How Social Media Buttons and Icons Can Improve Your Blog Traffic
All 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.
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.
Voting buttons and icons work well for very simple reasons. First, they encourage visitors to vote for your content. And second, they make it easy for visitors to do so.
Common Mistakes When Using Social Media Icons/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).
By showing only a few voting buttons, you are helping visitors by telling them that these are the specific sites where you want votes. With too many buttons they will not know which sites are your preferred places to get votes.
Do’s for Using Social Media Voting Buttons
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.
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.”
Some blogs will have audience that consist largely of people that do not use social media. If this is the case for you, consider using your blog to inform your readers about a particular social media site, how they can use it, and how they can vote for you.




























