Social Media Sharing Tools for blogs and websites (Add This)

Social Media sharing tools are a must-add tools for any blogger. With the widespread use of Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc., bloggers should be able to allow their visitors to share content from the website easily on Social Networks to increase traffic as well as to increase Social Media presence. The way Social Sharing tools are added to websites varies for native websites, CMS and blogging platforms. For native websites, the social sharing code has to be included in the source code of the web pages.

For CMS and Blogging platforms (such as Blogger and Wordpress), there are widgets and plugins available to add. In this post, we'll talk about "Add This" Social Media sharing tools and how to add it in websites and blogs, covering Blogger blogs as well.

There are a lot of Social Media Sharing tools available out there. But in my opinion and usage, I really recommend "Add This". It is the most complete, requires minimal setup and code additions. If you are looking for Social Media Sharing tools for your blog or website, I recommend you to try "Add This".

• Go to https://www.addthis.com/login and signup for a FREE account on Add This. You can sign up with Google, Facebook and Twitter accounts also.
• Click on the "Tools" menu. There are basically four category of Add This tools -

1. Sharing Buttons - Social Media sharing buttons for your blog or website. Sharing sidebar, sharing buttons, Image sharing tool etc.
2. Follow Buttons - Social Media buttons for the visitor to follow your blogs, social media accounts
3. Targeting - Marketing tools to help you target your audience with content, special offers etc.
4. Recommended Content - tool to engage your visitors by recommending content, related content, next article etc.

• Choose the Social Media sharing tools you desire to add to your blog or website. If you want to manage multiple websites or blogs with one AddThis account, it is recommended that you create a separate profile for each. This will help you configure social media sharing tools separately for each website. Otherwise, if you use the same main AddThis account for all your blogs, the social media tools configured and enabled will all be applied to the websites. 

• Too manage different websites and blogs on Add This separately, create a profile for each from "My Site menu > Add a profile". AddThis will create a separate profile ID for each.

Adding "AddThis" Social Media Sharing Tools on Website

For native websites, you will need to add code to the HTML pages manually as there won't be plugins or widgets available. After enabling a Social Sharing tool, "AddThis" will display the code to add to the HTML page. The code will be of two types:

1. Main code with the profile ID which need to be added to the HTML page

After enabling a particular tool, AddThis will display some code to add to the website. The first code is one that need to be added within and before the </body> of the HTML page. This is required. It looks like this-

<!-- Go to www.addthis.com/dashboard to customize your tools -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-0000000000000000"></script>

The profile ID in use is highlighted in red above. If you create separate profiles for each website, each profile will have it's own ID.

2. Additional Code related to the Social Media tool

Some of the AddThis Social Media tools will not require you to add widget codes specifically. But some will require you to add. For example, if you enabled "Sharing Sidebar", AddThis does not require you to add a code specific to the "Sharing Sidebar". Only the first code is required. Some other tools will require that you add code specifically for it. The code will look like-

<!-- Go to www.addthis.com/dashboard to customize your tools -->
<div class="addthis_native_toolbox"></div>

For websites, paste the additional code within the body of the page and in an area where you would like this tool to appear.

Adding "AddThis" Social Media Sharing Tools on Blogger

If you want to add "AddThis" social share tools to blogger, it is very simple. You can simply add both the codes to widgets or gadgets in layouts. Since the requirement by AddThis is that the code has to be within the body of the HTML page, adding AddThis codes to widgets or Blogger gadgets works.

You may add "AddThis" social media tools in Blogger following the steps below:

• Login to Blogger and go to LAYOUT
• Add a new GADGET
• Select HTML/JAVASCRIPT as the GADGET type
• Paste the FIRST AddThis code in it and Save Arrangement
• Add another GADGET and select HTML/JAVASCRIPT as the GADGET type
• Paste the Additional AddThis code (related to the tool you enabled)
• Save Arrangement
• The AddThis Social Media Tools should now be visible on the blog.

AddThis Social Sharing buttons can be added to Wordpress or other CMS in a similar way. AddThis has a WordPress plugin that can also be use (Social Share Buttons by AddThis for WordPress).

AddThis Analytics /Statistics

AddThis also includes website statistics which is very useful. You can find out information about number of shares, follows, recommended content, targeting rules. From the Analytic report graphs, you can find out your top contents, top referring domains, Social sources etc. which could be very helpful for bloggers to under the site's performance also.

Access "Analytics" from AddThis.com > Analytics.

Another similar Social Sharing tools available for Free are ShareThis.