Social media is here to stay but based on people’s preferences, either by region, personality type, personal connections and influences it is not always the case that visitors to your site are using the “major” services and networks we would like them to. In China, renren.com is the major player, not Facebook.

The wider you cast your net the more fish you’re likely to catch. Besides the big four (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & LinkedIn) there are multitudes of other ways people find and share content on the web. Giving your visitors ways to share content with their preferred networks can only help you gain more exposure online.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Besides the obvious social networks we are all familiar with there are other options like the social bookmarking sites Digg, StumbleUpon, Google Buzz, Delicious and more. These services allow us to keep track of the stories, articles and blog posts that we read and find entertaining and interesting enough to want to revisit at a later time. Not only do these services allow you to catalog your experiences, they are also shared with that network and can be voted up or down, commented on and further distributed to others who may find them interesting. The benefit is that if you’re content becomes popular it drives more traffic to your site!

Sharing Services

For sharing that goes beyond the most popular sites and includes the smallest and most obscure entities out there, adding an addthis or sharethis button set to your site can open up a vast number (appox 50+) of possibilities for visitors to share your content on.

In addition to the increased number of avenues to sharing they provide, you also benefit from these services analytics. In depth analytics can help you make better editorial and programming decisions that driver greater user engagement. You can learn not only how your pages are shared, but who is doing the sharing, what they are sharing and searching for, who is following their links and how you can tailor content or advertising to each group.