Last month, I shared 4 powerful free blog promoting tips, which included sharing your content in blog communities. Blog communities allow you to easily share your content with others, providing you with added exposure for you and your blog. These communities also allow you to connect with other like-minded people, while gaining access to tons of great content that’s being shared by other bloggers.
I’ve become more active in the Blog Engage, Blokube, and BizSugar communities and am really enjoying the connections I’m making with others bloggers as well as the content I’m finding there, not to mention the added exposure it gives my blog!
One thing you can do to maximize your blog exposure in these communities is to make sure your blog is as easy to share and vote for as possible. Now, there’s no shortage of social bookmarking plugins you can use to make sure people can share your content, but I could not find one that had all of the voting and share buttons that I personally wanted to display on my posts. Then I found the Sharebar WordPress plugin by Devgrow.
Why the Sharebar WordPress Plugin?
Before I found the Sharebar plugin, I was using the Digg Digg plugin, which is pretty similar in style and functionality. However, the difference is that the Digg Digg plugin didn’t let me add new buttons, but the Sharebar WordPress plugin is fully customizable. Sharebar will allow you to add any blog voting buttons to your blog that you choose.
How to Add Your Favorite Blog Voting Buttons to Your Blog Using the Sharebar WordPress Plugin
In my quest to add all of my favorite blog voting buttons, I found this fantastic post by Dragon Blogger. His post basically told me what I needed to know, but I hit a snag when I tried to add the Blog Engage button. For some reason, the BlogEngage blog voting buttons are not shared on their site the same way that other blog community buttons are – they’re mostly zip files with just one piece of the script code at the bottom of the page.
At first, I just added the the Blog Engage button script code and then tried to work out which button I wanted to display. With a little tweaking, even though I got the Blog Engage buttons displaying properly, my votes weren’t showing up at all (all zeros). After messing with it for awhile – and scouring the net for answers – I finally got the buttons working right. So, I thought I’d share the correct code you need (see below) and everything else I learned to save you the hassle of going through what I did. 
Here’s How to Add the Blog Engage Voting Button to Sharebar
Step One: To start, you’re going to need to download the Sharebar WordPress plugin, install it, and activate it. This is the same process you go through with any other WordPress plugin.
Step Two: From within your WordPress dashboard, you need to find “Settings” in the left-hand navigation and then click on “Sharebar” to access this plugins settings. You’ll find the various sharing buttons already available on that screen. You can choose which ones you want to display by ticking their box (on the left), selecting “Enable,” and then clicking the “update” button (at the bottom).
Step Three: Now, you need to click on the blue “Add New Button” on that settings screen to be taken to the button customization page. Then, you need to add the Blog Engage button information in the corresponding fields, as shown below (and then click “Update”):
Click here for the Blog Engage button code you need (to copy & paste) [link opens in a new window]
Please Note: The “Position” number you add can be whatever you choose, based on how high up you want it on your vertical Sharebar in relation to the other buttons. I chose the #5 for Blog Engage because I basically positioned my buttons by their size (widest on top).
Once you’ve done this, you should see the buttons show up as an option on the Sharebar plugin setting screen. As long as its enabled, the button should now show up on your blog’s Sharbar! 
Here’s the Info You Need to Add Some Other Buttons…
To add any of the other buttons you want to display, you simply need to go through the same process outlined above for each button. For some sites, the trick may be finding the right button code. To make things easier for you, here are some direct links to the code you need to add these buttons:
Now, you should be good to go. If you found this tutorial helpful, I’d love it if you’d vote for this post on any of the blog communities you’re a member of …or you can Like it, Tweet it, Google+ it, and/or leave me a comment below – any of them would be much appreciated.
To Your Success and Prosperity,
Mikayla,
I use the social media counters share button, but sharebar is great as well the digg digg one is just funny it sounds funny lol
Kenny Fabre recently posted..Blog Engage Review
Twitter: mikaylasway
says:
Hiya Kenny, I’ve never used Social Media Counters, but I’m really loving the vertical float feature and customizability of Sharebar.