AddThis is a social sharing and demographics monitoring tool that you can install on your blog or website. It's available as a plugin for WordPress but you can also install it on your Blogger blog, website or newsletter. To give you an idea of how huge the AddThis social sharing platform is, these stats are taken directly from their website:
“Here's AddThis by the numbers:
- 14 Million Sites: AddThis social plugins and analytics are used by over 14 million sites worldwide.
- 1.3 Billion Users: AddThis reaches 1.3 billion unique users worldwide monthly through the sites that use our platform.
- 10 Terabytes of Data: AddThis plugins are loaded over 3 billion times a day, generating 10 terabytes of data daily. That’s as much data as a digital Library of Congress weekly.
- 500 Brands: AddThis Social+ audiences enable over 500 brands to reach the right audiences at the right time across the web via real-time bidding platforms.”
Plugin To Your Audience With AddThis
Take a moment to imagine all of the data that is being collected from all of the websites around the globe with the AddThis tracking codes installed. This should give you a pretty good idea about how using AddThis on your blog can give you an in-depth understanding of your audience so you can target your message in a way that resonates with them.
Do you want to know what social network is giving you the most bang for your buck?
Want to find out when someone actually clicks on your links from Facebook or Twitter?
AddThis is the perfect tool for tracking social engagement and providing insights that other social sharing plugins like Digg Digg can't capture. Let me put it a different way, some plugins will give you social proof and display the number of people sharing your content, AddThis takes it a step further and shows you where the traffic is coming from based on the links people are sharing.
Even more simply – what shared links convert into blog traffic!
Take a look at this video I recorded as I demonstrate the wealth of information we can learn from the AddThis analytics reports.
AddThis Plugin for WordPress Monitor Social Engagement on Your Blog
In the video I give you a tour of the various dashboards and metrics you can monitor from the AddThis website. We looked at these reports:
- Summary – the daily shares and clicks
- Content – trending blog posts
- Audience – learn what interests your audience and to what degree
- Services – which services are used to share your content
- Geography – what is being shared by country
I recommend that you install the plugin and let it collect data about your site over at least a four week period or even longer before you begin to take steps to tweak your message and get closer to the needs of your target audience. The reports on the dashboard will help you make crucial decisions about the content you're publishing on your blog and also improve your social and subscription calls to action.
New: The AddThis Welcome Bar
Not long after I posted the video on YouTube, Kori from AddThis reached out to me. She was really excited to learn that I was spreading the word about AddThis and she so thoughtful and kind that she hooked me up with some “schwag” and you can see all the goodies she sent in this pic I took.
Kori also told me to the new AddThis Welcome Bar which is a separate plugin or script that you can run on your site. She goes into detail about the Welcome Bar on the company blog which you can check out for more information.
You can get the click tracking to see right away when any of your content is going viral.
One last thing before I forget – I love the way AddThis connects directly with Bit.ly and StumbleUpon too. Bit.ly revamped their interface and so did StumbleUpon so this is a really nice integration. It's much easier to find the StumbleUpon links when I want to share them over on the Social Buzz Club and the link to the Bit.ly reports are an added bonus.
Get AddThis!
Give the AddThis Plugin a try and find out which social networks are really sending traffic to your blog. I know that it can be so overwhelming at times to decide where to focus your attention and in the long run your decision making process will be a lot easier after you let AddThis collect some valuable data for you. Knowledge is power and the more you can learn about your audience the more you can use that information to your advantage. Let me know how you make out with AddThis or if you have any questions about what I covered in the video.