Why social bookmarking links are usually a waste of space

I think it really only helps Stumbleupon and delicious to have those links. If you really want to help yourself first, you gotta get the Javascript plugin that way no search engine crawls your site and gives credit to StumbleUpon or Delicious. It's unfair for bloggers to promote big sites without any money, I rather use javascript to do just that.

All those icons confuse me too. It's chaos.
I think that, the Digg and Technorati work when they come with the stats. As you said, people wants to know what others dugg.

Thanks for the comment, Max! That's a very good point. As I was approaching it from the angle of non-technical readers being confused by them, I didn't even think of that.

I do think it's a good idea to link to other sites, but if every single blog entry has a link to StumbleUpon and the rest... well, that's a lot of publicity for sites that already have a lot of traffic. The big just get bigger.

Thanks for the comment, Djakson (we commented at the same time).

I think people should keep the links to a minimum if they include them at all. I have seen some blogs that have 10 of these links on every blog entry. It's overkill!

If nobody has dugg or stumbled an entry yet, then there are no stats... and seeing a counter that says "1 digg" makes me wonder why it's even there.

Some of these links are in my feed... maybe that's the best place for them?

I'm glad to see someone else talking about this. While it's probably not easy to make sure that every aspect of every potential visitors experience is completely smooth and confusion-free, details such as the one you just mentioned are so frequently overlooked.

With A-list bloggers who don't deserve their fame all talking about the same things like, "how to comment on others blogs to get noticed" (see my antidote), the bloggers who follow them never seem to get a good education in the "details" where we both know the devil resides.

Thanks for redeeming them with some simple, straight talk on not assuming everyone knows what's obvious to them. ;-)

Sam
ps found you through Entrecard.

Hi Ben, I think you might have inadvertently assumed something yourself. As you see, in my previous comment, the html didn't take. The "link" button is obvious to me but I didn't know that the comment section wouldn't still take HTML like so many do.

And now I've got an ugly link! ;-)

Sam

Hi Sam, thanks for the insightful comment. :) I have read the blog entry you linked to. I think that's a great strategy and I have already started doing this in the last few weeks.

Sorry about the link - I fixed that for you. I'll see what I can do about the comment box, as I've been working on a new version of Majestic and this would be a good thing to include. I think it would be easier just to allow a few HTML tags. Thanks for giving me a nudge about this. :)

Wow, someone who feels the same way about all these so-called social bookmarking sites.
My readership is generally not into blogs, and most have no idea what the heck a Digg is. Nor would my site likely to be Dugg as it's not your typical content. I do use a few provided by Feedburner at the end of my posts, but mostly the ones I think my type of readers would use (email this, for example).
This post gave me the idea to add the explanation of what they are to my FAQ page. Thanks.

Hi Sue, thanks for the supportive comment. :) Glad to give you the idea of adding an explanation, too.

This kind of post is something I hope to do more of, i.e. questioning things that many bloggers seem to do as a matter of course. I build on this topic in my latest blog entry, Join blogging sites when the time is right for YOU.

It's good to see I'm not alone in these thoughts!

I agree with what's been posted so far, but I do think that social bookmarking links do offer one function which hasn't been mentioned...

I've been using Digg, Del.icio.us etc for a while, but there are times when a reminder is really helpful... Maybe I might have slipped back to using a browser bookmark, or I might not have checked to see if anyone had used Digg, or Stumbleupon to reward a story. And that's the main purpose of the those links for me...as a memory aid..

Hi Badger, thanks for the comment. :)

I think it looks a bit desperate if every blog entry has "Digg This", "Stumble This" and so on, but most of them haven't been submitted. Seeing every post with "1 Digg" or "2 Diggs" suggests that nobody likes the site, when in fact it's just that nobody's submitted many of the posts.

I think that a couple of links may be acceptable. What I dislike is when someone puts a huge list of every bookmarking site under the sun beneath every post they make. It's just needless clutter. Maybe add one or two but who honestly uses all of those sites?

And as always, an explanation of what the sites are for is important. :)

I think I struck something of a middle ground. Addthis has a very handy plugin for Wordpress that creates a tiny "bookmark" badge on every post. Mousing over it pops out a little window with all the popular bookmarking services listed.

http://blog.addthis.com/?p=32

Maybe you'd like to look in to it? It's a wonderfully unobtrusive way of linking to the major services.

~ Wogan

Actually, that rings a bell, and I'm surprised I didn't mention it here (doh!). I may very well have a look at this soon. Thanks for the tip!

The link to the BBC there is great. I think i'm going to go through and update the links on our site.

I definately don't use the digg widget - because seeing anything less than 50 or 100 on a post is just discouraging.

Hi Matt, thanks for the comment. I totally agree about things like the Digg widget - seeing one of those on every single post just looks desperate. I feel the same about similar widgets such as the Sphinn and BloggingZoom widgets. Maybe if the widgets only showed up once they get above a certain number of ratings? Either way, I'm happy with my "Stumble This!" link with no indication as to how many other people already rated my page. :)

How do you even get those bookmarking tools at the end of each post.

I can't seem to find a site that'll give me the code so it automatically attaches itself to each new post.

Thanks

Hi Matt, thanks for the comment and welcome to my site. So you still want to include the links after reading my post? :) If so - this might help: TopRank Social Bookmarking Tool

little correction: Google explain in their help what is bounce rate...

mmorts- I hadn't noticed that, thanks for pointing it out. However, I think they could easily provide a short explanation within Google Analytics itself, instead of requiring you to go to a help section and search for what you require.