All bloggers want the world to see their blog. Regardless of how many visitors and subscribers you have, you will always want more. One of the most popular (and productive) ways for bloggers to market their blog is with social media.
Bloggers can devote their time in different ways in order to get better results with social media (writing new blog posts, networking with other social media users, etc.), but one thing that tends to get some easy results is to use recognized social media icons and voting buttons on the blog.
By placing a voting button on your site you are encouraging visitors to vote for you (think of it as a friendly reminder) and you’re making it quick and easy for them to vote. Simply reminding visitors that they can vote for you will help to increase the number of votes that you get.
How Not to Use Social Media Voting Buttons
The first thing to know about voting buttons is that you don’t want to overdo it. Because they can be very effective, some bloggers decide to include an icon/button for every social media site known to man.
This is a bad approach to take. Too many icons and buttons will leave you with a very cluttered blog that isn’t easily readable, and it will be distracting to readers. Additionally, this approach tends to result in votes that are spread out over a large number of social media sites, which will usually produce poor results.
For example, lets say you are using 20 different voting buttons on your blog and each one gets one vote from a reader. This isn’t enough to get any kind of traffic to your site. But if you were to use two different voting buttons and get ten votes with each, you may be able to get some traffic from that.
With an approach that users fewer voting buttons you will be showing visitors exactly where you would like them to vote for you. This way you have more control over where you get the votes and your readers are less likely to be confused.
Do’s for Using Social Media Voting Buttons
Place only a small number of social media voting buttons on your blog, I recommend 2 or 3. Carefully chose the social media sites based on fit with your audience, as well as their potential to send traffic to your site.
For most blogs, especially those with smaller audiences, it is not a good idea to only target the major social media sites like Digg and Reddit. You’re more likely to have success with smaller social media sites, so try to find a niche site that you can target in addition to a major site.
Depending on your audience and their familiarity with social media, you may want to explain to them what social media is, and how they can vote for your site. For audiences that are not tech-savvy, you may only have a few readers that use social media, but if you introduce the others to specific sites, they may become users and vote for your content.
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