Does your blog look like a Christmas tree at the end of each post with dozens of small icons for every obscure social media site? Just because there is a plug-in for your blog that makes it easy to add them, doesn't mean that you should do it. At first glance the idea of encouraging your blog readers to digg, stumble, bookmark and recommend your post seems sound. And if it works for a few services, more has to be better. Right?
Place yourself in your reader's saddle and ponder if the numerous links on your site serve any special purpose to delight them? If not, then remove them.
If your reader is actively using one of the social media sites, it's very likely that they have the accompanying toolbar installed. Clicking on the familiar toolbar button is probably much faster than finding the right tiny icon on your site.
Many readers won't recognize some or all of the social networking sites. If they do decide to click on the icon and sign up for the services, there is little chance that they will then think to return to your page and vote for your blog.
Besides self-highlighting, do you think that many more people will actually spend time to highlight your post on different social media sites?
So is it worth it to take up this much space on your blog with these icons? The correct answer is of course to test it. You can track clicks on outbound links with Google Analytics.
If you have a specific post that is written to target a particular service, you should encourage your readers to digg that post once in a while.
Are icons that bookmark social media sites helpful or do they just get in the way? Navigate to my personal blog to comment on the issue.
Learn how to get your customers to pay attention from Nick Dalton at http://www.AttentionRich.
