Boost Blog Traffic with Social Media Buttons
Each blogger wants to reach a larger audience with their blog, regardless of how many readers they currently have. Social media sites present one of the best opportunities for bloggers to expand their reach.
There are many different ways you can market your website with social media (content development, joining groups for exchanging votes, etc.) but one that has been proven to work when used properly is placing social media icons and voting buttons on your blog.
The voting buttons and icons that you use on your blog serve as a reminder and a polite request to your visitors to vote for you. The buttons make it faster and more convenient, which usually means more votes.
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 approach does more harm than good. The buttons will clutter up your blog, make it look unprofessional, distract readers from the content, and most importantly, it could spread the votes that you receive to the point where they don’t have an impact.
If you have 20 different voting buttons on your site and you get one vote through each button, you’ll see very little, if any, traffic as a result. However, if you have one or two voting buttons and you get 20 votes, it will make a difference in your traffic levels (depending on the particular social media sites).
By using fewer icons/buttons you can indicate to visitors which social media sites are the most important ones for you. If you’re using too many buttons it can be confusing and they have no idea where you would most like to receive the votes.
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.
Another thing to keep in mind is that small bloggers will typically not have the best results if they are only targeting major social media sites like Digg. With a small audience, you are much more likely to get significant exposure from a smaller niche-specific social media site that will require fewer votes in order to become “popular.”
If necessary, explain to your visitors what the social media sites are, how they can use them, and why they would want to use them. Depending on the topics that you right about, it’s possible that only a small percentage of your readers will be familiar with social media. In this case you can help to educate them and they’ll be more likely to wind up voting for your content.
