In case you hadn’t notice I’ve had a major overhaul of this blog. Something I have been putting off for ages and tying myself in knots about.  But once I started I began to question some aspects of my blog, from content to plugins that I hadn’t considered before. With my new blog design there is the option for social share buttons which are more streamlined and in keeping with the theme.  They look much slicker and since the demise of the twitter count I had been falling a little more out of love with shareaholic.

So here is what I considered to make my decision to remove the plugin :

1. Am I making money from it? : And the honest answer is no. I’m not actually making any money from the advertising side of things.  In the recommended content area I didn’t always like the content that showed up from 3rd party websites and regularly edited this in Shareaholic. In some areas I had found monetising Shareaholic had become intrusive and not in keeping with my vibe. I’m not exactly sure how long I’ve used this plugin between 3-4 years and I have made a grand total of just over $4 (less than £3!) Meaning the intrusive angle isn’t worth the reward as there isn’t any!
2. Who are the numbers for? : I used to think that people would think I was amazing if the Facebook count reached over 100 but lets get realistic my “how to maximise the share potential of images” has been stumbled over 1,500 times but visits to this post of late have been few and far between. Plus I’d end up tweeting/resharing content just for the sake of getting it to a certain number. I’d started deviating off a plan and like many things these numbers became an obsession.
3. Twitter count : Once twitter removed the share count  I was struck by how unloved it made twitter look. The more I looked at it the more it annoyed me against the number count of other platforms.
4. Does it fit my brand? : The bright bold colours were slightly distracting and do you know what they don’t reflect my brand or my new look.

I’ve now reassessed and deleted 4 plugins so far. What happened after I removed the Shareaholic plugin? Well after I deleted it (yes I went the whole hog not just deactivating!) I freed up a lot of storage space! So that’s a win. I also have felt less stressed and back on track with sharing content. I’ve spent more time on Facebook encouraging conversation on one shared post rather than sharing the same post a few times in order to increase my count number. In turn this has helped drive traffic and increased my FB reach. Another win!

Photo Credit | Shutterstock

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