Blogging 204: WordPress.com Social Sharing

Long-time SMUGgles will note something new at the bottom of each new post (and I will be adding these retroactively as I am able.) It looks like this:

This social sharing toolbar lets readers quickly and easily share interesting posts quickly and easily with specific friends or with the wider Web, through Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Blinklist, Ma.gnolia.com, Technorati, Furl and Newsvine.

So if you see something you want to share, like the 10 Steps to Your Own FREE Podcast post (which is featured in the screencast below) or this podcast on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), it’s easy to spread the word.

And it’s easy for you as a blogger to add these buttons to make your content easy to share. The screencast below takes you through the process of adding the buttons a post and also using the buttons to share.

But before we do that, I want to take a moment to thank Jan from the Typepad vs. WordPress blog (who will soon debut as a SMUG visiting professor) for sharing how to add this functionality. Because WordPress.com doesn’t allow import of Flash-based widgets, I had thought it was impossible to have these social sharing buttons on my posts. Another friend, Monty, calls WordPress.com “Digg-proof” and I think that’s why.

But no more. I saw these buttons on Jan’s blog (which is on WordPress.com) and asked how it was done. Jan sent the link to where I could download the GetSocial program, along with a tutorial.

But I thought a show-and-tell screencast would be simpler, so here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCnVpj6XCYs]