With social shares on con­tent down 50 per­cent since 2015, it’s feel­ing like a lost cause to even con­sid­er social media in your con­tent plan.

And we’ve all heard the age-old “social shar­ing but­tons are dead” statements.

Just like we’ve heard for SEO, con­tent mar­ket­ing, PPC, and just about every oth­er mar­ket­ing tac­tic that still works.

The biggest gripes that tag along with social shar­ing but­tons are often from mar­keters who use them wrong.

Or on sites that don’t get enough traffic.

Most of the time, it’s the case of awful place­ments and poor usability.

Here is how and where to add social but­tons to your site for max­i­mum social engagement.

Where to Avoid Social Buttons on Your Site

Most mar­keters go wrong in two main areas with social shar­ing buttons:

  • Putting them on the wrong pages: nobody is going to share it.
  • Using poor social but­tons with hor­ri­ble usabil­i­ty: it’s too much of a has­sle to use.

Where do social shar­ing but­tons defin­i­tive­ly not work?

Accord­ing to a study done by VWO, remov­ing social shar­ing but­tons on ecom­merce sites prod­uct pages increased con­ver­sions by 11.9 percent.

This study has pro­duced some con­tro­ver­sy as to whether social shar­ing but­tons actu­al­ly work or if they neg­a­tive­ly impact your success.

But it’s hard to tell for a few reasons:

  • It was on a prod­uct page. Who is going to social share a prod­uct direct­ly from the prod­uct page before they buy it? Prob­a­bly 1 in 1,000,000.
  • Low amounts of shares on a prod­uct page are sim­i­lar to neg­a­tive or zero reviews on Ama­zon. Peo­ple don’t trust it. It works as “neg­a­tive” social proof.
  • It is dis­tract­ing peo­ple from the main CTA, which is to buy the product.

If you can add user-friend­ly social shar­ing but­tons to the right pages, you can bet that social shar­ing is going to rise.

So, where do you add them?

Add Social Sharing Buttons Within Your Content

When con­sum­ing con­tent on Hub­Spot and high­light­ing spe­cif­ic sec­tions, a social shar­ing bar pops up, dis­play­ing options for Twit­ter, Face­book, email, LinkedIn, Mes­sen­ger, and copy and pasting.

This is stel­lar usability.

It allows users to not only just share the entire arti­cle but share spe­cif­ic sec­tions of the con­tent they find interesting.

Plus when you copy and paste a sec­tion from the post, here is what it looks like:

“When you seg­ment the above results by com­pa­ny size, the results get even more inter­est­ing.” https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks

It auto­mat­i­cal­ly places the copied con­tent into quo­ta­tion marks and cites the source with HubSpot’s link.

Boom! Now that’s prop­er attribution.

When you select the social but­tons like Twit­ter or Face­book, it does the same thing, auto­mat­i­cal­ly import­ing the quot­ed text and cit­ing the arti­cle link.

Want more social shares with but­tons? Fol­low HubSpot’s lead and incor­po­rate it into the usabil­i­ty of the page, rather than just hav­ing sta­t­ic but­tons on the side-bar.

Add Social Sharing Buttons Halfway Through Content

A white paper by Chart­beat found that 55 per­cent of site vis­i­tors read an arti­cle for 15 sec­onds or less.

Bru­tal.

Get­ting peo­ple to click in search engine results is hard enough as is, let alone get­ting them to stay around for con­tent consumption.

So you can bet that those social shar­ing but­tons dis­played at the top of your blog post aren’t doing the heavy lifting.

If peo­ple aren’t even read­ing for 15+ sec­onds, they aren’t going to share your content.

With that being said, you should add them fur­ther down the page on your con­tent, tar­get­ing more inter­est­ed read­ers and high intent traffic.

If peo­ple are reach­ing the bot­tom of your con­tent con­sis­tent­ly, they prob­a­bly loved the post.

And if they loved the post, your odds of gen­er­at­ing a social share are far higher.

Shar­ing but­tons at the top of your con­tent can just be a dis­trac­tion from the big picture:

Get­ting peo­ple to active­ly read your content.

So, try adding social shar­ing but­tons towards the low­er half of your content.

Display Social Sharing as Social Proof When Shares Accumulate

As you begin to accu­mu­late social shares, you can flip the script and dis­play social but­tons at the top of your content.

Low shares on con­tent can work against you if you don’t have years of built up brand awareness.

Imag­ine this:

Some­one who has nev­er heard of your brand decides to give you a shot in the SERPs against big brands.

Chances are, they are going to think:

That’s weird, why does this post have just a sin­gle social share? Is this con­tent accu­rate? Is it bad? Should I find some­thing else?

If you haven’t had time to gen­er­ate tons of social shares yet, or a post sim­ply didn’t get that many, avoid using sta­t­ic but­tons at the begin­ning of your post.

It might neg­a­tive­ly impact your abil­i­ty to get more shares.

The Best Social Sharing Button Apps and Plugins

Not all social shar­ing but­tons and plu­g­ins are cre­at­ed equal.

Some are clunky, out­dat­ed, have bad usabil­i­ty, and sim­ply look awful.

When it comes to shar­ing but­tons, you want the oppo­site of that.

Here are some of the best on the mar­ket, both free and paid to exper­i­ment with.

1. Highlight and Share for WordPress – Free!

This plu­g­in for Word­Press works just like HubSpot’s, allow­ing users on your site to share your con­tent when high­light­ing text.

This plu­g­in is com­plete­ly free for Word­Press users and works with:

  • Twit­ter
  • Face­book
  • What­sApp
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

With it, you can enable themes, dis­able spe­cif­ic socials and cus­tomize the shar­ing options.

2. Social Warfare – Free to Paid

Social War­fare packs a bunch of dif­fer­ent options for shar­ing but­tons from sta­t­ic to fad­ing in at spe­cif­ic points on your post.

It’s great for adding shar­ing but­tons halfway through con­tent to tar­get inter­est­ed readers.

3. Monarch – Paid

Monarch is the social shar­ing plu­g­in under the Ele­gant­Themes brand. It costs mon­ey to have access to the site and plu­g­in, but it’s one of the best on the market.

It allows the most brand­ing cus­tomiza­tion of any plu­g­in out there and the most diverse ani­ma­tion sequences.

Want a supe­ri­or plu­g­in? You are going to have to pay a bit more.

But if cus­tomiza­tion is key for you, this is worth it.

Conclusion

Social shar­ing but­tons can be high­ly effec­tive when placed on the right pages at the right time.

But more often than not, most mar­keters just put social shar­ing but­tons everywhere.

More but­tons! You get a but­ton, you get a button!

Sad­ly, this approach fails.

Want more social shares from your social buttons?

Place them with­in con­tent when peo­ple high­light sections.

Add social shar­ing but­tons halfway through con­tent to tar­get inter­est­ed readers.

Only dis­play social but­tons at the top of posts when you have accu­mu­lat­ed tons of shares.

Avoid cheap, clunks social but­tons and opt for ones with greater usability.

Social shar­ing but­tons are far from dead. It’s just time to start using them with intent.

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