I’ve been noticing a proliferation of ’share this’ type widgets and links being embeded lately…often in unlikely places.  You see them all over social media sites and social networks and more and more they are popping up in unexpected places.

For the most part I don’t have a problem with these types of widget, they provide some incremental value, saving me time when i’m in the mood to share, but when I start seeing them pop up in the footers of emails from corporate pitches, I begin to scratch my head.  In what world would I possibly want to share the anoucement of your new webinar on email deliverablitiy to my friends on facebook?

Secondly, I don’t have any data to back this up, but my guess is that including these types of sharing widgets has little to no effect on promoting sharing of your content.  How big of a barrier is it to share something without one of these widgets?

This type of marketing mentality is the same kind that thinks a marketing strategy is to strap on a share-this widget to your site/service to make it ‘go viral’.  Take a second to think about the reason someone would want to share your site/service and then if you can honestly answer that question, you have earned the right to clutter up your page with sharing widgets. Thanks.