Pushing the Right Share Buttons: A guide for choosing the social media buttons that are right for you

Earlier this year, Oliver Reichenstein made some ripples with his piece “Sweep the Sleaze” in which he critiqued the use of social media buttons. We agree with many of the points he makes in this article.

We’ve all seen content surrounded by an overabundance of mismatched, staggered buttons “encouraging” the user to share on every social platform imaginable. What this really may be encouraging is the opposite.

Users are overwhelmed by the options, which may misdirect them off-strategy with the wrong content velocity – sending them too far down the wrong path or not far enough along the right one.

There are technical considerations as well. Adding these buttons can slow down the time it takes to load and display your page, especially on mobile devices. There are techniques that can help address this issue, but they aren’t commonly used and sometimes have side effects, such as “jerky” scrolling which disrupts the user experience.

There are design considerations, too. Buttons can clash with page designs and make otherwise clean layouts look busy and overburdened, distracting from the content itself.

They’re also unnecessary. People can just share the plain URL manually on the social media platform of their choosing.

Some publishers have actually seen their sharing increase after removing the buttons. Smashing Magazine tweeted that their traffic from Facebook increased after removing Facebook Like buttons because readers began sharing more on their Timelines – a higher level of engagement than simply Liking things.

Someday we may look back and understand share buttons as a fad. Smashing is not the only popular website that foregoes them. 37signals.com notes that none of Technorati’s top 10 blogs use the buttons.

But the verdict isn’t in on their effectiveness for more mainstream destinations. If you’re going to use share buttons, choose the right tools for the job – the ones that best match your objectives and audience.

• Facebook is great for engagement, for sharing content people would naturally start conversations around. It should be content that users’ friends would also find valuable, especially exclusive content, offers and deals.

• Twitter is great for awareness, for sharing articles and news items. You can start conversations on Twitter but the 140-character limit means most of the conversation is happening somewhere else. Include the hashtag when writing default share copy to generate hashtag awareness. Most Twitter activity takes place on mobile so the content being shared should be easy to consume on a mobile device (no infographics or Flash content, for example).

• Pinterest is the new big kid on the block. It’s good for retail, sales and recipes – for sharing and generating awareness of image-based content.

• LinkedIn is all about jobs and networking.

• Google+ is good for sharing articles, images and videos. Its user base is far smaller than Facebook or Twitter and is mostly male.

• reddit is for funny and non-serious content appealing to computer-savvy males under 35.

• StumbleUpon has lots of penetration within the blogger community and is good for sharing blog content.

• RSS is not a social sharing tool. Many sites will include the RSS button near or with the social share button. These aren’t the same things and should be kept separate. An RSS feed allows users to track content that is published by the site. Social share buttons are about sharing specific pieces of content on off-site social networks.

Don’t start a conversation if you don’t have time to talk.

It’s important to have a presence established and be engaging people on the platforms where you want users to share your content. If you don’t have the resources to manage your communities on a particular platform, there’s no need to waste time encouraging people to share your content there.

Stick to your strategy, make it clear where you want users to go, and give them something great to take there. They’ll thank you by sharing it with ease.

Topher Burns and Joanna Firneno contributed to this post.

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON DEEPFOCUS.NET (LINK)