Content Sharing Applications

How can you make it easy for others to share your content online?

Aliza Sherman

Digital Marketer

June 12, 2008

3 minute read

Episode #7

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Content Sharing Applications

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Hi there, The Digital Marketer here, ready to help you put the power of the Internet and technology to work for your business.

Content you produce is your company’s asset. How can you leverage that content to enhance your company’s brand, demonstrate your expertise, and market what you do across the Web? You can allow people who visit your site to share your content with others. Sound scary?

I talked about RSS feeds in a previous podcast, however, content sharing tools–or content sharing widgets–are another easy and free way to spread your content around the Internet.

Why Share Content?

Sharing your Web site or blog content is very different from someone taking your content without your permission, putting their name on it and re-publishing it. Through content-sharing tools embedded into your site or blog, your branding and your byline remain intact along with a link to the original source of the content–your site.

The most common way sites have been sharing content for years is through an “E-mail This to a Friend” function where someone who is reading an article or blog post can easily e-mail a link to that content to anyone.

Encouraging your readers to share your content with others is a powerful way to drive traffic to your site and extend the reach of your brand. Here are some quick and dirty tips for preparing your content to share:

Put copyright symbols and language in place. Go to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s copyright site at copyright.gov to find out the best way to protect the content you publish online or speak with a cyber lawyer.
Assess your assets. Not all content makes sense to share. Content not worth sharing should not be online and available to the public. Keep it behind a password or keep it offline. Content worth sharing is anything that others can use – that isn’t proprietary to you and your company but has a more universal appeal. Case studies are great assets to share. Your internal memos or an off-topic rant about politics…probably not.
Create more in-demand content. Keep track of what content is shared most often from your site or blog. Think of ways that you can build on that content to provide additional useful and popular information. If a certain type of content works, produce more of it, but only if it works to achieve some of your business goals.

Content Sharing Widgets

Having content worth sharing is your first challenge. Providing easy-to-use features that allow your readers to click and easily distribute your content is your next challenge.

Two handy Web applications that make it easy for you to add a sharing function onto your site are ShareThis at ShareThis.com and AddThis at AddThis.com. Both tools allow you to enter your Web address onto their sites, and they provide you with some lines of code to place on your site that will allow readers to e-mail your content to others. Both of these sites also provide you with statistics so you can identify your most popular content.

These tools also allow your readers to share your content on content rating and bookmarking sites such as Digg at D-I-G-G.com, StumbleUpon at stumbleupon.com, Del.icio.us at D-E-L-dot-I-C-I-O-dot-U-S and Reddit at R-E-D-D-I-T.com. All of that translates into more traffic for you.

Bottom line: If you share your online content with easy-to-use widgets and tools, you can increase your audience and Web traffic exponentially.

That’s all we have time for today. Visit the show’s website at digitalmarketer.quickanddirtytips.com for links to all of the sites mentioned in the show. If you’d like to ask a question or request a topic for The Digital Marketer, email me at digitalmarketer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email .

The Digital Marketer’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Building Your Business With Web Tools is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network at quickanddirtytips.com.

Tune in for another business boost from The Digital Marketer, the host who’s not afraid to go under the Internet’s hood & get a little dirty!