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SOCIAL SHARING: BEST PRACTICES TO TURN
YOUR USERS INTO BRAND AMBASSADORS
PUBLISHED BY:
LOGINRADIUS INC.
EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA
APRIL 25, 2013
VERSION 1.0
This whitepaper discusses the best practices for social sharing on websites and
focuses on LoginRadius’ Social Share solution.

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INTRODUCTION
Social sharing is being widely utilized across all industries and mediums, such
as news and media sites, e-commerce sites, blogs, etc. by users who want to
share web content with their friends, and thus has become an integral part of
web applications.
Content sharing leads to significant referral traffic for your website, thereby
boosting your business with high returns on marketing efforts --- also known
as online word-of-mouth marketing.
There are two components that make up the best practices for social sharing:
1) Selection of social networks
2) Position of Social Share widget
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SELECTION OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
The optimal selection of social networks depends upon the following two factors:
1.1 USER DEMOGRAPHY
Always select the sharing networks based on your users’ demographics: region,
language, profession, interest, and age group. Most sharing networks represent a
specific target population. For example, LinkedIn is primarily used by professionals,
and vKontakte is widely used in Russia. If you think your users will print your content,
then it is a good idea to include the print button in the sharing widget.
1.2 POPULARITY OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
It is always a good idea to choose the most popular sharing networks. At
LoginRadius, we analyzed sharing activities across our platform and the following
table shows the top 15 sharing networks by user preference:
Top 15 social networks on Loginradius Platform
Rank Social Sharing Network User Preference (in %)
1 Facebook 52.00%
2 Twitter 21.00%
3 Google Plus 8.00%
4 Email 4.60%
5 LinkedIn 4.10%
6 Google 2.20%
7 vkontakte 1.40%
8 Digg 1.10%
9 Tumblr 1.00%
10 Yahoo 1.00%
11 MySpace 0.80%
12 Delicious 0.70%
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Top 15 social networks on Loginradius Platform
13 Pinterest 0.60%
14 Reddit 0.60%
15 Live 0.30%
To learn more about social network trends, read our recent industry research: Social
Network Statistics – Social Login and Social Sharing Trends – Q1 2013
LoginRadius provides you with options to customize the social sharing widget, so
that you can select the sharing networks to be shown, set their order, and choose
your desired social sharing theme.
2. POSITIONING OF THE LOGINRADIUS SOCIAL SHARING

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2. POSITIONING OF THE LOGINRADIUS SOCIAL SHARING
WIDGET
The position of the social sharing widget drastically affects sharing activities on a
website and the resulting referral traffic. The position of the sharing widget typically
depends upon your website type, which we have divided into 3 categories:
2.1 Blogs, News, and Content Websites
The best chance of your content being shared is when the user gets hooked
onto your content. We recommend the following three positions to motivate
users into sharing:
• If the design and aesthetics of the page permits, placing the social sharing widget
just below the content title will provide the greatest value. We recommend using
the Social Counter widget with sharing options.
• Always add the sharing widget to the end of the content as users are most inclined
to share right after reading the article.
• Add the Social Counter widget to the left of the content.

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LoginRadius’ CMS plugins provide the option to enable the social sharing
interface both before and after the content, as well as the option to place
the social counter interface to the left of the content. For non-CMS websites,
LoginRadius provides JavaScript code that can be placed in the desired position
of the website.
2.2 E-COMMERCE WEBSITES
If you have an e-commerce store or any other website that promotes products to
your website’s visitors, you can use Social Share in a variety of ways to help you
reach your goal.
Below Product Description
Providing an option to share the product page will result in more leads. As
the product description is shared among the user’s social circle, an increasing
number of qualified leads will be captured as friends and family go on to share
the product within their circles.

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Below the “Add to Cart” Button
Once the user makes the decision to buy a product by adding to cart, displaying
the sharing widget right below the “Add to Cart” button will increase the
chances of the user sharing the product.
Product Review Submitted by the User
Allowing users to share their product review with their social networks is a great
way to engage customers. A good review of your product will go a long way
towards establishing your brand in the mind of your prospective customers. As
social shopping is the next big thing in the e- commerce space, an increasing
number of users will buy products on the recommendation of their family and
friends. Users shall be motivated to share at the time of submitting the review.
2.3 OTHER WEBSITES
Most website pages can easily be categorized into one of the two aforementioned
categories, but there are a few pages which do not fit into either category. For those
pages, we suggest using the vertical social sharing widget to the left of the content
(if the webpage design allows) in a location that is immediately visible on the page
without the need to scroll.

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ABOUT LOGINRADIUS
LoginRadius was founded in 2012 and has continued to grow rapidly to over 120,000
customers and has a monthly reach of 250 million social share views. LoginRadius
made it into the list of Canada’s Top 25 Startups (by TechVibes) and BranhamGroup
placed us among Canada’s Top 25 Up-and-Coming ICT companies.
We are funded by some of the top Canadian VC’s: Yaletown Venture Partners,
Accelerate Fund, BDC Capital, and Real Ventures. We are partnered with industry
leaders Amazon, Mozilla, Google and Microsoft; and are working together towards a
common goal of simplifying how users connect to the web.
Currently, LoginRadius has over 25 employees and headquarters in Edmonton,
Canada. There are also additional offices in Jaipur, India, and Sunnyvale, California.
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APPENDIX
(A) HORIZONTAL SOCIAL SHARING WIDGET THEMES
(A) VERTICAL SOCIAL SHARING WIDGET THEMES
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APPENDIX
LIST OF SHARING NETWORKS SUPPORTED BY LOGINRADIUS
PLATFORM
Facebook DotNetKicks Technorati Webride
Twitter Hyves MisterWong Segnalo
Google Plus StumbleUpon Netvibes muti
Email PDF LaTafanera YahooBuzz
LinkedIn FriendFeed SheToldMe Kirtsy
Google Diigo Linkter Fark
vkontakte NewsVine Xerpi connotea
Digg DZone Faves HealthRanker
Tumblr MyShare Sphinn Meneame
Yahoo Print Netvouz Gwar
MySpace BarraPunto ThisNext BlinkList
Delicious Yigg Ratimarks LinkArena
Pinterest LinkaGoGo Upnews Haohao
Reddit Wykop eKudos NuJIJ
Live blogmarks Rec6 Posterous
HackerNews Hemidemi Slashdot Scoopeo
Mixx
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