Here’s a great tool for your website that facilitates the sharing of content via social media links. It’s called AddThis and you’ve likely seen the little doodads at the bottom of news articles or blog posts. Heck, this blog sports them too, down there just above the “leave a comment” in this post.
By linking an AddThis account to your WordPress blog—or other notable CMS software—via the AddThis plugin you can install the sharing buttons at the bottom of all posts and pages, or just posts or just pages. It’s pretty straight forward and the folks at AddThis take care of all the complicated stuff with an API, so you just have to enter your user name and account number in the settings for the AddThis plugin on your blog. The key benefit for web surfers is it’s a slick and easy way for them to share your post or news article with their network—if they’re so inclined. From a webmaster’s perspective, the key feature with this tool is statistics, and you get some dandy stats that show which items of your content people share and how many times your stuff is viewed or clicked on. On my pages, I also have a “Tweet this” shout out link under the comments link (up there by the post date), which also makes it easy for someone to Tweet my post on their Twitter feed, but it doesn’t get logged in my AddThis account statistics the same way. So, if Stats matter to you, do check out the AddThis website. And if you feel like sharing this post, please do so with the features below!
