Tips & Tricks for Submitting to StumbleUpon
Aug 31, 2009 by Greg Finn | Social Media Marketing, Social NetworksQuick Steps to Follow before Submitting Content To StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a great social site because it features a diverse crowd that spans hundreds of topics and thousands of tags. StumbleUpon can work well for ANY site and shouldn’t be overlooked in any social media strategies. This is a quick list that you can reference before submitting (called “discovering” on the site) anything to StumbleUpon:
- Use Proper Tags
Tagging allows for you to label your content for consumption by others. If other users are a fan of “web-design” and you use that tag, they will have a much higher probability to getting found on StumbleUpon. The tags page shows tags that are recently hot and most popular all time. - Use Multiple Tags
By leveraging as many different tags, you can give your content a much higher chance of getting traffic and momentum through the various different types of users.For instance, an infographic about how much NFL players make per year could be popular with the tags:
football, sports, NFL, salaries, wealth
If you have a StumbleAds account, you can also view the number of users who are subscribed to different categories. Using this, you can make sure to include a few of the tags with large subscribers!
- Submit It to the Proper Topic
Many times users may see a topic that has a large following or is extremely popular and they select that thinking it will lead to the most exposure. Not the case. If submitting to incorrect categories, you will most likely receive fewer positive votes and more negative votes. Use the drop down menu if none of the standard categories work for you.
- Leverage Popular Friends
Having an existing following can greatly help your chances in getting stories popular. On StumbleUpon people can “subscribe” to your stumbles, which means that your discoveries will have a good chance of showing up for them. Talk to anyone in your network and see if you know any users with a good deal of subscribers in a field that is targeted in certain categories. If you have a good relationship with them, see if they would be interested in discovering your content for you to help give you a boost!
- Share with your Friends
You can use the “share” function to send your stories directly to your friends. This new method allows you to hit all of your friends with your message. Hover over the thumbnail of an article that you have recently thumbed and a share button should appear:
By sharing this story you can pick and chose who to send it to (or you can send to all). Recipients will be notified that they have a new item to be stumbled:
- Don’t Spam
Like any social site, spamming the site by submitting Digg/Reddit links, using incorrect categories or sharing every story will be frowned upon. Be a good user and add value to the community. If you aren’t adding value, you probably won’t see much coming back to your campaigns either.
- Use StumbleUpon Groups
Sign up for relevant StumbleUpon groups that are already popular. A detailed list of groups can be found here and the most popular groups can be found here. Many times these groups have active discussions where you can talk to fellow members and moderators. Moderators can also post links to sites so make friends with them! Group activity has been declining sharply since its inception, but it is always better to try every avenue possible.
And that is it! To me, one of the most important things with StumbleUpon is to make sure you are having fun. The SU audience is very friendly, helpful and insightful, so enjoy yourself and do your best to join the community!
Have any other tips or tricks for “discovering” stories on StumbleUpon? Feel free to share in the comments! And also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Twitter!
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Musical Acts Who Used the Internet and Social Media to Get Popular
Aug 28, 2009 by Victor Murygin | Social Media Marketing, Social NetworksSocial media has an uncanny power to shine a spotlight where traditional media has no interest. Unknown musicians in particular have discovered and exploited this power, whether intentionally or not, to get an overnight exposure to an audience that even the massive record labels oftentimes fail to deliver. Here are just a few of many musical acts that have used the Internet and social media sites to get popular.
Her Morning Elegance Stop Motion Video
This just proves that if you create something cool and original and put it on YouTube, you can get noticed… and a pretty girl in pajamas does not hurt either.
The video has blown up on the most popular social media sites and resulted in over 7 million views on YouTube.
Oren Lavie, who wrote the song and directed the video, was a simple struggling singer-songwriter who just hit a jackpot with this video. You can bet the song itself, even though a very good tune, would never have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for this video.
OK GO
OK GO was a signed band under a record contract for a couple of years, but that got them nowhere. They decided to record and release a video on their own, with a simple camcorder and a quirky ingenious dance routine.
This simple no-budget video got them much more popularity than years under a record label. They released the video without the label’s consent or knowledge. After millions of views, they followed up with another video – this time with some treadmills.
Whether they’ll become a powerhouse rock band or if they’ll forever known as a gimmick video dance band remains to be seen.
Bathtub IV
This story is a little different in that the video was not created by the musical act, but rather by a clever photographer/director who used a tilt shift technique to create a miniature world. He has a few videos like this with different unknown musicians.
This particular video got tons of play on the social media sites and has gotten more publicity for the photographer as well as for Megan Washington, whose music was used.
Saul Williams Releases His Album Online
Saul Williams is a local New York MC and poet and is little known to a mainstream audience. When he hooked up with Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) to produce his album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust,” the music sounded quite original and a little off-the-wall for the mainstream crowd.
Trent Reznor was on the outs with his own record company at the time, and was openly outspoken about the music business model as a whole. So they decided to do something different with this album and release it online only as an MP3 download and give a listener the choice: Download lower quality MP3’s for free, or pay $5 and download the higher quality MP3’s while supporting the artist.
Even though some time later Reznor expressed that this particular experiment did not prove to be very successful (in terms of money made), I believe it still got Saul Williams a ton of new fans that he would never have gotten otherwise from a record company with such an experimental album.
Some people got his album for the music, while others who don’t really care for that style of music got it anyway to support the artist, simply because they hate the RIAA and the record industry. Tons more people got to hear his name because the story was blown up all over social media sites. So even though the album might not have sold as they expected, the publicity that was generated online alone was probably worth it.
United Breaks Guitars
Pretty cool story — what happens when United Airlines breaks your guitars? Write a song about it; better yet, shoot a funny video and put it on YouTube. People love funny videos and they hate big corporations, so this video turned out to be a big win for Sons of Maxwell, a group that no one has really heard of before.
Here’s the sequel of the video:
DJ Danger Mouse – Grey Album
Creating a mash-up between The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album into the Grey Album, DJ Danger Mouse got a big Internet following which catapulted his career. After the success of the Grey Album he formed Gnarles Barkley, produced the next Gorillaz album, and was nominated for a Grammy for Producer of the Year.
Furthermore, the album was used in a tug-of-war between record companies’ copyright laws and activists looking to change record labels’ practices.
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It seems like it should be a no-brainer. If you are going to take the time to develop content and promote it on social networks, you should take the time to track your efforts so that you can showcase cold hard facts to your boss/client/company. This is where the details come in, and I have listed them out in an easy to consume social media checklist over at Search Engine Land!
This checklist is made for the internet marketer and should help you provide more results than just brand mentions so that you can really try to show bottom-line ROI on promotions that could be easily overlooked. So head on over to Search Engine Land and read the Social Media Checklist for Internet Marketers!
Don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed.
Social Media Education is Needed Now More Than Ever
Aug 26, 2009 by Rebecca Kelley | Social Media MarketingToday I saw this piece on Mashable about how resistance to social media is beginning to fade. The article mentions that while 59% of marketers use social media in some capacity and the figure will jump to 82% next year, some companies are still resistant to social media marketing.
Mashable’s article features a chart that lists the biggest deterrents to social media. They are (in descending order):
- “We don’t know enough about social media to know where to begin.”
- “There’s no established way to measure the effectiveness of social media.”
- “There’s no funding for social media in our budget.”
- “We don’t have the time to invest in social media right now.”
- “Social media isn’t a proven, tested strategy.”
- “We’re hindered by legal constraints/corporate policies.”
- “It’s not a good use of employee time.”
In my opinion, reasons 2-7 directly correlate with Reason #1, which can be boiled down to a lack of social media education. Social media marketing is fairly new, although it ties the basic principles of marketing into a new medium/environment. Many companies are likely intimidated or confused by social media marketing — they have a lot of questions about it and don’t want to devote time or marketing dollars on something they’re unfamiliar with. The problem is that social media is only going to get bigger and more common, so sooner or later companies are going to have to have some awareness of it…and the sooner, the better, because by the time your competitors catch on and join the social media marketing club, you should have already established yourself as being fairly social media-savvy, forcing them to play catch up.
A lot of our work with clients involves educating them about the value of social media marketing as well as the ins and outs of various social media platforms. We’ve written lots of introductory guides for our clients about Twitter, Facebook, social news sites, blogging, social networking, and more. The absolute first line of offense for us is education, because when a company is uneducated about something, they don’t think they need it, they don’t think it’s worth their time, they think it’s a fad and a waste of money, they believe misconceptions they hear, you name it, they’ve got an excuse as to why they’re not adopting a tactic that can prove to be extremely valuable to them.
I think the above seven excuses are important to keep in mind when talking with a prospective client. Prepare a little guide or some talking points that address these concerns and educate the company about why social media marketing is gaining steam and why they should participate in at least some capacity. Education will lead to the following:
- The client will know a little more about social media marketing and why it’s important
- They’ll know how to measure a campaign’s efficacy and what to look for
- They’ll free up some room in their budget for SMM once they understand its value
- As with #3, they’ll invest more time once they know what rewards they can reap
- When they learn how to measure the effectiveness of social media marketing, they’ll know what’s proven to work for them
- Learning about different social media marketing angles will help them determine which strategies they can adopt that align with their company morals and legalities
- They’ll have employees either doing SMM in-house or being the point of contact for an SMM company
A lot of us learn about social media by diving headfirst into it, but bigger companies often can’t afford to spend that much time learning about something new, so it’s our job to help them along the learning process. At that point they’ll develop a strong enough interest to learn more on their own and become experts themselves, or they’ll understand the value but trust you to be the expert and help them maintain a solid social media presence. Either way, the path to each can be boiled down to one certain truth:
G.I. Joooooooooooooe!
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I sat down with the (now bald) face of Google, Matt Cutts, to revisit the widgetbait madness of 2008 and see if anything’s changed in how Google’s been handling widgets. Surprisingly, Matt says that the use of widgets to build links and distribute content has died down considerably, probably because Google has adopted a pretty straightforward stance of what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to creating widgets.
Watch the video below:
Matt Cutts Talks About Widgetbait Guidelines from 10e20 on Vimeo.
I was surprised to hear that, as a whole, social media is pretty straightforward when it comes to building links and doesn’t seem to give Google too much of a headache. It makes sense when you think about it — social media is user-powered and Google always emphasizes that you should provide a positive and solid user experience. If your users are sharing your content social and linking to you via social media, that’s pretty much as editorial as it gets, right?
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Video Interview: Topher Kohan and the Shift from Print to Digital Media
Aug 21, 2009 by Rebecca Kelley | VideoLast week at SES San Jose I caught up with Topher Kohan, search engine optimizer for CNN, and interviewed him about the shift from print to digital media. He had some interesting things to say and is a big advocate of newspapers altering their business model and converting to an entirely digital publication platform. Topher feels that holding a hard copy of a newspaper is a good nostalgia trip but that everyday news will, for the most part, continue to be digested by users and readers from the Internet and other digital means.
The Shift from Print to Digital Media from 10e20 LLC on Vimeo.
What do you guys think? Should all print news publications throw in the towel and start offering up all their information digitally, save for the occasional commemorative publication when something monumentally newsworthy and historical occurs? How, in your opinion, can print publications have the best of both worlds and continue to operate successfully in both print and digital worlds? Drop your comments below, or tweet at us (@10e20)!
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My last two posts were a bit critical, with some readers commenting that I must have really hated SES San Jose to have pooped on it as much as I did. Not the case — while I found some sessions and speakers to be disappointing and the food to be abysmal, I do acknowledge that the large-scale SES SJ show is more catered to beginner marketers and I heard very positive feedback from them. I also enjoyed a lot about the conference and thought I’d highlight my favorite parts in this post so you guys don’t think all I do is sip on Haterade. So, with that said, here are what I felt were the highlights of SES San Jose this year.
1. The “Search: Where To Next?” Panel
This panel was the first one I attended, and I was surprised at how jam-packed it was. The session was standing room only, so I resorted to sitting on the floor at the back of the room. Despite the crammed conditions, I heard a lively, engaging discussion between the panelists about how search will be impacted in the next year or two, what factors shouldn’t be counted out yet, and why SEO is more important than ever. Anne Kennedy always shines as a moderator, and she kept the conversation flowing nicely among the engaging and thoughtful speakers (Stephan Spencer, Pavan Lee from Microsoft, Heather Dougherty, Chris Boggs, Eli Goodman and Carla Borsoi from Ask.com). I think this is always an important session to have at a search conference — our industry is so dynamic and constantly shifting that it’s essential to take a critical look at where we’re at now and where we seem to be headed.
2. Meeting with Clients (when they’re happy 
)
Greg and I took a few timeouts throughout the week to meet with some clients who were also attending SES. It’s always nice to sit down with a client on a more laid-back level and just get lunch or coffee and chat pleasantries. Oftentimes you don’t get to know a client on a personal level when you’re going back and forth about deadlines and deliverables, so I really enjoyed getting to know some of these folks and not “talking shop” too much. We checked in with them to ensure that they were happy with our work thus far (they were!), chatted about some upcoming work, talked about the conference, laughed about my ridiculously unappetizing salad, and just had a nice time. In this industry you often work with people who are thousands of miles away, so it’s nice to be able to converge together and meet and have a face-to-face chat.
A mountain of pre-masticated and regurgitated greens
3. Catching Up with Colleagues and Friends
Similar to #2 is how you can go to a conference and run into all of your industry friends and colleagues who work in different cities and time zones. It was great catching up with folks who I always love running into at events. Additionally, I got to meet my coworker Greg for the first time. We’d been working together for a month and hadn’t met other than at a huge dinner we attended together about a year ago (it was like the scene from Batman where Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger are sitting at ridiculously far ends of the table). He amused me to no end with his fondness for trees, his sidelong glances when we’d hear someone say something a bit questionable, and his drilldown of his ever-shifting hobbies. I can’t wait to meet my other coworkers (the downside of working remotely).
Greg kicking ass and taking names during his social media presentation
4. Networking with New Attendees
When thousands of people attend a search conference, you really have no excuse not to meet someone new. SES is great for networking. I met people while sitting in the audience at sessions, eating lunch, working in the lobby, attending mixers, in elevators — there are countless opportunities to shake someone’s hand and exchange business cards. You might meet a new friend, a business contact, a future client, a prospective employer — I’ve done all of these at previous conferences and hope to continue to grow my lists of contacts (except the “prospective employer” part — love you, Chris!).
Chris Boggs and Lisa Williams chatting at the aimClear Tequila Networking Mixer
5. Watching Attendees Soak Up Information
When I first began my career as a search professional, I attended a lot of SES shows and learned a lot about various aspects of search by watching tons of presentations about SEO, PPC, social media, vertical search, you name it. Though now I find some sessions to be a bit basic and introductory, I always enjoy watching the new wave of beginners and attendees come in and furiously jot down notes, ask questions, have that “light bulb” moment, bum rush the stage to ask more questions, and basically soak up as much information as they can. Yeah, I’m critical about some sessions and speakers, but that’s because I think the audience (especially one full of novices or beginners) has a right to receive information that is as accurate and applicable as possible.
Rushing the stage like there’s no tomorrow
6. The “Search on a Dime” Panel
Easily one of my favorite sessions of the conference, Search on a Dime showcased clear, simple, and straightforward pieces of advice for SEO, local search and PPC. Stoney deGeyter gave a nice and basic but straightforward presentation about the most essential on-page SEO factors to focus on. David Mihm knocked it out of the park by explaining why local search is vital to your business’s online success and how you can optimize your website for local search. Matt Van Wagner was charming and amusing and provided a good overview of low hanging PPC opportunities. A note to SES programmers: try to duplicate sessions like this one for future shows.
Nobody beats David Mihm! He’s the Wiz! Hesthewiz.
7. The Advanced SEO Roundtable
This panel was a thing of beauty. You have the two Todds (Friesen and Malicoat, my Michigan brutha from another mutha), Bruce Clay, Matt Bailey and Mike Grehan all fielding questions about SEO with snark, charm, humor and an otherworldly level of expertise. Richard Zwicky was a perfect moderator, reading off questions via tweet, text, and calling on folks in the audience to voice their inquiries. I loved the honesty, the high caliber of knowledge, the bluntness and the charisma of these panelists. It was an entertaining, crowd pleasing session without compromising quality and actual usefulness.
8. The IM Charity Party and WebmasterRadio’s Search Bash
No conference is complete without a little bit of play time. Although Google canceled their “prom” this year, we still had the IM charity event and the sensory overload known as Search Bash. IM was the casual and relaxed yin to Search Bash’s psychedelic yang — I’ve embedded some videos below that showcase how much of a nut Daron Babin is in his constant quest to outdo his previous bash.
Entering the Search Bash Rabbit Hole from 10e20 LLC on Vimeo.
The White Rabbit Kicks Off Search Bash from 10e20 LLC on Vimeo.
So, despite my grumblings, I did enjoy many aspects of SES San Jose and do recommend it to beginners who are looking to learn more about SEO and Internet marketing and to marketers who want to network and hopefully pick up some new clients, make new friends, or see Daron Babin dressed as a white rabbit. If you missed SES San Jose, never fear, for SES Chicago is happening this December 7-10 in the Windy City. Go and learn about SEO, network with marketers, freeze your ass off and get some delicious Mexican food at Frontera Grill, restaurant of the newly crowned Top Chef Master Rick Bayless (I’m so stoked he won — any other foodies out there?).
Tune in to the blog next week when I showcase some brief video interviews with Michael Gray, Matt Cutts and more folks, plus a fun game I forced many of my colleagues to play. 
In the meantime, don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed!
YouTube Insight: Embedded Player Discovery
Aug 19, 2009 by Jake Matthews | Analytics, Social Networks, VideoVideo continues to be a powerful medium to work with online. YouTube recently eclipsed Yahoo as the 2nd largest search engine. Participating in video for the purpose of promoting your business is becoming more important each day. Whether it’s increasing brand exposure or simply getting across a “how-to” to your customer base, video communicates your message in a unique and lasting way.
In a post about video optimization and analytics last year, we discussed ways to gain more exposure for your videos and find ways to measure the successes of your efforts with YouTube Insight. Here we’d like to dig a big deeper to show that within YouTube Insight you can find where your videos are embedded on other websites, and it’s these websites that present further opportunity for marketing your business and content.
Knowing where your videos have been embedded provides the opportunity to find new, targeted communities and then possibly join or work in those communities where people have adopted your content. This is basically following the lead of your fans, a true “go with the flow” organic approach.
How do we do find where our videos are embedded?
In YouTube Insight go to > Discovery > Source of Views > Embedded Player
….and then you’ll be able to view the sites where your video has been embedded.
Oftentimes there will be video sharing websites that have picked up your content, but from time to time you find niche sites and communities that have picked up your video content as well. Click on those links and you’ll find pretty targeted sites/communities where your content may resonate well in the future and where it may be worth joining to discuss content and share yours in the future.
It’s important to note that sometimes YouTube Insight shows websites where your video may not necessarily be embedded, but where your video received exposure through the “related videos” feature of another embedded video. Additionally, Insight does not show the actual URL where your video may have been embedded; it only shows the domain name. Nonetheless, the Embedded Player feature in Insight will provide you with leads on targeted websites.
With the above example of a video about a BMW car, we were able to discover the following new websites:
- E90post.com,
- bmwfans.net,
- bmwtuner.net,
- e30club.ru
These are very targeted websites covering the area of BMW cars and for BMW enthusiasts to gather. Prior to working with YouTube Insight, we did not know of these four targeted websites nor did we know that the users would potentially be interested in this video content. Now there is an opportunity to “follow the lead” of your content.
There is a lot you can do once you know the websites and communities where your content is shared and adopted. Here are a couple of proactive examples:
- Find the page where your video is embedded and promote and tag that page in other social sites or link to it from a blog to increase exposure. Try using [site: domainname.com keyword] searches, which can help you locate your video since Insight only shows the domain and not the actual page where your video is.
- Join the new found website and be transparent about who you are (representing your brand) and become a contributing, helpful and friendly community member so that more users within that community will begin to look back at your site or YouTube account for more video embed opportunities.
- Reach out to the user who posted the original embed and offer them an opportunity at exclusive video looks in the future, where they may access your content before others to share first. By befriending and empowering this user, you can begin to build real advocates for your video content.
There are many great software packages and websites to track your social and video campaigns and where your video has been picked up and embedded. However, if you are running a small, targeted video campaign and you’re focused solely on YouTube as a channel, sometimes finding successes and other “rooms” to build awareness and impressions is as easy as digging through your YouTube Insights panel and checking out the “Embedded Player” feature in Discovery. It can lead to a lot of great relationships and more exposure for your content.
Here’s a brief video recap of what’s discussed above 
By now I will assume that everyone knows the value of Twitter, whether you are a brand or an everyday person. Optimizing that space behind the feed, your background design, is an obvious step to extending the reach of your brand and making it that much easier for others that may be interested in you or your brand to make a connection.
Some may say, “I only see someone’s background in Twitter once, so who cares what it looks like?” To that I say, first impressions are key. Besides, I find myself going back to view someone’s profile on Twitter from Tweetdeck to catch up on some missed tweets.
Changing background designs and color options is simple to do in Twitter Settings, and there are a few ready-made designs or themes that they offer to you as well as tons of paid services. But why stop at ready-made when you can be unique? I will go through the basics of what Twitter offers, then dig deeper into the more creative ways to liven up your design by using patterns, photographs, a business card style background, or a combination of all.
The Basics
Within your main navigation you have Settings; this is where you can change your Design by following the link on the bottom to Change background image or selecting a preset theme.
Once you click on Change background image, you can then upload or delete your current image.
Clicking on Change design colors takes you to settings that control colors for all the other components like text, background, side bar, etc.
Graphic Fade to Color
This technique can be more lightweight than a huge photo and still pack a stronger punch than just a solid color background. By adding a graphic to your background you add visual interest. For the graphic to work well with higher screen resolutions, you would need to fade it out into a solid color. This solid color would then be set as the background color from the Twitter basic settings for design colors.
Below is the graphic used for @obox’s background. A color selection, hex color #, from the very edge of the graphic will then be used for the background color in Twitter’s settings.
Photo and Pattern Backgrounds
Photos are a great way to give life to your backgrounds. They can be purely fun like Twilk, which is a background generator that will create a custom background made up of your friends’ profile photos. The downside is you have to pay a fee of $5 to get the Twilk.com branding removed.
A very large photo can be powerful and effective in creating a certain mood or feel. The examples below show a crisp, clean interior shot of an airplane, interesting books on shelves and a stark simple cup of coffee. All of these relate directly to their brands.
You can also tile your photo or image so that the picture repeats itself like a pattern. Simple, effective and fun.
A repeating background pattern is a sure way of knowing that your background will display on any monitor at any given setting. Upload a repeating background and check the option for Tile background.
Business Card Design
This is the better background design option to ensure branding and design consistency is tied together throughout all your design and media.
When I started creating the 10e20 Twitter background design, I began with a template in Photoshop with a canvass size of 1635 x 1288 pixels. This large size ensured that even the biggest screens/resolutions would see just design or solid color.
Then I set up margin guidelines where the main text and additional company information would be, like “10e20’s on Twitter,” etc. The size of this space is 234 pixels wide. Again, this gutter width varies from screen to screen depending on certain variables, but if you design for at least 200 pixels wide you are playing it safe.
After uploading the 10e20 background design, I left the option for Tile background unchecked. This means that if someone has a huge screen/resolution they won’t get endless repetition.
I also set the Change design colors to White for Background, so when the design did end the white in it would continue on in either direction. This is essentially a Fade to color technique.
Some creatively designed business card backgrounds that I feel work great:
When you’re viewing someone’s background and you see links to other social sites as graphics that you can’t click on, it gets a bit annoying to have to type in that URL just to get there. It’s almost like using a rotary phone. I wonder if Twitter sees this flaw with the backgrounds packed with information and in the future allows a more in-depth customization of the background with fields for specific links and other information besides the right-hand side bar.
Your screen resolution does matter when it comes to seeing some of these information-packed Twitter backgrounds. Like anything designed on the web, you will run into inconsistencies with various screen resolutions, monitor sizes and how big the browser window is that the viewer is using. These are all variables that constantly change. The assumption that the image size available is determined by monitor size is not 100% correct. It is determined by the window width, which the designer has no control over.
Still, there are some who say “DON’T DO IT!” about backgrounds at all, but where is the fun in that? I say get in there, play around, have fun if you’re starting out. If you’re a business then get it together and use your existing branding that allows your audience to recognize where they are.
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When speaking last week at SES San Jose on the Igniting Viral Campaigns” session, one of the questions that were asked in our Q & A session was about Social Media buttons. Basically, the question was:
“What buttons should I put on my site?”
The short answer is that there is no standard answer for each site … but scaling down what should not have buttons can help you find the right answer for your site. This list should help you identify what buttons should be placed and where they should exist based on some poor implementations in the wild.
Is the Button Relevant?
It seems like a no brainer, but you should make sure that the buttons that you choose match with the content that you have on your site. Many times some of the multi-site share buttons like a ShareThis might be a bit bloated and not have the most relevant social sites for your domain.
Here is an example of a Purse blog with a Digg button on each post. With Digg being mainly comprised of males, the relevancy is clearly low.
And here is an example of a women style forum with a Digg button on each forum posting:
Is the Location Relevant?
Clearly, the item with the social buttons should have the potential to help those share socially-relevant content. However, it is surprising how many sites slap these buttons on everything, not just the best content for social media.
Here is a great example of Buy.com, a major e-commerce site, with a Digg button on each item in the store.
This application directly on a product page clearly doesn’t fall in line with Digg’s Terms of Use:
“to advertise to, or solicit, any user to buy or sell any products or services.”
Here is another example of another major store, Walmart, who is placing a Digg button on every single product review. Even if this isn’t against the Terms of Use, it doesn’t really make any sense to try to help users promote reviews onto Digg.
What Buttons Work For Me?
This is the question that you should be asking yourself rather than slapping every button under the sun onto your site. In the past, we have compiled both a list of the most popular social buttons and badges, and also a list of some niche social sites that might be right up your alley.
In looking for other buttons to add to your sites, our best advice would be to scour your analytics to find out what is sending traffic, as you will most likely have continued success on these sites.
“Can’t Go Wrong” Buttons for Your Site
Two buttons really stand out that shouldn’t ever hurt your site and its ability to be spread in a social fashion. These two buttons would be for Twitter and Facebook. If you are taking the time to put content up on your site, then it should probably be worthy of being shared on the social networking sites. However, the type of content can determine how successful these buttons could be. I wouldn’t place these on a product page in a shopping cart, nor would I place these in a sign-up form for a newsletter as they could pose a distraction.
At the end of the day, your buttons should be small social value adds to your site, not big honkin’ distractions. For a comprehensive list of social media buttons and badges, check out a post we did earlier this year. The more targeted and relevant your buttons are, the better off they will perform!
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