Each blogger wants to reach a larger audience with their blog, regardless of how many readers they currently have. Social media sites present one of the best opportunities for bloggers to expand their reach.
Bloggers can devote their time in different ways in order to get better results with social media (writing new blog posts, networking with other social media users, etc.), but one thing that tends to get some easy results is to use recognized social media icons and voting buttons on the blog.
The voting buttons and icons that you use on your blog serve as a reminder and a polite request to your visitors to vote for you. The buttons make it faster and more convenient, which usually means more votes.
Common Mistakes When Using Social Media Icons/Buttons
Because voting buttons and icons have potential to send more traffic, and because it is an easy change, many bloggers wind up going overboard. You’ve probably seen a number of blogs that have tons and tons of voting buttons.
In almost every case, this strategy will backfire. Adding too many buttons will create a cluttered blog that distracts the reader and just plain looks bad. Just as important, having too many buttons can spread out the votes that you get to the point that they have no impact.
If you have 20 different voting buttons on your site and you get one vote through each button, you’ll see very little, if any, traffic as a result. However, if you have one or two voting buttons and you get 20 votes, it will make a difference in your traffic levels (depending on the particular social media sites).
By using fewer icons/buttons you can indicate to visitors which social media sites are the most important ones for you. If you’re using too many buttons it can be confusing and they have no idea where you would most like to receive the votes.
Ways to Use Social Media Icons
Place only a small number of social media voting buttons on your blog, I recommend 2 or 3. Carefully chose the social media sites based on fit with your audience, as well as their potential to send traffic to your site.
Another thing to keep in mind is that small bloggers will typically not have the best results if they are only targeting major social media sites like Digg. With a small audience, you are much more likely to get significant exposure from a smaller niche-specific social media site that will require fewer votes in order to become “popular.”
If necessary, explain to your visitors what the social media sites are, how they can use them, and why they would want to use them. Depending on the topics that you right about, it’s possible that only a small percentage of your readers will be familiar with social media. In this case you can help to educate them and they’ll be more likely to wind up voting for your content.
