Today’s post is about sharing – not just sharing on blogs, but sharing from just about any page you come across on the internet and find an article of interest you’d like to share or capture to potentially use in a blog post or social media. The two options I’m going to write about today are the ‘Add Any’ Chrome extension and the ‘Press This’ marker.
I know I’ve written on these topics before, but it’s come to my attention many times through the years that some bloggers are still not aware about how to use these must have tools to capture reblogs and/or any articles from anywhere on the web, as well as to be able to share an article from any page – including articles that don’t offer share buttons on their posts.
Add to Any
Let’s start with the Chrome extension. So what is that? On the top right-hand corner of your computer you will find the 3 vertical dots. If you click on that you will get a drop-down box. Move your mouse over ‘more tools’ and you will see the option to click on ‘extensions’. You will now be offered a list of extensions you can add, and the one you want to click on is the ‘Add to Any’. If by chance you don’t get that option, just type it in the above search bar. Once you’ve downloaded the extension, you will then discover the tiny blue blue icon with a plus sign in the middle, now resting on your top right-hand corner of the page. By clicking on that icon you will get a long drop-down box of social share buttons you can use from anywhere on the internet to share the current page you’re on.
I find myself using the ‘AddAny’ extension multiple times a day on many sites I visit – especially blogs. With the advent of the new Gutenberg editor, which I still haven’t endeavored into switching over to, I have noticed that approximately 40% of the blogs I now visit no longer display a Twitter share button to me. I’ve questioned many of my blogging friends about the missing button, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s me, not their blog that no longer can see a tweet button, and in some cases even a Facebook share button has gone missing.
Enter the ‘AddAny’ extension. With this extension I now have the ability to click on the little blue icon and share that blogpost via the extension to any social media by clicking on. The only drawback I find with using it is that it doesn’t tag the author of the post as it does from clicking that share button directly under a post. So what happens is I have to either remember that blogger’s Twitter handle or hop over to Twitter to obtain their handle. This is a bit of a time suck, but still a great sharing option. I can share to anywhere with this extension whether I choose to add a tag or not, which is a huge help for me when reading articles I wish to share from anywhere. I love to share posts and articles I read to various platforms so this little tool is invaluable for doing so.
To give you an idea of what your top tool bar will look like after you’ve added these extensions, I’ve captured a screenshot of my top tool bar. Notice the ‘press this’ I have there for easy access at top left, for when I want to capture something to reblog. On the top right is the blue ‘addany’ icon for sharing on social media when there are no share buttons offered. And at the very top right are the 3 little dots you can click on to add the extension. (Note: you will have to enlarge the toolbar to see as I couldn’t enlarge the screenshot itself.)
Press This
The Press This tool is another invaluable tool we should all have access to, especially for reblogging someone’s post and there is no reblog button offered under the post. This happens mostly when I’m on self-hosted blogs like my own, where we don’t get an option to add a reblog button (more on this later). This saves a lot of time from having to open a new post in your dashboard, copying a link to a post and having to copy and paste everything over to that post.
When you download the ‘press this’ marklet from your blog’s dashboard in ‘Available Tools’, it will send an icon to your top toolbar for easy access when you’re on any web page and wish to reblog it. You only have to click on the icon and a draft editor will open up with the link to the post you wish to reblog. Once it’s opened you have the option to type whatever you want to the draft and hit save, or just hit save with the link to the post embedded. This will now become a saved draft in you dashboard. You can also hit ‘publish’ right away in that draft box, which I prefer not to do because I’d rather save it and be able to elaborate on it before publishing.
Once you have that link in a blog draft, it’s easy to go back to your drafts and view. Just open the post, click on ‘preview’, then click on the link you’ve saved in that preview. Now the article you wish to share will open up for you on a new page. You can then copy and paste whatever you wish to share from that article back into the drafted post. And voila!
Now that I’ve alerted you to some helpful extensions to make your blogging and sharing life easier when you’re visiting other blogs, I’m also going to introduce you to another valuable plugin you can add to your own blogs to make it easier for visitors to share YOUR posts:
If your blog is a free blog with WordPress – meaning your blog’s URL address ends with ‘.wordpress.com’ then you don’t have the option for plugin add ons, but WordPress made sure they gave you a reblog button as a means for others to share your posts. But for those of us who are self-hosted or on the WordPress business plan, you have the option to add your own plugins. I highly recommend for those bloggers who don’t have the option for bloggers to reshare your work that you add the plugin ‘Add to Any’, which is available to install from your plugin page in your dashboard. You only have to open the page and click in the ‘find new’ search box and it will come up. Now you can add the ‘add any’ plugin and activate it. You can click on the blue ‘plus sign’ on the page and the drop-down box will offer you a multitude of share buttons you can add to your posts. And with that, I’ll now list some of the advantages and disadvantages you will encounter with these new sharing buttons:
Below is a video to demonstrate how to add the ‘Add to Any’ share buttons to your blog:
- When someone shares from the ‘add any’ share buttons, the only disadvantage, as I mentioned earlier, is that the writer’s name of the post is not automatically tagged like it is with regular share buttons. So if you want the poster of the blog to be accredited and alerted to the share, the only way is to add their tag name manually – such @ so and so for Twitter. Still, at least a great option to share if you don’t decide to tag.
- A great advantage of adding these buttons are that now people can share your posts to more of their social media outlets.
- You will be able to add the ‘W’ button – one of the only means of having somewhat of a ‘reblog’ button for self-hosted blogs!
Yes, it’s true! I finallyyyyyy have a sort of reblog button now on my blog!!! So many bloggers have asked through the years why I don’t have a reblog button that has been out of my control until my recent discovery of the ‘addany’ button!
If you look at the end of my post, you will see my ‘follow me’ on social media buttons where you can visit my pages on all offered buttons. Below the ‘follow me’, are the ‘share this’ buttons which will allow you to share my post directly to your social media. BUT NOW . . . look just below those share buttons (I still cannot find a way to keep all buttons together) and you will see my new row of share buttons. Yes, Twitter and FB buttons are an automatic, so I couldn’t delete them, but look what I’ve got now! I’ve added a share to: Gmail, Amazon, Mix,, MeWe, plus the ‘addany’ button for any other social sites I haven’t included but you may want to share to, and most of all, THE W BUTTON! Yes! If any of you aren’t yet using the ‘press this’ method to share a post without share buttons, you NOW have the ability to share my posts by clicking the W (WordPress) button! I’m so excited! All you need to do is click on the W button and fill in the URL to YOUR blog when prompted, and voila, you can open a draft post (you may have to scroll to bottom like I do). The only thing I’d advise is to copy the link to the URL of the post you’re going to reblog or draft before clicking on the ‘W’ button as it does open in a separate window and it doesn’t grab any text without you entering it. So open the draft and paste the URL you wish to reblog inside, title it (you can always change later) and hit save. Now the post will be in your drafted posts and when you’re ready to reblog, just open it, click on preview, then click on that link you’ve saved in post and the original post will open. From there you can copy and paste back in your draft having both posts open to work easily. Then save or post as your heart desires.
I hope you found these tips valuable. If you have any questions about these excellent tools, please leave them below in comments and I’ll do my best to help you with these tools. Is anyone here today using any of these tools?
UPDATE
NOTE: After posting this article, it came to my attention that some were having problems accessing the ‘add to any’. Here is a link to the WordPress instructions for those self-hosted https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-to-any/ .
The video I posted above will demonstrate a visual for you to add from your dashboard plugin page. I’ve also added an easier method to add the ‘Add to Any’ marklet to your toolbar for easy access to share from anywhere. Just click on the link and drag the marker up to your tool bar
https://www.addtoany.com/users/bookmarklet
Alternatively, you can load it from the Chrome page directly:
DGKayewriter.com 