#AtoZChallenge Sharing on social media by @shilpaagarg

“Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.” ― Brian Tracy

We all love sharing something exciting or funny or something that resonates with us, with our circle of friends and acquaintances. Right from a joke on the Whatsapp to a call for signing petition for a change in our society on Facebook to an interesting tweet, we like to share it all on the various social media platforms.

Our blogs which we mother like babies need all the love too and no one’s more happier than us when our posts get some encouragement. Comments on our blogs is one form of encouragement, the other form of it is when our content is shared on the different social media platforms viz Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Google+ etc.

When I am reading blogs and I find something interesting or worth sharing, I do not hesitate to click the share button. And Twitter is my favourite medium to share content of bloggers in my network.

Usually, this is what I see when I hit the share button.

And this really makes me groan!

As you can see, this tweet is not optimized with custom information. The tweet is missing my Twitter handle. In other words, this tweet would go in the Twitter la-la land and nobody would ever know about it. If I had customized it with my twitter handle @shilpaagarg and/or hashtag #BAR, this tweet would help this post have a better reach and engagement.

Since, I love sharing good content, so, I try to go the extra mile and make an effort to remember the twitter handles of friends who have not customized the share buttons on their blogs and add it myself in the tweet. For example, I know Elly’s twitter handle is @ellytreehugger or Tulika is @obsessivemom06. But sometimes, my grey cells go on a holiday without informing me. I remember sharing Inderpreet’s blog posts @indiwrites instead of @indywrites. @indiwrites must be really wondering about my sanity of sharing tweets with him/her. That’s another story that this twitter handle is hardly used.

To make long story short, it is important for us to customize our share buttons on our blogs.

The default share buttons at the end of the post on Blogger are simply redundant and one must simply do away with them.

Today we have a lot of plugins for social sharing buttons like Shareholic, AddThis  ShareThis etc which work on both Blogger and WordPress Blogs, while Digg Digg, Get Social etc are exclusive WordPress plugins.

You can select any of these plugins, I would recommend Shareholic though for its simplicity and ease of installation and convenience.

So, go ahead and customize the share buttons on your blogs. Believe me, it is a great way to increase traffic, reach and engagement. Did I tell you that  research shows that including a tweet button increases Twitter mentions sevenfold!! Now, isn’t that awesome?

What are you waiting for! Get going and start sharing!

Drop in a comment, in case you get stuck while configuring your share buttons. We’d be happy to help!

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Blogger Bio: Shilpa Garg

Shilpa Garg is a blogger from the Pink City of India who is passionate about the written words, sweets and beautiful conversations that happen over a mug of tea. She loves writing micro fiction, book reviews and general observations of life, things and circumstances on  her blog,  A rose is a rose is a rose! Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

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