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Does your blog look like a Christmas tree at the end of each post with dozens of small icons for every obscure social media site? Just because there is a plug-in for your blog that makes it easy to add them, doesn't mean that you should do it.

At first glance the idea of encouraging your blog readers to digg, stumble, bookmark and recommend your post seems sound. And if it works for a few services, more has to be better. Right?

If we think about it from your readers perspective: Do the social bookmarking links add any value for your reader?

If your reader is actively using one of the social media sites, it's very likely that they have the accompanying toolbar installed. Clicking on the familiar toolbar button is probably much faster than finding the right tiny icon on your site.

Do not waste your time creating dozens of icons on your site that will rarely be used. If your reader has never heard of social book marking, it is very unlikely that they will know what these icons are about. These icons will not serve as inspiration to research them and return to your site to bookmark it.

Other than *yourself*, how many people do you think are going to take the time to highlight your post on more than one social media site?

To find out if it is worth it to have all of these icons on your blog, it will be necessary to conduct a test. Using Google Analytics you can track outbound clicks to see if the icons are used.

If you have a specific post that is written to target a particular service, you should encourage your readers to digg that post once in a while.

Are icons that bookmark social media sites helpful or do they just get in the way? Navigate to my personal blog to comment on the issue.

Learn more about getting attention for your blog on Nick Dalton's blog http://www.AttentionRich.com