Avoid Social Media Wolf Calls
I remember when voice mail kicked in the late 80s – I had one co-worker who labeled every voice mail as URGENT. Then when email took off in the 1990s there was always somebody who labeled every email as HIGH IMPORTANCE! As Social Media has taken off in recent years, I think that some bloggers have fallen prey to the same issue and added social media links to every blog posting.
If you’re reading this then you probably have a blog. Think about how you have integrated social media into your blog. How many requests for users to tweet you, buzz you,digg you, love you are on your home page? Do you have these requests on every page, on every blog on every comment? 
Sure you have written some great blog articles. However, be honest, is every blog on your site worthy of being tweeted and dugg? Should you put social media requests on each blog or do they belong on a selection of your best articles? You know which articles are great and which ones are re-hashed press releases that you posted to make your site look active. If you know, many of your readers know too.
I like the approach here on Blogging Tips, you never see multiple social media links/requests on the same page. When you drill down to a specific article – you see the links at the bottom. However, when you are on a page that has excerpts from multiple blogs you don’t see the links on each article.
I do blame the blog plug-ins for some of this as they make it so easy to post these links. I read a number of blogs and just for a test, I counted over 120 social link buttons in my morning blog review. With that in mind, they just become noise, something my eyes know to ignore. I hope that some of the future blogging plug-ins add in more intelligence. For example, once an article is 6 weeks old, or certainly 6 months old – do you really need the social media links associated with that article? It would also be great to link the appearance of the links to the volume of traffic or to highlight the links to visitors who have used them before.
Check out the analytics for your blog. Do the numbers show that these social media links are being clicked on? Do these links register as exit pages from your blog? Or if, as in the image above, the links themselves show the counts – you can get an immediate look at the metrics. If you have 10 social media links on 20 articles for a total of 200 links and only 4 tweets – maybe your audience is telling you something.
If your metrics show that your links are generating results – than ignore my advice as on your site these links are clearly well worth the real estate they are taking up! However, for many blogs I think that strategic use of these links might yield better results than constant displays.
Written by David Silversmith from Info MusingPosted on April 21st, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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7 Responses to “Avoid Social Media Wolf Calls”
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Out of curiosity, is this post supposed to be ironic or the beginning of a crusade to get BlogginTips to change their design? Or are you saying that every other site but this one should use social media buttons more judiciously?
No I seriously think that Blogging Tips has a good balance of social media.
1 – The links only appear when you drill down to the article page. They don’t appear, for example, on each article shown on the home page.
2 – The audience for Blogging Tips has a likelihood of using social media links to help promote stories.
My thoughts are aimed at blogs that have dozens of these links on each page and are targeting audiences that I suspect are not likely to use many of them.
I also think any blog owner should use the metrics to really know what is happening. If they are being clicked all day – then ignore me and add more! But if not – do you really need them all?
Thanks for the clarification. I was actually admiring the design of Blogging Tips when I came across your post. I guess I was confused because the article illustration was a clip from this site. I admit that I have seen sites that do not implement social media buttons very well.
BloggingTips may not overdo with quantity but those buttons could sure use some uniform size.
I used to have AddThis link (not dynamic widget) on my posts but it was so rarely used by readers I just removed it.
Rarst – That’s the way to run a blog or any website – respond to your readers/shopper/visitors.
You tried out the AddThis link but you tracked it’s use and then decided to phase it out. To me that is a successful test – you did not get the results you wanted – but you learned something about your readers.
The editor of another blog I write at just pointed out to me that, in his words, “I had 4 images and 5 image sizes in a recent blog!” So, I’m apparently the last blogger on earth with the right to talk about uniform image size!
Very good article David. I’m not 100% sure if I have striked a perfect balance but I have always kept social voting buttons outside of the post itself.
Rarst – Yes I might look into making the buttons all the same size. I could just use standard images which are all the same size but I am using the standard javascript for the digg and retweet buttons so that readers can see how many times the post has been voted.
Kevin – and another great tip – keep the voting buttons OUTSIDE of the post and even better, below the article. Let the reader actually read the article – let them enjoy it. Once they have read your great ideas – then they are ready to think about voting you to the top!