share – Stay N Alive

Getting Me to Share Your Posts

One of the things I like to do on my Twitter account is to share interesting articles around the web that I think would be interesting to my readers.  Such articles can be techy, geeky, mainstream, pop-culture, or anything I deem interesting.  Based on your retweets, I think you like it.  I had someone ask me the other day why I wasn’t sharing more of their posts.  It’s actually quite easy – I’d like to share how, and I’m pretty sure you can use this same technique on any other blogger that uses Google Reader.

I have a policy on Google Buzz – it’s the same policy I have on Twitter.  I follow everyone on Buzz who follows me.  The thing is that I think it’s even more powerful on Buzz because, just like Twitter, it gives me an opportunity to discover interesting people I may not have known about before.  For the spam, I have SocialToo for that.  However, with Buzz, for everyone I follow, I also see their Google Reader shares.  That means for every one of you that follows me on Buzz, if your content is interesting, I am very likely to discover your content that you share (that can even be your own blog posts!), and if I like it, that content goes straight to Twitter and Buzz.

So the secret is just to follow me on Buzz!  Yes, I hide many people in my Google Reader, so it’s important you share unique, and interesting posts.  Also, if I know you I’m also more likely to not hide your shares, so get involved in the conversation.  Comment on my shares, retweet my posts, reply to me, comment on my blog.  I read every single comment and try to respond where it makes sense.  As we have more discussions I get to know you better and I’m less likely to hide your content.

I hope that helps.  I don’t think the individual who asked me to share his content more is following me in Buzz.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t hide his content because I know him and I like his content.  The secret is to follow on Buzz, join the conversation, and I’ll very likely share your interesting shares on Twitter.  I think the same goes with anyone that uses Google Reader.  There’s a great opportunity here – I hope you use it.

You can follow me on Buzz over on my Google Profile.  Can’t wait to start seeing your shares!

Photo courtesy Creative Commons on Flickr.

Introducing the FB Share Button WordPress Plugin for Facebook Share

FacebookToday Facebook launched a nifty little tool enabling website owners and bloggers to allow their users to better share and track their content on Facebook.  The new tool provides a piece of HTML and javascript that renders a little “Share” button.  When clicked, the post is tracked by Facebook, the number of shares is shown, and via an API comments, likes, shares, and more can be tracked across all of Facebook for items shared via that button.  Today I’m going to add to that by providing a WordPress plugin.

The FB Share Button WordPress plugin renders the Facebook share button of your choice on your blog.  Via admin settings in WordPress you can choose which Share button you would like to display, where you want to display it, and even provide the language for the link.  The plugin is based on the same Easy Retweet plugin by Sudar which you see on this blog.

To install, just download this link, untar and ungzip into your WordPress plugins directory.  Activate the plugin, adjust your settings to display where you like (or you can manually add it to your template or posts – see the readme), and it will display for every post you write on your blog.  You can even turn it on or off per blog post.

I’m also working to make this FBFoundations compatible so it will load as an optional XFBML tag if you like – expect that in a future revision.  Now WordPress bloggers everywhere have the capability to enable and track Facebook sharing on their blog.  You can download it here:

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/facebook-fb-share-wordpress-plugin.zip

Stay tuned though – in the next revision I’m hoping to add Facebook API support so you can track and read the number of shares, comments, likes across all of Facebook from your WordPress admin.  That will all fit in with the FB Foundations plugin I wrote earlier.