Go Viral with the Summer’s Hottest Social Sharing Tools

You spent over an hour writing the perfect blog post. You’ve added pictures that help your readers to visualize what it is you’re talking about and you kept your audience in mind. Once you press publish, though, what happens to the blog post that you just put so much time and energy into?

Does it just sit there, waiting to be discovered by web surfers who are haphazardly browsing the Internet? It doesn’t have to.

You can add social sharing tools to both your blog and individual blog postings. These tools will allow your readers to share the website URL with their friends across the Internet. Chances are that you’re going to get some readers to your blog without having to do much. However, by including social sharing tools, you’ll be able to multiply the amount of people that are seeing your pages.

The Simple Sharing Button
The social media sharing tool is a button that readers can press online. This button is located either at the top or bottom

of the blog post, or even at both the top and bottom. It’s important to clearly mark the sharing tool and to make it easy to use. Generally, though, sharing tools from popular social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are clearly recognizable and most users know what to do with them.

Widgets or plug-ins
Some blog platforms come standard with widgets or plug-ins. For example, Blogger, which is Google’s blogging platform, will add a widget to every Blogger post. Other Blogger users can then share your post. They’ll also be able to follow your blog so that every time you post, they’re alerted. This will help you reach out to your blogging community. Tapping into other bloggers is a major way to gain exposure.

“Tweet this!”
For Twitter, the social sharing school will allow you to Tweet whatever it is you’re looking at online. Typically, the widget will be labeled, “Tweet this!” When you click it, you’ll have the option to customize a message that will go along with the Tweet. Then, it will show up to all your Twitter followers.

“Like”

The Facebook social sharing school works in much the same way, although there are two choices instead of one. You can “Like” the blog post, which means that it will post to your Facebook page saying that you “Liked” a certain Internet page. Alternatively, you can share the link on Facebook. When you click “Share,” you’ll have the option to include a message along with the link. Then it will show up on your Facebook timeline for all of your Facebook friends to see.

Bookmarking 
Other social sharing tools for popular social media sites are for websites like LinkedIn and StumbleUpon. All of the work

in much the same way. The benefit is that the more tools you have for a variety of sites, the farther your blog post will reach. People are connected with different people on Facebook than they are on LinkedIn, for example. Letting them share your post amongst their multiple social media platforms will allow you to expand your reach as far as possible.