How to customize official bookmarklets to make social sharing faster

If you’re a social media power user – or just a share-a-holic – you’ll constantly be looking for easier and faster ways to share, like, and promote content.  But the problem is that with at least four main social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Linked, Google+), not to mention a dozen other social bookmarking websites and blogging platforms, updating each of these can become a hassle.

That’s why we love bookmarklets.

These small pieces of JavaScript allow you to complete dozens of social sharing actions  quickly. Below we have collected the official bookmarklets from the main social networks and websites for your pleasure.  We’ve also mashed-up a few of these to allow you to share or Like/+1 the same page with the click of one button.

If you’re not familiar with bookmarklets let’s explain. Bookmarklets are similar to the bookmarked/favorite websites saved in your browser.  But rather than opening a website or page they perform a specific action – they let you do things like annotate a webpage, spellcheck its contents, or share the page on sites like Facebook or Twitter.

To add a bookmarklet to your browser just drag the links below your browser’s bookmarks’ bar (Firefox or Chrome) or right-click on the links and select “Add to Favorites” (Internet Explorer).

Share bookmarklets

• Share on Google+
• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Shorten link with bit.ly
• Bookmark on StumbleUpon
• Pin on Pinterest
• Share on LinkedIn

Combined Share
Let’s say you want to share the same link on several websites.  You can do this by combining bookmarklets into one piece of code (see instructions below). For example, this link will allow you to share the same page on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook at the same time.

Share on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Combined Share, with bit.ly
Alternatively, if you want to use bit.ly URLs in your shared content you can use this bookmarklet which will generate one for you. We’ve customised the official bit.ly bookmarklet to open in a new window.

Multi-share, with bit.ly

Like/+1 bookmarklets
Believe it or not, not all pages have Facebook Like or Google+ +1 buttons installed but with these bookmarklets you can Like and +1 any page you’re on.

Facebook Like
Google +1

Combined Like/+1 bookmarklets
What if you want to Like a page on Facebook and also +1 it on Google+?  To do that, drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks’ bar.

Like and +1

Customize
Because bookmarklets are all written in JavaScript you can combine them to create customized share buttons for your browser – if you want to share on Facebook and +1 on Google+ you can simply combine the Google+ +1 bookmarklet with the Facebook Like bookmarklet.

1. To do this open up a simple text editor and copy the Facebook Share bookmarklet;
2. Then copy the Google+ +1 button bookmarklet;

In your text editor simply past one after the other making sure that both have a ; at the end.  Also be careful to remove the “javascript:” line from the start of the second piece of code. Once combined your bookmarklet will look something like this;

javascript:void%20window.open(‘https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=’%20+%20encodeURIComponent(location.href),%20’_blank’,%20’width=250,height=100′);var%20d=document,f=’https://www.facebook.com/share’,l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,p=’.php?src=bm&v=4&i=1339881106&u=’+e(l.href)+’&t=’+e(d.title);1;try{if%20(!/^(.*.)?facebook.[^.]*$/.test(l.host))throw(0);share_internal_bookmarklet(p)}catch(z)%20{a=function()%20{if%20(!window.open(f+’r’+p,’sharer’,’toolbar=0,status=0,resizable=1,width=626,height=436′))l.href=f+p};if%20(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else{a()}}void(0);

Now all you have to do is drag this line of code from your text editor to your browser’s bookmarks bar.