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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21 Responses to “What Social Buttons Should Go On Your Site?”
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I was looking into this just last week. So many times on corporate homepages, or on pages where they really don't belong, you see the standard "share this" type of widget to share posts on digg, facebook, etc. Who diggs a corporate homepage, really? Is global implementation really a good idea? No.
But then I was struggling to say why it was dumb other than "its just dumb," "nobody will click them," or "it looks unprofessional." Any thoughts on the argument that it's not helpful for global implementation on every page? I'm wondering how it could be proven that this sort of lazy or misguided implementation could be harmful to the site, rather than just an annoyance (other than the fact that the sites who do this have no traction on those social networking or bookmarking sites).
Some days, I'd be happy if sites would just pick a couple, regardless of what they were. Just yesterday, I was on a site that had 25+ social media icons (all full-sized, maybe 1/2" square on my screen) – I'm not even sure I've heard of 25 social media sites, and definitely not ones that I'd use.
There's a basic rule of psychology that we seem to always forget on the web – if you draw attention to everything, you draw attention to nothing. Having half a screen of social media icons is just as dumb as having a blinking red "NEW!" next to everything on your home-page. Year 2009 strategies don't help if you have a year 1999 brain.
We deal with this all the time…we throw a common share module across all sites. I've seen sooo many sites do it without actually thinking through the timing, the relevance, and/or the type of visibility to create around the buttons.
Every site should ask themselves that question, "What buttons work for me?"
"if you draw attention to everything, you draw attention to nothing"
Amen Brother, couldn't have said it better! I do like some of the buttons that do allow you to interact w/o leaving the site (like the reddit button) – but I agree 100% that if you leave 100 buttons on your posts you will be much less effective than leaving just one really relevant one on there.
Great examples. I think people should try and search out the niche social sites that are appropriate to them. Some may be small traffic, but very targeted. There seems to be a handful of drigg/pligg sites popping up lately.
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If you have a blog, you should definately have a digg and technorati button. If it is just a website, it should probably be a stumble upon button.
-Nikki-
I wholeheartedly agree with this article, Greg. And in fact, even though I'm an entrepreneur with a button to promote to online retailers, we tell our potential customers that we DONT want to put the button on non-product pages/non-relevant areas. Our reputation is on the line as well — if our button is irrelevant on one site, a user will likely not click on it again when they see it on another site.
Hey Nikki – I am guessing that you are only replying to get a link (they are nofollowed even though they might look like they aren't BTW) but that is some pretty broad advice and incorrect IMO. The article pretty much sums up all the reasons why also – might be worth a read
Greg,
It was nice meeting you at lunch at SES (If you can't remember who I was, the link to my company's blog has my avatar). Anyway, This is something we have debated internally and are currently erring on the side of having too many buttons. Believe it or not, we actually "narrowed it down" to the 10 buttons that are there. At least we don't have them on every page like buy.com…
Sure do remember you, thanks for the SearchBash recap BTW! Yeah, I always think less is more also (especially with buy.com) Funny thing about your buttons, the one I might think would do the best with your targeted content would be Sphinn (http://www.sphinn.com) and it isn't there
Great meeting you, take care!!
[...] will appear “current”, nay cutting edge. Update: good tangential post: What Social Buttons Should Go On Your Site? Do you use links like these to share? Should [...]
I think the only ones that are important to have on your website are the ones that have value to your customers. Do they really care about what you bookmark on delicious? Maybe they do!?
You know that is definitely a valid point. The question I have raised though is that when blogging about the tech/web industry you find a lot more people that are into the more obscure social media sites, therefore more buttons for us.
However, I would imagine that people that are interested in fire trucks might not be as geekily diverse. So you probably are ok with two or less, maybe none.
[...] What Social Buttons Should Go On Your Site? | 10e20 — 11:39am via [...]
Well very soon you should add a Vreebit button. The other day I went through a online walk through of a news site about to launch – Vreebit.com is a new social networking site that attempts to combine aspects of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites. Besides the usual photo sharing and job seeking, Vreebit members can conduct polls and create petitions directed to legislative and business leaders.
This question is right in place. Do we need all bookmark buttons at addthis for example?
Buttons are important if you want your sites to be ranked well in the search engine. By adding these buttons you are giving your readers and visitors the ability to share their finds out to the world through these bookmarking sites. I have a lot of these buttons in my blog. My most recent find which I think is the best is onlywire. It is automated therefore less hassle.
I use addthis.com Its easy and use only small area of your blog.
I think the only ones that are important to have on your website are the ones that have value to your customers. Do they really care about what you bookmark on mister-wong? Maybe they do!?
[...] work best for you. Consider creating social website-specific landing pages, and don’t just slap every single share button that exists onto your pages in hopes of casting as wide a net as possible. If your audience flocks [...]