Why and How to Add a Social Media Share Button to Your Blog

If there's one part of my blogging strategy that's really been suffering since I began, it's been my lack of social media share buttons. From time to time, people have commented about the lack of such buttons in the comments of this blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, and elsewhere. Yet, in my lazy searches, I couldn't find an easy way to add those buttons. Of course, this post has them at the bottom--so I've figured it out now (finally).

It's good to share!

Why add social media share buttons?
The answer to this is pretty simple. Social media share buttons make it easier for people to share your amazing blog posts by cutting out steps in the sharing process. This is important, and it has measurably increased traffic on sites that use them.

The increase in traffic should be expected--even if you don't change anything else in your blogging strategy--because share buttons make you easier to share with the world, which means that share buttons make you easier for the world to find. Like I said, it's pretty simple.

But beyond that, Google recently starting incorporating social media into its search results, which means that SEO alone isn't going to drive traffic to your site through search engines. Rather, it'll be a combination of solid SEO practices combined with a super social media strategy. These share buttons help in that arena.

How do I add social media share buttons?
There are several ways to add social media share buttons. However, it took me far too long to figure out how to do so on my own, and I'm sure there are still much better ways for me to optimize my social media share button strategy, but...baby steps.

The share button I'm using below is from http://www.addthis.com/. Just go to the site and register to receive the code that you post in to your website and/or blog posts. After years of share button pain, it took me less than 60 seconds to capture and add that snazzy button to my first post. Go ahead and try it yourself.

Here are some more social media share button resources:

• 17 WordPress Sharing Plugins That Will Increase Your Blog Traffic. 
• The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Creating Social Media Buttons.
• Use the New Generation of Share Buttons to Increase Traffic (and Maybe Rankings).

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Check out these other Not Bob posts for writers:

• Top Media Feeds for Writers.
• 11 Tips for Writers to Find Success.
• The Second Most Important Thing a Writer Can Do.