I'm sure many of you have on your own blog or have seen blogs with links to some of the social media sites either after their posts or before them. These can make it easier for people to submit or bookmark your site.

If you use FeedBurner for your feed, they offer their 'FeedFlare' to make it easier to put these links in both your feed and on your actual blog. I still use FeedFlare for my feed, but I didn't like the formatting and some other things about the code they generate for you to use on your blog. There are plugins to do this with too - but the one I tried anyway - didn't give me as much control of the formatting that I wanted either.

I eventually just found the code to use for the link from each of the sites I was interested in and hand coded the whole thing so I could make it look how I wanted it to.

Social media sites
There are many, many social media voting and bookmarking sites, but many of them are not used too much or are not relevant to my blog's topic. Based on some reading I've done, I've narrowed it down to just a few to use on my blog:

• StumbleUpon

- because many people use it and get traffic from it.

• Kirtsy

- because it is relevant to a blog for women.

• Delicious

- it's been recommended to use it and easier to do well in than Digg

• Reddit

- same as Delicious

• Digg

- because, well, everyone seems to have a link to it and some of my posts could do well there if I got enough Diggs.

The code I use
While I liked the small icons I saw on many blogs, I think they can be confusing sometimes - I forget which site goes with which image. I wanted mine to include both the name of the site and the small icon at the bottom of each post. FeedFlare didn't do it that way and neither did Sociable (at least I couldn't figure out how to make it do it this way).

I use the following code at the bottom of each of my posts:

<p class="smallcenterbold"> <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>">Stumble: <img<br /> src="http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/16x16_su_round.gif"<br /> border="0"/></a> <br /> <a href="http://www.kirtsy.com/submit.php?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>">Kirtsy: <img src="http://www.kirtsy.com/badges/kirtsy_addicon.gif" mce_src="http://www.kirtsy.com/badges/kirtsy_addicon.gif"<br /> style="border:0" alt="add to kirtsy" /></a> <br /> <a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>">delicious: <img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/delicious.med.gif"<br /> border="0" /></a> <br /> <a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>">reddit: <img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/reddit.png" border="0"<br /> /></a> <br /> <a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<<br /> ?php the_title(); ?>">Digg: <img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/digg.png" border="0"<br /> /></a> <br /> <mce:script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/IdeasForWomenNewsBlog?i=<?php the_permalink() ?><!-- " type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"> // --></mce:script> </p> <p>

You can style the paragraph tags to look however you want them to look. I center mine and keep the text small.

This code goes into the index.php file of your theme right after the div with class="storycontent" closes.

I also wanted something shorter and simpler to put at the beginning of my posts that uses just the icons. I figure this might be easier for people in a hurry and who are really familiar with all the icons used:

</p> <p class="smallcenterbold"> <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>"><img<br /> src="http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/16x16_su_round.gif"<br /> border="0"/></a> <br /> <a href="http://www.kirtsy.com/submit.php?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>"><img src="http://www.kirtsy.com/badges/kirtsy_addicon.gif" mce_src="http://www.kirtsy.com/badges/kirtsy_addicon.gif"<br /> style="border:0" alt="add to kirtsy" /></a> <br /> <a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>"><img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/delicious.med.gif"<br /> border="0" /></a> <br /> <a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink();<br ></a> ?>&title=< ?php the_title(); ?>"><img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/reddit.png" border="0"<br /> /></a> <br /> <a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<<br /> ?php the_title(); ?>"><img<br /> src="http://www.ideasforwomen.com/graphics/digg.png" border="0"<br /> /></a>  </p> <p>

This code goes in the index.php page of your theme right after the following code:

<br /> <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark">< ?php the_title(); ?></a><br />

The exact placement of the code may change depending upon the theme you use and of course where you want to put it. This is something you can play around with, try it different ways, until you get it where you want it and how you want it to look!