Social media sharing tools give your website visitors a way to easily and quickly share your blog posts and web pages with social media websites, extending your reach online and increasing your readership. There are more than just a few social media sharing services out there, so how do you know which one will be a good fit for you?
Integration
Some social media sharing tools integrate with your website more easily than others. How experienced are you with inserting HTML and JavaScript snippets into your preexisting web pages? If you’d rather not deal with copying and pasting script snippets, search for a social media sharing service that also has plugins that will allow for a hands-off installation.
Appearance
When you add social media sharing tools to your website, buttons and widgets will be displayed near each blog post that users can then click to share your website with others. Some buttons and widgets are highly customizable and others are not. The appearance of widgets and buttons should be clean, not cluttered, and blend well with your website.
Multiple domain tracking
Do you operate more than one website? Multiple domain tracking tools make it possible to view separate stats for each domain in one convenient place.
Reporting
Would you like to see who is reposting and sharing your website links and where? Some services use Google Analytics or Compete to keep track of your visitor’s actions and other services provide no statistical reporting tools.
Load time
Having a fast loading website is imperative to your success. While most social media sharing tools have been optimized so that they don’t drag your speed down, many have not. A good tool will have the least impact on your website load time.
Language availability
Not everyone reading your blog speaks the same language. If you want to extend a hand to all of your readers, search for a social media sharing tool that offers multiple language support.
Network reach
What social media networks are most important to you? Most social media sharing tools cover the basic big name social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but others also give users the ability to share on social bookmarking websites like StumbleUpon and Delicious, too.
The most important thing to remember when choosing social media sharing tools is that you want people to notice the buttons and widgets and click on them to share your content. Look at the visual aspects of each button and imagine which you’d be most likely to use. Once you’ve done that, compare feature sets, and don’t be afraid to test different services out for yourself to find the one that works best for you and your website.