Social sharing buttons and modal newsletter popups

I read a lot of posts on blogs every week. I read every post from every feed in the iOS Dev Directory and I get plenty more recommendations of articles from both automated services, and humans! šŸ˜€ Itā€™s safe to say Iā€™ve read a few sites over the years, so if you have a blog Iā€™d love to give you some advice.

Your site doesnā€™t need social sharing buttons. You definitely donā€™t need a modal, full page newsletter signup that pops up when I move my mouse outside the browser window. You donā€™t need your cookies notice to take up half the page and cover your content. You donā€™t need any of the thousand other plugins or services that ā€œtheyā€ say you do.

In fact Iā€™d go much further than that. Iā€™d say that every annoyance on your site is doing your content and reputation harm. Whenever I visit a site, every time Iā€™m annoyed by something makes it less likely that Iā€™ll consider sharing it or subscribing to your feed. Part of it is that I value my time and attention, but I also value the time and attention of my readers and I donā€™t like to send them to places they might also get annoyed.

Of course, your content matters most but itā€™s definitely a balance between how good the content is and how annoyed by your JavaScript I am. šŸ˜€

I have another, more important point to make though. I also donā€™t believe these things are at all effective. Iā€™d urge you to look at how many people are actually sharing your content using the social media buttons as opposed to simply copying and pasting a link. Have you tested the difference in subscribe rates between your modal popup newsletter signup and a respectful, quiet sign up box in a sidebar? Are people clicking to close your cookies panel, or are they just closing the browser window instead?

Iā€™ve always tried to be respectful with getting people to subscribe and share my content. Yes, the subscription form on iOS Dev Weekly is prominently positioned, but I put a huge amount of thought into not making it feel like it was ever too much. It also works! Iā€™ve always been surprised that people share the newsletters that I write but with over 45,000 subscribers to the newsletter and many more via RSS, all grown from nothing, Iā€™m proof that you donā€™t need these things.

Alright, Iā€™m going to stop there and apologise for the rant that this was before I get started with my thoughts on ā€œgrowth hackingā€. šŸ¤®

Thanks for reading and donā€™t forget to smash that subscribe button. šŸ˜‚


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