How to Use Bookmarklets to Ease Social Media Efforts
As popular as social sharing has become, some great blogs and websites still don’t have sharing buttons or sharing buttons that work available to users. There are also many websites that choose to only include sharing buttons for the major social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, which poses a problem for those who really want to share an article on Tumblr or Pinterest. Although websites often have valid reasons for making the choices they do in regards to social sharing icons—they don’t want to spread themselves too thin, the majority of their audience uses StumbleUpon, their content usually isn’t appropriate for Pinterest, etc.—these choices won’t always coincide with what works for an individual.
Fortunately, individuals can take these matters into their own hands by taking advantage of bookmarklets. Although bookmarklets have been around for a while, Internet users are just now beginning to take notice. With social sharing and SEO becoming more intertwined every year, it’s going to be important that users are able to promote and share information as easy as possible.
How Bookmarklets Work
For those who are unfamiliar, the term “bookmarklets” refers to small icons that you can put in your browser’s bookmark bar or a folder. You can choose which bookmarklets you want to put in your browser bar and then simply just click the icon and share whatever webpage you are viewing at that time.
In most cases, you either need to download the bookmarklet or simply just drag it up to your bookmarks bar. There are literally hundreds of different bookmarklets out there to choose from. There are of course your typical Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn choices, but here are a few other popular bookmarklets and the links you can visit to download them:
- WordPress Press-This – This bookmarklet allows you to quickly put up a video or picture on your blog as well as edit content.
- Gmail This – This allows you to paste a link into your Gmail faster than if you were to copy and paste the link into another window with Gmail.
- Google Translate
- Instapaper
- Bitly Shortener
- Pinterest “Pin It” Button
- Tumblr
As you can see from some of the bookmarklets above, they are not all related to social sharing. Bookmarklets are really there to help make your Internet experiences easier and faster whether that be through social sharing or through emailing or browsing.
What Bookmarklets Mean for Your Company
Bookmarklets obviously mean that your company can work faster and easier. There are many social scheduling tools available, but the vast majority of these only focus on the major social networks. Utilizing bookmarklets will make it easier for your team to promote your content on every network possible, as well as go back and make any edits to any articles or respond to any emails.
Although there are hundreds of Bookmarklets to choose from, some companies still find that they need to make their own to really get where they want. Anybody can make it happen, but bookmarklets are technically little pieces of JavaScript, so the job might be best suited for an IT professional. You can read more about how to create your own bookmarklet here.
What is your favorite bookmarklet? How have bookmarklets helped your business? Let us know in the comments below!
Adam Heitzman is the founder of Higher Visibility, an SEO firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country. With over 10 years of experience in online marketing, Adam offers small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice.
