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Are you using Shareaholic on your website or blog to help promote your pages across different social networks? Did you know many people miss one particular setting when they decide to start using Shareaholic and it hurts their social sharing efforts?
Most of these people don’t even know that this setting is hurting their social sharing efforts! So here I hope to help you discover what is the most important setting you need to change in Shareaholic. How to change it and why you should change it asap.
What is Shareaholic?
Shareaholic is primarily known for its Social Media sharing buttons which it can add to your website. It can be installed on a variety of platforms including WordPress, Drupal and Squarespace.
For a free option, Shareaholic is a great tool. It’s one of several tools used to run Individual Obligation. I can honestly say I don’t use all the features. But those I do use I have been more than happy with.
It has its Pros and Cons. The floating and static buttons work well but the setting’s menus are confusing. Some sets of settings being possible to edit in multiple places. Not to mention settings being buried within sub menus and tabs within tabs.
How do I setup Shareaholic?
A list of comprehensive installation instructions can be found on Shareaholic’s website here. So I recommend starting with their installation instructions to get started if you haven’t already.
Once you’ve installed and verified your site with Shareaholic. Start poking around the settings by going to My Sites and clicking on your site. With any new add-ons, you should always go through the settings to make sure everything is customised to your needs and goals.
By default, you’ll start in the Apps page. This is broken down into sections for:
- Analytics
- Prompts
- Monetization
- Content Personalization
- Follow Buttons
- Social Sharing
Analytics
Here your Google Analytics can be configured so the social shares through Shareaholic can be tracked. These settings are sitewide. If you are looking for the actual analytic stats these are under Site Settings > Analytics.
Prompts
When users share content through one of Shareaholic’s social network buttons. A prompt can be toggled on to appear asking the visitor to follow you.
It’s possible to customise the messages, which social networks to display and the design of the buttons. However, it’s not possible to customise the design of the prompt box itself. Which lets this feature down.
If you use cookies on your website for whatever reason, then you should definitely notify users. Any websites that are based in Europe or have Europe based visitors are required to display this.
Shareaholic has a nice quick and easy way to add this to your site if you don’t have one yet. Simply toggle it on and customise the settings to your needs. Again the main downside is that the customisation is limited visually so it might look out of place. Remember to set the location of the Privacy Policy to your actual website’s page.
Monetization
Here are tools for automatically making normal links into affiliate ones, adding video ads, anchoring adds to the bottom of the screen, and adding ads in general.
Lots of tools here are to help make money through Shareaholic. I currently only use the Affiliate Links, which are toggled on by default. I suggest going through these carefully and configuring to your own preferences. As Ads can be downright ugly if overused or implemented poorly.
Content Personalization
Here related content displays can be set up to try and get visitors to engage with other pages on your site. In the Settings, the overall look can be customised with different themes, like rounded, card, text-only, facebook etc. The Max Posts can be set as low as 4 and as high as 16.
Content Pool tab allows you to filter what content you want to appear. This is site wide. The Page Tag Filter can be used to include or exclude content based on tags such as excluding Pages and only including Posts. Filtering can also be done based on custom tags you’ve applied. For example, this page has the tag Shareaholic. So I can filter all content with this tag and either exclude or include it for the Content Pool.
If you want to exclude a specific page, add its URL to Pages to exclude from Related & Promoted Content.
The Algorithm tab allows you to set how Shareaholic matches content to related content by using a page’s Title and Tags. As well as setting a minimum number of tags in common.
Keep in mind though that Page Tags mean categories, page type (page or post) and tags you’ve added yourself. If you’ve excluded all pages from your Content Pool then all related content will have the post tag in common. Meaning all content will already have 1 tag in common.
Next, the Monetization tab has settings you will have already come across if you went through and configured the Monetization section on the main apps page. There’s no right or wrong way to set this as it depends on your goals and your audience.
Finally, the Code tab provides you will either a WordPress shortcode or a manual HTML code to paste into your website.
Shareaholic has four Related Content apps already set up by default for you to use. More can be added if you like but the only difference between them is the Layout tab.
Follow Buttons
Follow buttons can be added to the Post Share Prompt which was mentioned earlier. This is just another way to get to the same settings. You also have the ability to add follow buttons directly into pages using the Follow Buttons option. The options between the two are similar. So while the buttons can be customised, you have limited control.
Social Sharing
The bread and butter of the Shareaholic add-on. These Apps allow you to add floating share buttons, share buttons when hovering over images, static share buttons and share counters.
You should be able to see the Floated Share Buttons to the left of this post. You have slightly more customisation options than in previous Apps. Since I was able to make everything fit into my colour scheme.
Even a preview and settings can be edited for mobile devices.
If you switch to the Targeting Rules tab, by default the Floating Share Buttons will display on all pages. This may or may not be what you want depending on your site. For me I didn’t want the floated share buttons on my home, contact, meet the author or disclosures page. I prefer that people share my content and I don’t want to clog up my homepage. My rules look like this at the moment:
The Analytics tab is the same site-wide settings you may have set previously.
Shareaholic has an option to add share buttons over images. This is particularly handy if you want to add Pin buttons onto images for sharing on Pinterest. Here’s how the Pin button is setup on Individual Obligation.
You’re not just limited to Pinterest though. Any of these services can be added as buttons to images.
Settings for the Total Share Counter can be left as default. As the settings inside the separate Share Button Apps calculate this providing the option is toggled on.
Finally, the Share Buttons App is just for static share buttons which can be stuck in strategic places, such as at the bottom of a post. You’ll notice this Post has these at the bottom of the article. Here are some of the settings I have set up for the unique call to action header.
The Most Important Setting You Need to Change
Now, what’s the most important setting you need to change? Well, it’s hidden inside the different Social Sharing Apps. The setting is in each of the Apps but you only need to set it once as the setting is site wide.
So let’s go to Social Sharing > Floated Share Buttons > Configure.
Head over to the General Settings tab at the top.
On the Sharing Settings page, you should have a Tweet Template.
By default, the template includes via @Shareaholic.
You absolutely must change the @Shareaholic to whatever your twitter handle is. For example, I set mine to @IObligation
To customise the rest of the tweet to your liking, use the variables described underneath (${title}, ${link} and ${short_link}). You may also add your own static text and hashtags. Just be aware that this will appear on all shared tweets from this site regardless of page.
Why Is This Setting The Most Important To Change?
This setting is buried away inside the menus and difficult to find. If you don’t know it’s there, and do not change it then all the tweets shared from your site will have via @Shareaholic. This isn’t good for your social shares as people won’t know where the tweet originated from. You also won’t get notified that someone tweeted your content since it won’t mention you.
People may even decide not to share your content because it doesn’t correctly reference the source. Meaning they either need to go find the source and edit the tweet before posting. Or technically post incorrect information, which could be considered bad etiquette. Every little bit of extra work makes people less likely to share. So best to make it as easy as possible.
The whole point of using Shareaholic is to promote your content and get it shared more. By not changing this option, you are shooting in the foot every effort this tool and yourself make to boost shares.
Do People Forget This Setting?
Short answer: Yes.
People miss changing this setting a lot. Most likely because the option is buried under a lot of submenus. Just go to Twitter and search for via @Shareaholic
You’ll be shocked at the number of tweets that come up. Sadly Twitter doesn’t give me a count so I can’t provide an exact number. I just know I was scrolling for what felt like an eternity.