Add Social Sharing to Your Blog - The Easy Way!

Social Media is ubiquitous now and many blog visitors click the sharing options before they’ll post a comment or even before they finish reading the article. If you’re following the latest social media trends and best practices, you know it’s important that you make it easier for your visitors to share your content on their preferred social networks. There are many options available to add social sharing to your website, no matter what platform you’re using.

Social Media Sharing Services

These services offer an easy way to add social sharing to your website, as well as providing statistics on what is being shared. They do, however, require that all of your sharing is done through their system, using their buttons, shorteners, etc. What you gain in ease of use, you lose in personalization and customization.

There are several large services that make social sharing on your site as easy as signing up for their service and then adding a widget or plugin to your site. If this sounds like what you’re looking for, check out any of the services listed below:

• AddThis has different versions of sharing tools, including sharing tools, follow tools, recommended content tools and conversion tools. Some of their tools are free and some require a Pro membership.
• ShareThis has free sharing tools and analytics, but also requires you to create an account to manage your sharing widgets and access to sharing analytics.
• Shareaholic offers share buttons, related content and analytics for your site. Like AddThis, they also have a browser button that allows you to share content easily. They acquired the very popular sexy bookmarks plugin a few years ago.

Social Media Widgets and Plugins

There are a myriad of plugins and widgets that allow you to incorporate social sharing options into your website or blog. All of the services above have widgets or plugins available for the major blogging platforms, but the following plugins work without a third-party processing the data. The drawback is that they don’t offer the analytic abilities that the social sharing services do.

• AddInto offers a simple social sharing bar with buttons you can add to your standalone website or WordPress or Blogger site.
• Add to any offers social sharing widgets/plugins for many different content management systems (CMS) and blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, Tumblr, Typepad, Drupal and more.
• Jetpack for WordPress includes social sharing options, so if you are using Jetpack, you already have social sharing available, you just need to enable it and connect it to your social accounts.

While there are many other options available, try these out to see if they fit your needs. If not, you can always Google it!