone to clutter, this might be a good idea for you. Most of these services will also give you a decent dashboard for analytics.

Here are a few services to try out.

  • Add to Any features the most streamlined sharing button we’ve seen. This service’s stats can be rolled into Google Analytics.
  • Add This is a popular sharing platform with a huge list of services readers and users can share through. The interface isn’t unpleasant (as many catchall interfaces are), and it can be customized to feature small or larg e buttons for popular...
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