A lot of us having social sharing buttons on our blogs, but how often do people actually use them? I have no idea, so I thought it would be interesting to chat about it.
I don’t often use social sharing buttons. Certainly, a substantial part of that is because my social media use is minimal, but even when I’m somewhat more active, I don’t often share people’s posts. The social platform I share on most often is Pinterest, but because I do most of my reading in the WordPress Reader, I’m not usually seeing social share buttons, and I would typically just copy the post’s URL and paste it directly into Pinterest.
On my own site, I have share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Facebook and Twitter seem like the two big ones that a lot of people use. The LinkedIn button is there as much for my own occasional use as it is for other people’s sake. There’s a plugin that will show a “Pin it” button when people hover over images on your blog, but I’m not really convinced that the convenience factor is enough to offset the fact that the plugin does slow the site down somewhat, so right now I’ve got the plugin turned off. WP doesn’t have an Instagram social share button; as far as I know, that’s because Instagram doesn’t allow that, although there may be some sort of work-around you can use.
Perhaps some people are using my Facebook share buttons, since I get traffic to my blog from Facebook even though I don’t have a Facebook account. I suppose if I cared enough I might be able to use Google Analytics to figure out how often the share buttons are getting used, but I just don’t care that much. The Pinterest share button shows how many shares there have been (although I recently disabled that on my site via my child theme’s code), but Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn don’t seem to do that.
While it may seem like a good idea to include social share buttons for every platform under the sun, apparently that’s actually a bad idea. This is because of the paradox of choice (which was described in psychologist Barry Schwartz’s book by the same name), whereby choosing among many options takes more cognitive effort than choosing from a few options, and we’re less likely to feel sure of our choices. So when you give people a bunch of sharing options, they’re less likely to share at all.
Now it’s over to you. What, if any, social sharing buttons do you have on your site? Do you ever use other people’s social share buttons to share their posts?
The blogging toolbox series has tips to support you in your blogging journey. It includes these posts:
I only use the Pinterest share button when I want to save a recipe for later. I don’t use any of the other share buttons. I don’t have any share buttons on my blog, but will sometimes post my own link on IG stories. I had my old site set to automatically share to my FB page, but not my current one because I really don’t want people I know reading it.
That makes sense.
Sure
I don’t tend to use any social media as in the big guns like FB and Twitter. I have plans next year to use Insta and Pinter and that’s about it as far as personal use goes. I know that l have sharing buttons on the bottom of each post l publish but l have never been shared at least not to my knowledge.
I am basically a social trugladite and l don’t bother to share content from other bloggers to my very minimal social media accounts – l only have FB and all l have is 11 so called friends who never speak to me anyway so are they friends? Nope, so why would l be arsed to share content from WP with the so called no friends l have in FB? Answer – l wouldn’t.
I have thought about removing the two buttons l have already, but l then thought meh at this stage of the phasing it makes no difference if they are there or not.
I think ultimately l am too asocial to be social especially when it comes to social media.
I am also too asocial to be social. As for the buttons, it probably doesn’t make that much difference, as if people decide they want to share things, they will, regardless of whether the buttons are there or not.
I didn’t even know they had social media ‘buttons’. Hm. Well things were fairly wonky over here when I started to come back, so why am I not surprised? I was voluble (as usual) and here is my post rather than a long comment. https://sparksfromacombustiblemind.wordpress.com/2022/10/04/one-packet-of-ketch-up-please-from-10-02-2022/
Maybe someone used to share my posts but I never do this personally. Because limited or unlimited, my stuff is pure. And that’s my satisfaction with my quality.
I sometimes share if I get permission form the person who wrote the post. I appreciate the same courtesy but find that doesn’t always occur. I also think the information regarding multiple choices (options to share) decrease the overall likelihood in sharing. I hadn’t thought of this before, but it makes good sense.
I always wondered this. There’s some stats in wp on how much your blog is shared and on which medium, but it’s impossible to figure out by whom and where. I’d be interested to know, as there’s certainly not a lot sharing that I see in my own social media circle.
I think sharing any content creator’s work is a great idea, scoop. it and Digg are always good to find content.
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