Are Social Bookmarking Buttons Useless?
A poll about the use of social bookmarking buttons was set up on Dosh Dosh a week or two ago and it received 221 votes by readers and other visitors.
I’ve just ended the poll and I wasn’t really surprised with the results because they cohered with my personal experiences.
I’ll be the first to say that I have never used any social bookmarking buttons on any website or blog that I’ve come across. All my bookmarks or page submissions are done via a combination of official and third party bookmarklets or tools.
I guess I never developed the habit of using the bookmark icons for some reason. Before I examine the poll results, let’s do an introduction to social bookmark buttons.
What are Social bookmarking or voting buttons?
These are simply small icons or text links which allow you to easily bookmark the webpage you are reading by saving a link to it on an online bookmarking website. Some of these icons also allow you to submit the webpage to a variety of social voting websites, whereby other users of the social website can vote for it, if they find it interesting.
You’ll need to first register with the various social websites before you can start using the icons you see to bookmark the article. A good place to start is through this list of the top 25 most popular social bookmarking/voting websites online.
Social Bookmarking Usage Poll Results
Here are the results for the poll:
- 45% of users never used them (99 votes)
- 37% of users use them (81 votes)
- 19% of users don’t know what they are (41 votes)
According to the results, 64% of voters do not use social bookmarking buttons, with 19% of them not knowing what they are at all. Out of the 37% of voters who use the buttons, there is probably a large number of them who already know how to bookmark through other means as well.
I don’t think social bookmarking or voting buttons are necessary for any website but I keep them up because they can serve as reminders for your visitors to bookmark or share the article with others. If I had to choose between text links or icons, I would probably pick text links because they seem to be more instructive and direct.
Reduce Social Bookmarking Clutter
You can easily set up social bookmarking/voting buttons for your blog but try not to display too many icons: they can create too much clutter and most of the time, nobody or very few people use the less popular web services.
I would suggest sticking with popular social websites like del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit. Stumbleupon buttons are quite useless because I think most stumblers are more familiar with highlighting + thumbing up a web page they fancy.
It’s also important to pick a social voting option that suits the theme of your blog, mainly because you want your content submitted and shared with an audience that appreciates it.
You might also want to provide an emailing alternative for your readers because some of them will indeed prefer to share a web page via email, instead of just social bookmarking or voting it.
Well, 38% isn’t anything to sneeze at. Reddit’s the toughest nut to crack, as they despise middleman links and also don’t seem to care too much for articles about blogging or making money online. Digg is somewhat similar.
I detest bookmark button clutter. Not only is it unsightly, but it makes you look desperate for friends. The “Share this” WordPress plugin that you’re using (as do many bloggers) is a great solution. Add This is great, too, especially for blogspot-hosted blogs.
I use the service AddThis so that I can have all of those social bookmarking buttons/widgets in one single button titled “Bookmark”. When clicked, a windows asks you which service you want to bookmark your site on (for example, Delicious). Instead of putting all 20 or so widgets, I just have that one.
I use Add This as well when it was clear the Share This plugin wasn’t going to work properly on my site. Works great AND it includes stats.
Only thing is the Wordpress plugin also posts a button on your pages too, which makes it look out of place then.
I started a test of adding a few buttons at the bottom of each post. I picked Technorati and BlogLines beacuse TLA counts them as 70% of your score.
So I would agree to focus on just a few, but pick the few that best suits your needs.
BeachBum Michael
Share This,
At least I can blow my own trumpet till others take a lead.
Vijay
They are definitely not useful for anything but, as you say, reminding people to bookmark. I track clicks and very few people use them, though many of my posts are submitted to social networks via toolbars and other means. I think the next generation will be dynamic bookmarking buttons that update to show where a site’s traffic is coming from. Romlet, for example, continually updates to show where people are coming from, how many are coming and presents up-to-the-minute bookmarking buttons relevant to most recent posts. It is about to be released in beta form, and people who want to use it or see how it works can sign up here: http://romlet.com – it is kind of like AddThis only dynamic and on the sidebar, and I suspect way more people will use it.
agreed with sly@2, AddThis button declutter your post while offering more social bookmarking options.
I’ve dropped the sociable plugin a long back. If the articles are really that good on a site, I’m sure the savvy readers will find a way to bookmark it. The proliferation of such buttons is also developing social bookmarking blindness, which is one of the reasons why most visitors do not use it.
Cheers, Ellesse
Yeah i hate when people have like 50 different icons to click on that are squished in with the artlce, i have 5 very small icons, and they are well at the bottom, out of the way not intruding on the article itself.
I think the debate now would be which is better – addthis, sharethis, or sociable with like 50 buttons.
personally i like the look of the addthis or sharethis better than all the buttons.
I’m looking more at gregarious which allows you to add a few buttons and then add sharethis to add to the rest – but it is giving me errors.
The least I could do was Stumble this
Thanks for the excellent tip.
I think my blog is cluttered enough but I’m always worried I’ll miss putting something crucial.
Thanks for keeping things in perspective.
Very true indeed – I have tried social / community bookmarks on my blog, and they don’t really serve a purpose.
The reason I’m on those communities is to attract users from there to my blog – not the other way round, which is why it wasn’t effective.
I did find that my mybloglog / blogcatelog do bring regular new visitors, but not all of them comment, which in turn makes me question if they really had any interest in my blog at all.
Those services do show me the faces of the people who visited my blog – which is something that appeals to me personally.
In the end, if you clutter your blog with stuff it becomes annoying to everyone, which will just drive people away. I believe this is your point of view too.
Whenever, I see buttons for the various social sites, it almost becomes background noise. Although I do use Digg, Reddit, and Delicious, I’ve never used those buttons. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it just seems too forced.
Hey everyone,
Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts. Much appreciated.
I think “Add This” is interesting because they allow you to measure bookmarking statistics. I’ve noticed that Techcrunch uses them as well. But generally I don’t think that social bookmarking buttons matter at all.
Most avid users of social websites already know how to bookmark or submit a webpage and that’s probably I’m using a text-based social button, which gently reminds people that they have the option of doing so.
Text based links also help because as you’ve seen from the poll, some people don’t even know what the icons are for and text links at least explain their functions in a very basis way.
Interesting results. In the future, I’d suggest you give a little more thought to the structure of the polls. I didn’t respond to this one on bookmark buttons becuase your allowed responses didn’t include what is probably the most common use pattern. I click on them sometimes. Never “always”. I think bookmarking “all” posts is no more useful than bookmarking “none”. I do click on the buttons when I feel a post is noteworthy … but virtually all the “big name” social sites have no relevance except to those who blog about blogging … so they are of little or no value to me or my readers.
Thanks for your suggestions, Dave. I actually thought the options offered for this bookmarking poll were quite alright. If you look at the poll questions, there wasn’t an ‘always’ option but a ‘yes, I do’ option. It doesn’t mean that you have to use them all the time to pick ‘yes’. As long as you use them (even once) you can pick yes.
I think most of the social sites have relevance to those who don’t blog about blogging. For example, Reddit and Netscape usually cover politics in detail and some political blogs or websites do use social buttons, although they are in the minority. It’s usually the tech-savvy crowd that understands what these buttons are for and most of the other people don’t really know their purpose because they don’t bookmark or vote via social websites.
for me, this buttons looks so great to decorate my websites or blogs, i dont think that i use them at all except for the technorati fav button. lol.
I agree that the Share This wordpress plugin is the best and cleanest way to add a number of popular social networking options on a single post. I especially like how it also has an “email this” option. I went with the default text in my installation but must admit I really like how you changed the text to “Bookmark, Share, or Email this article.” I might think about extending my text beyond “Share This”
My mistake and your mistake both … shows the fallacy of English as a commonly understood langauage. Yes, the questions did _not_ say “always”. My error. The question says “Each post” which also specifically means, “all posts” … so again, no I use the buttons on “some” posts, not “each’ or “all”.
I also will still insist the traffic from those sites has very little to do with most niche blogs. I certainly agree with your view that a lot of political “debaters” frequent them … but those who argue politics have little or no interest to me.
Anyway, a good follow-on might be … how many times have you tried to use a button and have it fail? A great many of them seem to be part of someone’s off the shelf blog template and to not work properly … or that has been my experience. Testing them would be a good idea for anyone who plans to use them.
And while you are in the reading/responding to commnets mode, maki, what happened to your self-challenge of seven blogs in seven days? Will we ever get a follow-up report, or did you make one and I missed it?
And last but not least I am using your ProSense theme now and wow! It seems to be doing great. Thanks again to you an Dan.
Honestly as a internet marketer myself I never use the bookmarking buttons! Whenever I come across a site that interest me, I use the toolbar on top of my browser
Nice article. I especially like the last link to bookmark, email or share this page with the drop-down menu. Is it complicated to make one of those?
hello,
i don’t think having either a number of text links or icons at the bottom of each post is sensible for the reader. what if a reader uses a different social bookmarking service? i wouldn’t want anyone to feel less important
i use socialmarker, cos it is really just one button, however, when clicked, it takes the reader to the socialmarker site, where they can submit the post to any number of bookmarking sites. it basically opens one social bookmarking site after another within a frame, when “next” is clicked.
very convenient.
of course, the reader has the option to submit to just ONE site as well!
Well, one single bookmark button for all social bookmarks is ideal. I will look for it further more
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