Do Social Media Buttons Really Work?

I took some time to see first hand how these social media buttons (aka Share) really worked to drive traffic to my humble web site blog and product pages. So I signed up with Addthis. I installed their code onto most of my web pages and tested the Share button. The Share button worked fine for FB and Twitter. It accurately posted my URL title and link to both sites. Addthis will also collect some data or analytics to give you some idea of "who" shared your web paged or blog with FB and Twitter and other social media sites.

They will send you an email report depicting Share activity. Don't get your hopes set too high for a ton of traffic caused by your Share button. You still need to use conventional traffic driving techniques - in addition to your Share button. Of course you have to have a web visitor to like your web page strongly enough to want Share it. But, don't give up sooner or later someone will give your Share button a go. And, that could start generating visitors you would have not otherwise have received.

Your Share button will take some time to pull traffic. As for my attempt to use the Share button, I could not wait for them to email my Share stats. My web hosting company stats are too unwieldy to make quick sense of my traffic. So I used StatCounter's free real time traffic stats to solve that problem. And within a matter of seconds they tell you where your traffic is coming from along with what page they visited.

So far I've seen very little traffic generated by my Share button. But, I am not willing to give up on it just yet. I think that "every little bit helps" and sooner or latter it will kick in. I'll just have to wait and see. At this point I would recommend installing a Share button on your web pages and you, like me, will have to wait to see just how much traffic it's generating.

If you are already installed a Share button on your web site, let us know if it is generating traffic - in the comments