I'm a big fan of social media sharing, Twitter in particular. When somebody finds an interesting, funny, insightful or informative entry (like this one!), I'd like it to be easy to share the article with friends and followers. That's where social media share buttons come into play.
They're everywhere these days. Most entries have a button or two (or three or four) to Like in Facebook, Tweet via Twitter, share via Buzz and submit to Digg, Reddit, delicious (if they're still around) or Stumbleupon. In addition, there's often an option to email, print, subscribe via RSS and something called "comment". That's right, you can actually comment on an entry without actually leaving the site. What an age we live in...
The problem with every blog / site having the aforementioned 11 buttons is clutter. That's a lot of buttons tied to every entry, and if you throw in the title, date, author, categories and tags, there's not much room left for the actual entry itself. The challenge is to find the right social media share button balance.
For the longest time I did without any social media share buttons on the home page and permalinks. Recently, I started playing with a Tweet button, and watched it do its magic when I posted Sarah Palin's Target Map last weekend. Today, I'm going to try something new on the home page.
Every entry will conclude with four simple calls to action: Permalink, Comment, Tweet or Like. So please start using them, should I actually write something you deem worthy of sharing with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. In the meantime, I'll keep tweaking. Gotta find that balance...
