Push My Button! – 6 Ways to Share
Social Media Buttons help your visitors share the content of your blog or website with others. Not all of your visitors will use them, but a large percentage of them will, and this can potentially generate a significant amount of traffic to your site, not to mention another backlink to boot. No savvy internet entrepreneur is complete without a decent set of social media buttons for their blog, although be cautious when adding them, so as not to add too may as it may clutter your site. Whatever your style, there is an easily implementable set of buttons out there for you to include on your blog or website, with little or no fuss at all. We have found the perfect one’s for you right here.
1. Add This
Add This is definitely the fully loaded, corporate style option. They are reputedly the #1 bookmarking and sharing service. Their buttons are currently used 20 billion times per month! With this choice, you can customize your look with very little effort. They are the market leader and their service is absolutely free.
http://www.addthis.com/
2. Sociable
Sociable is a very versatile plugin for WordPress, and it has been totally revamped by Joost de Valk. With this selection you can choose from 99 already specified social bookmarking sites, change the location of the buttons so they do not necessarily appear at the end of your post, and add any specific site you want as a button.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/
3. Share This
Share This is very much like Add This, but not quite as versitile (not installable on WordPress).
4. Add to Any
Out of all of them this one is perhaps the easiest widget to set up and add. It integrates fully with Google Analytics, and you can share to bookmark managers, social networks, instant messengers, browsers and E-mail addresses.
http://www.addtoany.com/
5. Social Marker
Social Marker does not really look all that nice, but it can help you spread a link on 49 of the best social bookmarking sites in under 15 minutes!
http://www.socialmarker.com/
6. Sociofluid
It speak for itself! very cool looking and does everything you need it to.
http://www.sociofluid.com/
And if you are just after a nice looking button for your blog, check these sites out:
My Social Buttons
My Social Buttons provides a range of different buttons and badges for social media. Their most useful page is their collections page, which provides overviews of 9 fully functional sets of buttons. They also provide a personalised Twitter ‘follow me’ button service.
http://mysocialbuttons.com/
Open Source Hunter
This site is another nice compilation of free sets from various different designers. There are 3 particular sets that stand out for me:
1. Function Icon Set, 128 Completely Free Icons which range from icons for the usual social media bookmarks to icons for various other utilities that you might want to put on your sites.
2. Social.me which is a set of 30 icons for the most popular social networks/web 2.0 sites out there.
3. The Leaves Fall: A Social Icon Set For Bloggers. This set contains 11 social icons, designed in an autumn-style (I know summer has just started, but what the heck!). This set includes icons for Twitter, Technorati, RSS, Reddit, Facebook, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg.
http://www.opensourcehunter.com/2008/10/11/social-buttons/
If you have any Cool Social Button Sites you want to share – then we want to hear about them! Leave your recommendations in a comment.
Matthew Toren
