Social Media Sharing Tools - For Geniuses Or Fools?

Monday, February 25, 2013

Social Media Sharing Tools - For Geniuses Or Fools?

Aside from email delivery and RSS feed subscriptions, the way through which bloggers tend to build an audience is through the use of social media sharing tools, such as those provided by ShareThis, AddThis, SpewThis (I invented this last one) which permit bloggers to embed any number of social media icons into either the header (rarely) or the footer (much more common) of each of their blog posts or articles. The hope is that some reader will be so impressed with or entertained by a post that he or she will want to share it across some or all of his or her social media networks.

Bloggers, categorically, want their content shared to the largest possible audience possible. This is either because they have an important message to post, or because they want to monetize their blogs by flooding them with traffic from all over cyberspace and drawing them to affiliate ads. I think both are good ideas: Speak your mind. Get your money.

Regardless, blogs have become, especially for some overzealous bloggers (I am one of those -- I love pictures and buttons and links and things that are shiny... perhaps I am suffering from arrested emotional development), a planting field for all manner of toolbars, sharing tools, buttons and icons. This phenomenon is not unlike the ones you see on late night TV infomercials, where you can by one set of, say, stoneware, but {WAIT!} you can get a second set absolutely free, as well. I've seen infomercials where the advertisers was willing to give away four sets of some junk if you would just grab your credit card and call the telephone number on your screen. Read on...

http://bit.ly/Wci0ne