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Using Twitter or Facebook is more than just updating your status from time to time or responding to other people’s comments. It often requires finding new people to follow and to follow you. Many bloggers add social media icons to their blog to help people find them, but a huge number of people haven’t done this because they aren’t sure if it’s really a good idea. Isn’t it spam to have Twitter, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon buttons on every post?

The Pros

The fact is that you need publicity and your fans won’t mind some extra bling on your site. Often they don’t bookmark your posts because there’s no super simple way to do it. In fact, it’s a well known marketing fact that you need to tell people what to do in order to get a good response, so don’t just put those icons up, remind them at the end of the post to bookmark it if they found what you wrote to be enjoyable.

The icons make it very simple for any reader to turn the post into something viral and many of your readers will do just that. It’s also a simple matter to ask friends to pop by your blog and bookmark a post or two that they like.

The Cons

There are few cons to this, but many people feel that too many social media and bookmarking icons make the site look cluttered and spammy. It depends on how you feel of course, as to whether or not you’ll use a plugin like Sociable to add these symbols to your site.

If you don’t like the idea of rows of icons staring up at your visitors, why not opt for just one or two. Use only a Twitter button, for example. Choose the social networking site that has been good to you and feature that instead of trying to be all things to all people. You’ll find that your efforts will be quite concentrated and you can gain a lot more attention on one particular platform. The only downside to this is that you may have visitors who shun Twitter, Facebook or whatever other venue you choose.

The bottom line? Social media icons can help your audience share your content, which is always a good thing. Keep it toned down if you don’t like to have too much clutter on your blog and remember to tell people to actually use the icons!

I use the “AddtoAny” plugin and it works great. How about you? Do you use any? if yes, which one? if not, why not?

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