Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Social Media Sharebar and reddit.com


Social Media.  As much as I hate its addictiveness, I find it an essential side-kick of a blog.

As I've talked about previously on my major blog killer, how you can avoid it post, you shouldn't spend a lot of time on social sites as a blogger.  But! Why not let folks know you have a recent new post?  I do via my Twitter or Facebook page.

Bloggers need to spend more hours on blogs than social sites, but for the rest of the world, it is often the only sites people visit!  So a blogger needs to utilise a little time on these sites to show others their posts.

One way to let the world know of your post is a tool that I wanted to let everyone know about.  It is a widget that I use called a 'sharebar'.  You can see it on this post to the right. This is the most useful tool that my blog has (if you're reading this via an RSS subscriber, you might like to check it out).

I can hit 'Share to Facebook' to tell my Facebook friends of my new post.  I can also hit 'Retweet' to let all my Twitter followers know of my latest stuff.  There's a Digg button which sometimes I use, but there is my favourite, Reddit.

I'll talk about Reddit a bit later, but firstly, here's the code for this sharebar that you can add as a widget to your own blog! 


Add it as a widget or gadget, whatever your blog calls them, to the Design sections of your blog.  This will display as a vertical bar on your blog.

Don't like its position?  You can change it.

What you do is find the code below:


margin-left:230px;


You can change the number from 230 to anything you like.  Increase it slightly and you will move it closer to the right side, decrease it and it will move closer to the left.

Having troubles? Just let me know!  If it helps you I'd love to hear your feedback as well.

reddit.com

Now, about this site.  Reddit is currently one of the internet's most popular sites to waste time on.  It is full of good stuff on absolutely anything.  It also is a good tool to get some traffic to your site.  Albeit the traffic is not often useful, it is kind of cool to see a traffic spike in your stats.  If using reddit correctly, you can achieve thousands of visits to your site.  This can gain you perhaps a bit of GoogleAds benefits or extra subscribers if you're lucky.


Unsure about how to use reddit?  It can be confusing for the new users, I know it was for me.  You also have to be careful as they hate spammers, like everyone does!

It is all about selling the description you give of your links.  The site has helpful features if you're lost, otherwise drop me a line and I am willing to help.

Hope you find this information helpful.

Do you use social media to share your blog?  Are you familiar with Reddit? Love to hear from you!

 - tork