Get More Visitors with Social Media Buttons
August 4th, 2009All 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
Because voting buttons, widgets and icons can encourage votes and lead to more visitors through social media, many bloggers tend to overdo them. You will see blogs with voting buttons for every possible social media site you can image.
In almost every case, this strategy will backfire. Adding too many buttons will create a cluttered blog that distracts the reader and just plain looks bad. Just as important, having too many buttons can spread out the votes that you get to the point that they have no 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).
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.
Ways to Use Social Media Icons
The best approach is to only use about two or three buttons on your blog to produce maximum results. Pick the sites that you target based on how well they match up with your blog’s audience, as well as their potential to send visitors to your blog.
For the best results, don’t focus only on larger social media sites like Digg and Reddit. These sites are often dominated by major websites and blogs that already have a huge audience. Don’t ignore smaller but more targeted niche-specific sites. They may not send as much traffic, but it will be far easier.
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.
Steven Snell runs a blog, Traffikd, that covers internet marketing. If you’re looking for some great icons for social media sites to use on your blog, see Steven’s list at Traffikd.
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