Add social sharing buttons to your site

Social media is the largest source of traffic for most websites nowadays. It has taken over the leading position from search, which is an indication of where the web is heading.

Adding the social media sharing buttons is relatively easy and helps your visitors share content. The three main players in social media today are Facebook, Twitter and Buzz. It's advisable to add at least these three to your site. Plus there are several others depending on the subject of your site.

Facebook

The Facebook button posts the story that includes a thumbnail image from your story, the page title and a short description on the user's Facebook profile. This story will be seen and re-shared by the Facebook user's friends. It's advisable you have an image in every page of your site, so Facebook can create a thumbnail out of it for the story.

You can create official Facebook button codes here:
http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/share.php

Twitter

The Twitter button creates a tweet that includes the page title, your twitter account along with an RT shortcode and a shortened version of your page's URL. If you use the most popular Twitter button Tweetmeme the tweet will also be entered to tweetmeme.com automatically.

You can create button codes of different sizes for Twitter tweetmeme button here:
http://help.tweetmeme.com/2009/04/06/tweetmeme-button/
Make sure to include the following line in the code and replace tweetmeme with your own Twitter name.
tweetmeme_source = 'tweetmeme';

Buzz

Buzz is not in the same league as Facebook and Twitter yet, so if you're tight on space you may decide not to include it just yet. The button allows users to post the link with short commentary on their Buzz profiles.

Official Buzz buttons in various languages can be created here:
http://www.google.com/buzz/api/admin/configPostWidget

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is also a very popular. Some sites report it to be their number one referral, but adding the button for SU is unnecessary as most SU users use their browser plugin to stumble stories anyway.

If you decide to add it anyway here is the tool to create the code:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/buttons/

Digg

Digg is most popular for a tech audience, but there are many subjects on Digg, so if you have the space add the Digg button too. It posts the url with a short commentary and a thumbnail to Digg if it's not on Digg yet and simply gives a digg up vote if it's already on Digg. The only issue with Digg is that votes only count after the initial 24h of the first submission. Any votes after that have practically no use in terms of generating traffic to your site. If the story doesn't get appr. 200+ votes in the first 24h the story will never be promoted to the front page, which would be the real traffic generator. Digg is also heavily influenced by so called power diggers who can get a story dugg through their network of friends. An average user has little chance against them. If your story is submitted by a non-power digger it's highly likely it will never get on the front page.

Here is the place to create Digg buttons:
http://about.digg.com/button

Redditt

Reditt somewhat smaller and similar to Digg and it's most successful for sites with heavy image content. Here is the code to create redditt buttons:

http://www.reddit.com/buttons/

AddThis

There are hundreds more different sharing sites that may generate some traffic, but your layout will start to look messy if you add more than 3-4 buttons. If you prefer to have them all present you can use the service AddThis that allows to display virtually all sharing sites in one compact button. The only downside is that this button of course will not be able to show you the sharing count for each service. On the upside it's an elegant and lightweight solution:

http://www.addthis.com/

If you liked this post test the sharing buttons on the right to experience how it all works from the user's perspective.