Let's start by looking at how to add a Twitter Tweet button:
- Visit http://foliofor.me once more or log in to your own Mahara instance and start creating a new page.
- In Edit Content view, click on the General tab. You will see an icon called Twitter Tweet:
- Drag the block onto your page. There are a few options that you can choose. For layout style, decide where to display the tweet count. This refers to the box, next to the Tweet button, that shows how many people have shared it. Choose either vertical, horizontal, or no count.
- Next, choose the Tweet text that is displayed along with the link when the content is shared on Twitter. This should be something relevant to the content on the page. For example, Amazon Biodiversity, if the page is about bio-diversity in the Amazon rainforest.
- Click on Save. Here is what the Twitter button looks like on the page:
- That's all there is to it. Viewers of the page can now send updates to Twitter informing others of the content.
You just saw how to add a Twitter Tweet button to your page.
The Facebook Like/Recommend and LinkedIn blocks work in much the same way. You simply drag the block onto the page, set the options, and that's all there is to it.
These are great blocks to have in any Mahara installation. They enhance the sharing features that already exist, encouraging feedback and comments on your portfolio beyond that permitted within the walled garden. The question is, when is it a good idea to add these buttons to a page?
When you add these social links to a page, you are basically saying to the world, "Go ahead and let other people know about the content I have created".
Self-promotion isn't a bad thing! Maybe you have an interesting idea or take on an idea that you think is worth the world knowing about. If the content is good enough, people will naturally let others know about it. In fact, there's no reason why you can't use a Mahara page with the specific purpose of selling a product or to show off your work. This would be useful for, say, photographers, artists, authors, or freelancers in general.
As with setting up your page share settings, you should think carefully about whether the content in your page should be available to be shared with the outside world via social sharing buttons. Here are some situations when it's probably not very clever to allow social sharing:
- Your page contains information sensitive to other people in your class or organization, and you haven't asked their permission to share it with others.
- Your page contains private information from your organization. Perhaps a trade secret/intellectual property or simply meeting notes.
- Your content contains incorrect facts or uninformed conclusions. What you put out there, should be well thought out and true at the very least — unless, of course, you are writing in a satirical/ironic tone.
- The content you're sharing might be offensive to a particular person or group.
If you decide to add a share button to your Mahara page, it's probably a good idea to make sure that your page itself is public or at least has a wide audience in the Mahara site, so that enough people would actually be able to look at it. You're likely to get more shares that way.
Ok, so you've decided that you would like to share your page with the world. The question now is, which social networking site(s) to choose? Let's look at each of them a bit closer.
Twitter is a micro-blogging site and lets you share mini text updates with a limited character count. When viewers of your page share it on Twitter, it is their followers who will be notified as well as those who subsequently find the tweet through search engines and retweets.
Facebook is used for individuals to share content with their friends, although it is gaining more traction with professionals and universities too. Facebook shares are in the forms of "Likes", so by clicking the button, the sharer is saying they like your content.
This is a professional profile and networking site. When users share content here, it is usually in a strictly professional context. Add the LinkedIn button, if you would like to promote your content with other professional working groups.
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Christophe from Silverworks University thinks: | |
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I'm putting together a Mahara collection that promotes our degree show. It includes lots of images of student work as well as details about the event. I'm going to link to this from our social networking pages. These buttons will be really useful — I'm going to add them to the collection home page, so that students can reshare the collection with their friends and followers. |