Social Media Buttons: Give Explanation for Each of Them

NB! My current social buttons are different now. But the post itself is an example how you can analyze your set of buttons.

We love social media buttons. It gives us a feeling, that we belong to social media. The more – the closer, right?

Wrong.

There is some certain limit for a number of social media buttons. And each and every blog should consider its own limit. Because.. in the end it is your page load time.

Social Media Buttons vs Markets

Why do we make our blogs look like those annoying markets and super-markets? Or you did not think about that?

Do you remember how annoying are sellers in the markets? “Buy it, buy it, buy it..” Well, blogs with tons of social media buttons look just like that – “Submit it, share, submit, please, share it, share it!”

Give Explanation for Each of Your Button

There is a way to identify your own appropriate number of buttons.

Just try to explain why you have this or that button. Consider social buttons’ efficiency on other blogs and see if there were any benefits for your blog.

If you see, that people only retweet and digg your stories, then leave only these two social media buttons and uninstall all 59 others :) You will improve your page load time and bounce rate – it’s 100% guaranteed.

Explanation for My Social Media Buttons

4 Social Buttons Above the Content:

First of all, I should mention that I have these buttons above the content, because they are the most effective for my blog and they should be on the first place.

1. «Retweet» button – there is no doubt, that this is a must-have button. Plus, since I offer updates via Twitter, I know, that I have a lot of people, who use Twitter;
2. «Share on Facebook» button – Though this button doesn’t work for me, I think it is my fault, because I still did not promote my blog on Facebook enough. But I know for sure, that there are billions of people, who use Facebook. I also can see, that those big Social Media guru sites like Mashable have this button and it works for them. That is why I think it will take some time for my blog to make «Share on Facebook» button effective;
3. «BlogEngage» button – this button works for me, because I know how to hit the front page of BlogEngage. I have done that several dozens of times and having this button on my blog is one of the little secrets for that;
4. «Google Buzz» button – I have installed this button just today, because there was an update of Digg Digg WordPress plugin. They have added it and I have decided to test it. If this will not show any result, I will remove it. Besides, gurus have this Google Buzz button and it seems that it works for them;

7 Social Media Buttons Below the Content

These buttons still don’t work for me. They just don’t bring me any worthy amount of web traffic. But I use them myself sometimes. Plus, SexyBookmarks look great, which adds its value to the general design of my blog. So.. That’s why I have just 7 of them, though the whole number of available SexyBookmarks is 87.

1. «Google Reader» button – Testing this one. Not sure, if someone has used it by now.
2. «Google Bookmarks» button – This one is great even for your own usage. When you type in your tags there, they are then displayed in Google search results right under your submitted item. Not sure if it has any SEO value, but my intuition says – it has;
3. «Digg» button – I used to Digg my stories.. But I’m tired of seeing them above my original stories in Google real-time search results. I leave this button for now, because there are still people, who are addicted with Digg. Plus, I might be wrong about Digg.. that’s why I’m still keeping it and testing its efficiency;
4. «Del.icio.us» button – This button is great. And it works for me. But the number of submissions to Del.icio.us is still too low. Let it be here for now;
5. «StumbleUpon» button – This one also works for me.. just like the previous one. People stumble my stories, but I have not seen any traffic spikes yet, because I don’t have a lot of time to spend on StumbleUpon meeting new stumblers and getting subscribers there;
6. «LinkedIn» button – The only reason for having this button is that I have heard a lot of it. I am planning to promote my LinkedIn account sometime;
7. «Mixx» button – Mixx is dofollow social bookmarking site. And it has a great SEO value for your blog. I’m using this button to submit my best articles. Not sure if someone else is using it;

That’s it! And, to tell the truth, while writing this post I have removed Sphinn and Facebook social buttons from SexyBookmarks, because I have not found any explanation for them.

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What about you? Can you give explanation for each and every social media button on your blog? If not, why don’t you remove some of them?

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Video Dessert: «Evolution of Dance»

The fantastic success! 137,5 millions of views on YouTube means something! I especially like what starts on the 3rd minute of the video :) You simply can’t stay indifferent to this guy and his video!