It is a common knowing that social media websites and networks are great place to market content. By adding social media sharing buttons to your website, you allow your readers easily share your content on their social profiles.
This drives more traffic to your website so gives you more advertising revenue. Other than this more people come to know about your website and products.
Still there are some successful websites that doesn’t use social media sharing buttons at all, such as: signalvnoise.com. They are losing their chances to viral marketing online.
Now what is the best position to display social media sharing buttons on your website. Well, it should be the place where readers can easily notice the buttons.
#1 After the post title
After the post title is a good position as your readers would be able to notice share buttons at the same time they read heading of your article.
But this is not the best place because there are less number of users who share before reading.
But still don’t worry as most of them will scroll back to top as soon they complete reading your article. According to a survey people scroll back to top to re-read the post title once they finish reading some interesting article online.
One limitation of this position is that as the reader reaches the second fold of your website, the buttons are no more visible. To overcome this you may also add another bar of sharing buttons at the bottom of your post.
#2 Sticky buttons on the left
Sticky buttons on the left always give your better sharings as their position is more promising and they are always visible to your readers because text is followed from left to right.
The common limitation of sticky buttons is that they doesn’t look good on some website themes, specially on the mobile version of website and on smartphone apps where there is limited left-right margin.
#3 Bottom of the post
This is the most common place in use for displaying social media sharing buttons on blogs and websites.
Before you add social sharing buttons
The important thing is the prominence of your social sharing buttons and not their position. Choose some eye-catching but simple button style and display them on a prominent position so that more and more people would be able to see them on your website.
Avoid displaying too-many social sharing buttons and display buttons only for popular social networks. Too many sharing buttons will slow down your website and leave a very negative impact on your readers.
Another important thing to keep in mind is to keep your buttons in close presence with your article to let your readers be sure about what they are sharing.
Popular Sharing Buttons You Can Use
AddThis: Clean, customizable and simple share buttons are unobtrusive, quick to load. Enables you to promote your content easily by sharing to over 200 of the most popular social networking and bookmarking sites (like Facebook Share, Facebook Like, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and more).
Shareaholic : World’s leading all-in-one Content Amplification Platform that helps grow your site traffic, engagement, conversions & monetization, free of cost.
ShareThis: Social Charge your Content with ShareThis – features Social Analytics, CopyNShare, Open Graph Sharing, and the Hovering Bar.
AddToAny: All share buttons including the AddToAny sharing button, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, WhatsApp, many more, with follow icons.