AddToAny Blog
Guest Post: Location, Location, Location – How to Maximize Viral Traffic From AddToAny
This is a guest post by Dean Takamine of Mr. Cheap Stuff, a site for coupons, deals, discounts, and free stuff.
Recently I was looking for a way to increase referral traffic to my coupon site Mr. Cheap Stuff. I noticed many other shopping sites were using social bookmarking widgets to get more viral traffic. I did some research and finally decided to add AddToAny to my site.
Before using AddToAny I had used other social bookmarking widgets and I wasn’t too impressed with the results. After a few weeks of use I decided to check my stats and see what effect this little button had on my site. When I checked my stats I was pleasantly surprised. I noticed a jump in just about every category of my referring viral traffic. Now I love checking my stats to see all the viral traffic AddToAny is bringing to my site.
Why AddToAny is my weapon of choice to get viral traffic to my site
- It’s free & no registration
- Google Analytics integration
- Quick & easy installation
- Small size yet power features
- Easy to install WordPress Plugin
- Email uses sender’s own email servers, not your website’s
- With the proper placement it can bring in tons of viral traffic
How to use AddToAny to its full potential
All the viral traffic was great but I wanted to see if I could get even more traffic. One of the most important things you can do to maximize the potential of AddToAny is to a proper location on your webpage. I recommend using Google Analytics to help measure your results. Most people just put the AddToAny button under the main content but I also recommend trying different locations on the page like above the main content, sidebar and even integrating AddToAny within your content.
Testing AddToAny button locations
I decided to do some testing of the AddToAny button on of my Buy.com Coupon page. First I tested the AddToAny button under the main content. The results were not extremely impressive; I ended up not receiving much viral traffic. Next I decided to move it above the main content and I saw a huge improvement. This got me excited so I tested other locations until I ended up with the current location, which is integrated into the main content. The current integrated location of the button sends over 400% more viral traffic than having the button under the main content.
If your website doesn’t have an AddToAny button you are missing out on a lot of viral traffic. Also if you already have an AddToAny button on your site and have not tested and tweaked the location, then you could also be missing out on a lot of viral traffic.
What results have you gotten from tweaking your AddToAny button location?
Over 200,000 downloads for WordPress Share/Bookmark/Email Button plugin
Holy cow! Our WordPress sharing and bookmarking plugin has been downloaded over 200,000 times! Thanks to everyone’s insightful feedback, and over 2 years of development, the AddToAny Share/Bookmark/Email Button plugin is the most popular sharing widget plugin for WordPress blogs. We’re extra-proud of that!
It’s no secret that a lot of our effort goes into building a better WordPress plugin. In our last WordPress milestone announcement (50,000 downloads), we had a call for feedback and many of you responded with several actionable suggestions. With your help we made some noteworthy improvements:
- Standalone service links (exclusively on WordPress)
- More customization
- Support for older themes and platforms
- Localization/i18
… and a whole lot more. We’re continuing our call for feedback and invite all WordPress pros to weight in on how to make the plugin perfect before version 1.0 lands. Please feel free to get in touch directly or post your thoughts on the WP forums.
In other WordPress/Automattic news, we recently had the pleasure of working with IntenseDebate on a sharing plugin for comments (see post) and developing a sharing solution for WordPress.com publishers.
Share button for WordPress.com blogs – choose your own button
Shortly after launching our sharing & bookmarking button inserter for WordPress.com hosted blogs, many of you expressed interest in choosing your own button image. Good news: now you can!
On this page, just fill in a new URL for the button, click Change Button., and grab your inserter bookmarklet.
Get your Share Button Inserter now!
If you would like to use your own hosted button image (see others’ on Flickr), you can upload it to your WordPress.com blog then have the button inserter use that one. Just go to Settings > Media > Add New. Upload the image, copy the File URL, and replace/paste the URL into the Button URL box on our WordPress.com inserter page.
Let us know what you think!