Meta post – on social media, Google +1, share buttons and blogging.

Jun 20, 2011

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Obviously I have enormous amounts of stuff to get ready for the weekend and weeks ahead, just as obviously I’m suddenly shattered and in pain from the run yesterday, and now coming down to earth with a bump after a lovely morning with my #MumsOnThree posse (great to meet you all!) and fantastic lunch courtesy of Three and their On the Go Mums campaign. So instead of even spending time making a list, I’ve done some page editing and then fiddled with my AddThis plugin, upgrading it and tweaking the options on show.

I’ve gone for the Google +1 button. I considered this carefully as I’ve heard rumours it can adversely affect technorati rankings. Given that my technorati ratings have suddenly dropped to 25% of their previous average, I don’t think I need to worry about that too much (what is *with* that??) and as I think the future of the search is increasingly going to be social, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I had a read around and a chat on twitter as well, as you do, and had this article on the button recommended to me too. I liked it so much that I activated my google profile to +1 it. Which leads me to wonder who is going to go through that – will it be bloggers? On some levels we are early adopters of a lot of this stuff, particularly in the social media arena, but in this case, you have to have a public profile that shows who you are and what you’ve liked. I opted out of having google customise my content and search results based on my recommendations, and I wonder if that will counterbalance the whole thing, and whether it will end up being a complete flop.

Only one way to find out though, and that’s by giving it a go. Would love to hear your thoughts in the usual place. Or places. And if you think the article is interesting, do feel free to share or +1 it 😀

Addthis blogging Google +1 social media

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Comments

15 responses to “Meta post – on social media, Google +1, share buttons and blogging.”

MIdlife Singlemum
20 June 2011
Obviously I want to +1 this post. However, I cannpt see the +1 button. On my blogger page it appears below the post next to the fb, twitter, googlebuzz, M (whatever that is), buttons. Would it be missing because I came straight to this page via my blog list instead of going to your home page?
Reply
MIdlife Singlemum
20 June 2011
Sorry, I found it – but if it was so hard to see it may not be used so much. Hope this is useful, I don’t want to make empty criticisms.
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1. Jax
  20 June 2011
  How bizarre! When I look at it, I have Twitter, FB, Google +1, then an orange box with a plus on it. But the google one does take longer to load, which is weird. Where did it show up when you could see it? Thanks for looking.
  Reply
MIdlife Singlemum
20 June 2011
That is weird – I can see the twitter , the fb and the orange plus buttons but the +1 is not with them (just the three appear). I found the google +1 below in feint gray type in a line of other information. Just checked again to be sure.
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1. Jax
  20 June 2011
  What browser are you using please?
  Reply
MIdlife Singlemum
20 June 2011
Woops – what I found was your tag saying Google +I. I clicked on that but actually it’s not the +1 button. On the positive side – you have had about four comments from me and about 10 pageviews as i keep coming back to see if it has appeared yet. It hasn’t.
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1. Jax
  20 June 2011
  giggle. How very odd. It does take ages to load, but does load eventually here. I think I’ll have to look at a different solution, though, it’s really not ideal if it’s not going to show fast enough for ppl to use!
  Reply
Michelle Twin Mum
20 June 2011
Just hoovered over it and it said to +1 as my email address and seeing as generally I do not give that out, only my blog one I won’t be +1ing. Not even sure what it is, a new way to do social media shares I assume?
Mich x
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1. Jax
  20 June 2011
  Article I linked to explained it, but basically it’s a way of voting up articles in google’s search results. Combining social media and seo. But google wants you to do it as yourself – it goes to a popup where you create a profile with your real name. And I’m not sure how many ppl are going to want to do that, at least to begin with. But then again, a lot more ppl like with fb than I ever expected either.
  Reply
Merry
21 June 2011
Yeah, I added it a week or so ago (with no research at all!!!!) I’m still slightly baffled to it, I loathed most of the google tweaks like adding stars and getting results based on your previous visits. Makes my seo work on the sites very hard. So we shall see with this one.
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1. Jax
  21 June 2011
  Have you had many votes via it? How did you add it? Plugin? Does it actually show up all the time??? Mine doesn’t seem to show up on phones, which is a bit of a pain, and is so slow loading on normal site as to be overlooked I think.
  Reply
  1. Merry
    21 June 2011
    It’s a plugin (!) and I think I have had a few but I haven’t looked at it much really. Doesn’t seem to load on phones though.
    Reply
    1. Jax
      24 June 2011
      I’m told it’s disabled on phones, which seems peculiar tbh.
      Reply
Martina Iring
23 June 2011
Yes, it’s hard to know at the moment whether this whole +1 thing is really going to catch on. But since it’s so easy to get going via plugin, I would recommend to anyone who blogs regularly to go for it. If it doesn’t fly, it will be as simple as deactivating the plugin. I have noticed on really popular blogs with lots of traffic that they are getting quite a few +1s. I definitely agree with you Jax that us bloggers are early adopters of this kind of thing. If your readers are just regular folks and not super internet savvy, they might not be going for it. I guess time will tell!
Reply
1. Jax
  24 June 2011
  I think while it’s disabled on phones it’s not going to catch on, I think a lot of ppl are reading that way these days. My readers are I think regular, though there’s probably a few more internet savvy, mainly by dint of having been around blogs and blogging for quite some time. I will be interested to see how many +1s I get, and whether it has an adverse affect on other network scoring.
  Reply