I can certainly see arguments for both sides of this one:
Buttons at the top: Easy to find, reliably positioned regardless of the article length. Extreme ease of sharing as you don't have to reach the end of the article to share.
Buttons at the bottom: Ensures your users most likely read or scanned to the bottom of the article rather than sharing the article immediately after reading the headline.
However I am wondering which is superior in terms of conversion. Do users share stories more if the sharing buttons are at the top of bottom of an article?
Answer
The most effective placement of social sharing buttons is the place, at which visitors make the decision to share and where it's the most prominent.
Naturally users will decide to share once they're done consuming the content. This means that the social sharing buttons should be located somewhere close to the bottom. However, content footers often contain a whole lot of meta information as well as links to "related" content and whatnot. All of that is competing for attention with the social sharing buttons. In addition, visitors won't know what sharing links are available until they scroll all the way to the end. Thus, it seems that they should be present at the top as well.
A less obvious advantage of top placement is that high sharing numbers serve as a form of social proof encouraging people to read & share the content when they're making up their minds.
AddThis (one of the leading social sharing toolkits, which I shamelessly promote because they're also from DC are) has these suggestions in their best practices for placement:
Do's
- Keep AddThis near the top of the page
- Place sharing near the content being shared
Dont's
- Don't put sharing in the navigation
- Avoid putting sharing in the footer
- Avoid putting sharing below the fold
Their best practices also have an image with a sample layout and the instructions that read, Install AddThis before and/or after each post (see the link above).
Another set of placement recommendations from them suggests (italics added):
- Keep your button near the top of the page: Avoid making your readers scroll to find your sharing button. It is okay to have the button at the top and bottom of the page, but users will find it easier at the top.
- Watch out for navigation: be careful about placing the button too close to navigation, so users don't interact with it by accident.
Some developers think that multiple instances of nearly the same code shouldn't be repeated. The only position that satisfies both top & bottom placement is a fixed location. Most commonly, it is on the left side of the content ("in the empty space"). The problems with such a "solution" include visual imbalance, occasional JavaScript incompatibility/quirkiness, and no support for responsive design.
Other front-end devs might want to experiment with a horizontal sharing bar that appears once a user scrolls past a certain point but it still carries the disadvantages of the sidebar JavaScript module plus it's not going to be visible if everything fits above the fold.
Therefore, don't try being cute or gimmicky and put sharing tools both at the beginning and at the end of your content (just make sure they don't distort balance when everything is visible above the fold).
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