Using the Share Widget to post to Social Media

Using the Share Widget to post to Social Media

You can use the Share Widget on any page on MyLO to share it to social media. It is convenient and works pretty well for Facebook. Sharing to Twitter through the widget makes some ugly text. You are definitely better off going directly to the Twitter website to share your post there.

A detailed explanation for posting to the most common social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter can be found in Sharing on Social Media.

The Share Widget can be found on the right side of any MyLO page below your main image and above the body of your post.

Example showing the location of the Share Widget on the right below the Main Image and above the body text.

Click on the widget to pop up the share menu.

Example of the Share Widget menu showing Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Twitter and More.

Click on the name of the social media platform where you want to post the share. A new window will pop up.

Facebook via the Share Widget

Log in to your Facebook account if it asks you to do so. If you are not asked to log in, make sure that the appropriate name and avatar are displayed at the top left. If you are logged in to the wrong account, click on black down arrow at the right of the blue "Share on Facebook" bar. Click on Switch User and log in to the correct account.

Once you are in your Facebook account, you should see a window like below.

Example of sharing a MyLO article on Facebook via the Share Widget

Click on "Say something about this..." and type in a comment about your post.

Make sure that the correct privacy level is set in the privacy menu. You probably want it set to "Public."

Click on the blue "Post to Facebook" button in the lower right corner.

Twitter via the Share Widget

As mentioned above, it is probably best to NOT use the Share Widget to post to Twitter. However, if you wish to do so, here's how it's done.

Log in to your Twitter account if it asks you to do so. If you are not asked to log in, make sure that the appropriate avatar is displayed at the top right. If you are logged in to the wrong account, click on avatar, and select "Sign Out" from the menu. Log in to the correct account.

Once you are in your Twitter account, you should see a window like below.

 Example of sharing a MyLO article to Twitter via the Share Widget

By default the Title of your page will be first followed by "MyLO." After that you will see the URL to the page you are sharing. Then a hash sign (#) with some junk after it. And finally "via @AddThis" which is promoting the Share Widget used to make the post. Like I said, it's pretty ugly and will probably take more work to clean up than it would to just load Twitter in another tab on your browser and post on the actual website.

You will probably want to type some comment at the head of your tweet. It's up to you whether you think the Title and MyLO are important. Both of those things will show up in the Twitter card for the webpage preview once you've posted to Twitter. The hash junk at the end of the URL is not important and I think it should be deleted. I feel the same way about the "via @AddThis" but again, it's up to you.

Once you've spruced it up to your liking, it might look something like below.

Example of sharing a MyLO article to Twitter via the Share Widget after the text has been cleaned up 

Click on the blue "Tweet" button in the lower right corner.

 

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