Learn how you can promote the sharing of your website content to gain overall traffic.
Allowing your visitors to easily share your website content through the top social networking and social bookmarking websites out there is essential in being able to increase your website traffic for free. This article will cover the top social communication websites for you to share your content through and other services that can help you get your visitors sharing.
Twitter is one of the best websites in this article to integrate with your site. Aside from allowing your visitors to share your website with their individual followers, it allows your visitors to follow your updates provided that you post them on Twitter. You can easily place a link to the following URL for a suggested Twitter status update:
http://twitter.com/home?status=
At the end of the link above, you would add your suggested Twitter update. You can also replace each space with a + to connect the URL. Here's an example:
http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently+reading+an+article+on+Share+Options:+http://webmasters.icecaves.net/articles/shareoptions.php
As you can imagine this method allows for much creativity in how you present the link. Just be sure that the post is less than the 140 character limit for Twitter's posts.
A highly popular method with integrating your website with Twitter is through the service provided by Tweetmeme. Tweetmeme allows you to place a badge on your website content that allows your visitors to "ReTweet" or "RT" a link to your content on Twitter. The badge also displays a count of how many RTs have been made for your site. And if your content is popular enough, then it will be displayed on the Tweetmeme homepage or throughout its directory. You can learn more about adding Tweetmeme's RT button on your site by clicking here.
Facebook is currently the single most popular social networking site in the internet, and using Facebook's fan page feature, you can create a Facebook fan page for members to be able to follow your updates. Like Twitter, you can also link to the following URL to have people share your content on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=URL&t=PAGETITLE
Facebook also offers its own "Share this on Facebook" badge that can also display the number of times the page has been shared on Facebook. There are various options and you can learn more by clicking here.
Another site that also allows you place a Facebook badge is fbShare.me. You can compare this button with the button provided by Facebook and choose the one that you prefer.
Digg
Digg is a website that allows you to share different forms of media. While intended for news, it's also a site that can help you find high-quality articles. Digg's core visitors are generally tech or web savvies. Link your visitors to the following URL to allow them to share your content on Digg:
http://digg.com/submit?url=URL
Digg also offers its own badge with several more sharing options that you can set. Learn more about Digg's sharing bade as well as its sharing URL by clicking here.
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us)
Delicious is an internet bookmarking website that allows you to save, share, and discover popular websites through bookmarks. This popular social bookmarking site can be great in getting the word out for something new or something really helpful. Use the following URL when getting your visitors to bookmark your pages on Delicious:
http://del.icio.us/post?url=URL&title=TITLE
All In One
There is a ridiculous amount of even more websites that you can use to expand your visitor audience, but it is almost impossible and/or impractical to add individual links or buttons to each site on your website. Luckily, there are several all-in-one services that can allow you to place a single button or badge on your site that contains links to the most popular services out there. But are they worth it? That is up to each individual webmaster to decide what is better for his or her website. One may choose to only provide an exclusive list of the top five or so social sharing websites while another feels each user should be able to easily share the content on any service he or she might use. Well, here are the most popular all-in-one sharing services currently available:
ShareThis
ShareThis is my personal favorite website service for all-in-one share options. The ShareThis website offers an incredible amount of customization options for the ShareThis button. It also offers you statistics of the most popular services used by your visitors. Learn more by checking out the ShareThis website.
AddThis
AddThis is a lot like ShareThis only through a different presentation. You cannot customize which services are displayed after clicking the button, but it offers a much larger variety of services than ShareThis offers. With AddThis you can get different button designs with a variety of button sizes and types, which may be more appealing to some visitors.
