How To Install A Social Bookmarking Tool On Your Blog

Yesterday I was at the Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival in Cary all day, so I'm a little wiped. Thank you to all of your who came out! :) It was a successful show and a beautiful day, but quite warm in the afternoon. I'm taking a breather today, so I'm re-posting a previous post about how to install a social bookmarking tool on your blog. Come back tomorrow for the Monday Must-Have feature! Have a wonderful day.

Last night I posted a question in the Etsy forums about social bookmarking and blogs. I wanted to know how I could add a button or some sort of tool to the end of each post that would allow someone to socially bookmark and share my posts with other sites. I received a few different answers, but my favorite response was from Joanna of JoannasPhotography. She introduced me to "Add This," which helped me install exactly what I was looking for.


Here's a brief tutorial of how to add a social bookmarking tool button to each post in your blog using "Add This." Click on any of the images in this post to make them larger.

Go to http://www.addthis.com/ and click on the big orange "Get Your Button" button. :) The button you will want will be the "sharing/bookmarking button." Choose how you want your button to look and choose "on a blog" for the "where." Next you can choose your blogging platform; TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, or Other. I chose Blogger, so the rest of the tutorial is specific to Blogger. Finally, click "get your button code."

Next you will want to scroll down to "Blog Post Button" to insert the code into your blog template that will create a button at the bottom of every post. Go to the "Layout" part of your blog, and click on "Edit HTML." At this point you will want to backup you Blogger template just in case something wacky happens while you are editing the HTML. Click on "Download Full Template" (1 - see image below). Your computer may handle it differently, but mine opened the download with Internet Explorer, which I then saved to my desktop as an xml file. Once you have saved the template, go back to the blog layout and click the box next to "Expand Widget Templates"(2 - see image below).

Then, hold down the "control" button and the "F" button at the same time. This will open up a search toolbar at the bottom of the page (3 - see below). Copy and paste the text "Add This" asks you to look for. The text you are looking for will be highlighted in the html (4 - see below).
Copy the button code from the "Add This" site and paste it immediately behind the highlighted html text. Click "save template" and go check out your new social bookmarking tool! It should be at the end of every post.
Enjoy!! :)