Adding social media links to blog posts?

[simplesauce]

Hi there,

I have been debating for a whole about whether or not to add social media links to my blog posts, but am hesitant. My target audience are not techies, and my majority audience are 50+.

I don't want to assume that they DON'T use social networks, but I don't want to put them off with thousands of icons either. Can you recommend anything? I'm using wordpress for my blog (wordpress.org not .com)

I was thinking that instead of having share icons under every post, I could just put links to my social network accounts in the sidebar, perhaps utilising socially@ (http://socially.at/) so that only one icon is needed.

I suppose my real question is... have you guys found in your experience with an older target audience that adding social media icons helps increase your traffic? And which works best, having one icon in the sidebar or share icons under each blog post?

Summer :)

[LiveCity]

Hello,
I would suggest selective sharing buttons, which are subtle - so they won't get in the way for older audiences. You don't have to place a plethora of buttons - just use the most common ones: Facebook's Like, Google's +1 and maybe a Tweet button...
Putting those under every post might increase your traffic and "shareability", so I wouldn't pass on the possibility to use them - but design buttons that don't draw attention from your content.