While this is a great way to promote your blog posts, the buttons do not serve a purpose if you simply have an announcement to make on a post.

It would be great if we can turn the option on and off as needed, right?. Well by using WordPress’ custom fields and a little bit of PHP coding, we can display or not display these social media icons.

Let’s get to it

Step 1 – Download the SexyBookmarks plugin, upload it into your plugins folder and activate it.

Step 2 – Go into the plugin settings and modify the settings. You can reorder the icons by clicking and dragging. Check mark the ones you want to display.

In the Placement option, select Manually Insert.

Step 3 – Go into your Themes folder and find single.php. Open the file and locate The following code:

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<?php the_title(); ?>

The above code displays the title of your blog post. If you want the social media icons to appear right above title, then copy the code below and place it before the title.

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<?php if(get_post_meta($post->ID, "socialmedia", true)){ 
     if(function_exists('selfserv_sexy')) { selfserv_sexy(); }
} ?>

If you want the plugin to display at the bottom of your post, then paste the above code right after:

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<?php the_content(); ?>

Step 4 – In the Admin panel, open up one of your posts or create a new one. Scroll down to the Custom Fields section, click Enter New, name it socialmedia and give it a value of 1 or yes or whatever value you prefer, it really doesn’t matter as long as you input a value in there. Click the Add Custom field button to save it. You should now see a custom field called social media with a value of 1 or whatever value you chose.

From now on whenever you want to display your social media icons, simply scroll down to the Custom Fields section, click on the name drop-down, select socialmedia and give it any value.

It was great in the beginning but as it becomes over-saturated with users I’m seeing more and more non-sense Tweets…

For all the Twitter newbies out there, there are just things you should not Tweet about:

1 – You don’t have to tweet about every single second of your boring life.

2 – Most users don’t really care if your dog got hit by a car and lost one of its legs.

3 – Don’t ask what you should eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

4 – Leave your depression state of mind out of Twitter.

5 – Don’t ask what you should wear today.

6 – Don’t Twitpic yourself asking if you look OK today.

7 – Don’t send out a link to your favorite porn site.

8 – No more Rick-rolling please…it’s gotten quite old!

9 – Avoid 1, 2, or 3 word Tweets, we have no idea what you mean.

10 – Stop bitchin’ about how slow Twitter has been.

11 – I get it, you’re coffee was too strong, no need to Tweet about it.

Follow me at www.twitter.com/JONxBLAZE.

1 – Contact The Blogger
I would get in touch with a blogger to let them know how much I enjoyed their article. Some bloggers will not leave an email address or contact form on their site, at that point I would simply leave them a thank you comment.

2 – Link Love
Whenever I STUMBLE on a blog that is just full of great articles, I would link to that site and add them to my blogroll.

3 – The Stumble Upon Effect
Stumble Upon is a great service and it is a wonderful article promotion tool. I always make sure I give a thumbs up on blogs that I enjoy reading.

4 – Submit and Vote
Everybody knows that Social Media is a great source for generating traffic to a site. If the article you are reading is really, really good, chances are it’s already been submitted to sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Propeller, Yahoo Buzz, etc. If that’s the case, then go ahead and vote the article up.

5 – Give Out Some Change
This is probably everyone’s favorite since it involves money. Make a courteous donation to the blogger. I have received donations on this blog in the past and let me tell you, it is a great feeling! I went out and bought a bag of Cheetos.

6 – Add Cents???
This is actually my favorite one, whenever I see an ad, I make sure I give it a click if I feel like the blog has given me something I can walk away with. And don’t just click on the ads for the sake of clicking, take time to read what the ad is offering, you might just find something that is of interest to you. Just don’t overdo the clicks or the blogger will be penalized for click fraud. [ I am in no way advocating the clicking of any ads ]

So next time you read and enjoyed a random blog post, you’ll know what to do.