Uzuki Cheverie wrote:
We've all seen the posts and pictures people have created to encourage readers to Like, Comment, and Subscribe. But what of sharing? What merit does sharing actually have, and how can you use it to help support your fellow creators and their content?
What does sharing do, first of all?
Sharing, as many of you probably already know, is the act of linking a comic to another external source. Many of these sources include, but are not limited to:
Facebook
Tumblr
Twitter
Pinterest
Google+ (but we don't talk about that one...)
And a flurry of other places! (even reddit!)
Many of these locations are offered as default sharing locations in the drop-down share menu that's available on all comic episodes, just below the page.
Sharing is so fundamentally important in the growing of a comic. Consider it like a chain-mail type thing, except with all the threats of monsters getting you in your sleep or losing all your money. Imagine this scenario - you tell two people about a webcomic that you just read, either through word-of-mouth, or Twitter, or FB, or whatever social media you like to use. Those two people tell two more people. Those two people tell two more people, and all of a sudden, you've got a domino effect of your comic reaching more and more people, with potentially new readers coming in due to this.
Now, this doesn't happen all the time. With our over-saturation of media on the web, it's pretty easy for a person to read your comic and then forget about it in 5 minutes. Which is where sharing frequency and awareness comes into play.
It takes more than just sharing once to get that domino effect going. Sometimes it only takes once, yeah, but the chances of that happening are the same chances of you becoming an overnight sensation, which we know is also pretty rare (it's happened, but you shouldn't be betting everything you have on it).
If more people know the upsides of sharing and how to properly do it, more people will do it (hopefully), and the chances of that domino effect starting will skyrocket.
Places like Tumblr are built on the domino effect of sharing. Most of us know how Tumblr works - you share a piece of artwork, or a text post, or whatever, someone sees it and likes it enough to reblog it, and that article is now on their blog, which links back to your original post. Not only will more people see this post on this new person's blog, they will also see the original source and will be able to travel back to the original blog - you. Person 2 reblogs Person 1's reblogging of your work, and then Person 3 comes to Person 2's blog, and it goes on and on and on.
Then there are places like reddit, which acts as an "upvote" hub for things. You post something, maybe you get lucky and get a bunch of upvotes, people now know the original source of the content and can read more if they like.
Places like Facebook work on a more local scale (depending on who you're friends with). Most people we have on Facebook are family members, friends, pen pals, business associates, fellow creators/artists, etc. Share your work or your findings of other people's works on Facebook! That's now gotten to your friends, who definitely have friends on their Facebook whom you are not affiliated with, and who knows; they might just share your original sharing of the original content.
This applies to all works, not just your own. Whether you're sharing your own work or you're sharing the work of others, the potential for those dominoes to start tipping one by one is right there in that share button.
Before I wrap this up, let's talk real quick about the Do's and Don't's of Sharing.
Do:
Share! Share it to one of those websites that Tapastic has linked in the sharing dropdown menu. DO IT NAUUUWWW.
If you can help it, share the original source of the content. Whether this is Tapastic or their own original website, try and share the work that's truly the creator's works and not just a re-upload (<<<< we'll get more into those later).
Credit the original creator! Make sure people know you're just doing your part to share the love; don't lead people to believe it's your work (unless it is of course, haha).
Share because you care. This is a random act of kindness deal. You're probably not going to get instant fortune or anything from building up that karma, but it feels really, really good when you see that you've helped (take it from me; one time I shared a comic by someone else, got them like, 1000 subscribers. It was awesome). Share the comics that you enjoy and want to see get more exposure. You don't even need to share them to Facebook or Twitter, if you don't use social media; simply share them on your profile wall to your subscribers/friends right here on Tapastic!
Give people a reason to read the content you're sharing. If the content you're sharing has a space for you to type about it (often a description box, or on walls, like FB), then let people know why you like the content you're sharing. Tell them why it's so funny or so dramatic or so wonderful to read. Tell them how awesome you think the art is. Draw them in. Make them want to click that link.
Don't:
Re-upload content. I can't stress enough how much we should NOT be doing this. If you find yourself saving an image and re-uploading the image to Tumblr/DeviantArt/Photobucket/9GAG/etc. STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING. If you can't find the original source of the image, you can use Google's Image search functions to find it, it's not that hard, I promise. Even if you keep the artist credits on there, it's not the original source of the content, and you could be accused of stealing content. Find the original source and share it from there. If the artist has excluded embedding options or sharing options from their page, chances are it's because they don't want people sharing it, so if that's the case, respect their wishes and leave their content be.
Edit out the artist's credits. We should all know this, especially cause most of us do put credits on our comics, but just putting it out there. Just don't do it, there's no point to this unless you're blatantly stealing content, and you shouldn't be doing that either.
Bother people by sharing every minute of every day. Like I said, you should be doing this because you want to, not because you feel you're gonna get brownie points out of it or anything. Don't stuff your Tumblr feeds and Tapastic wall and Facebook wall with shares, cause then you'll just be pushing people away from the content you're trying to support. Sharing is caring, but attention-hogging is . . . well, I can't think of a rhyme for that, but you get my drift.
Along with the above point, don't share the content where it's probably not appropriate. Ex. if you share on reddit (this is a BIG one guys), don't post a Fail by Error comic in /r/minionhate or /r/AskReddit. Places like reddit have their nooks to post comics, including /r/webcomics, /r/comics, etc. So we shouldn't be seeing any of The Awkward Yeti in /r/starbucks 
Same as how if you're sharing on Tumblr, probably gonna be a little off-key if you're sharing a webcomic about cats on a blog that's about food.
Yes, some content is tough to share. Just like the Daily Snack features, sharing pages from a longform story can be tricky because it would be taken out of context. But in that case, share intro pages, or cover/chapter pages, to at least lead people on the breadcrumb path towards the content itself which they can read on their own if they choose to.
So next time you tell your readers/supporters to like, comment, and subscribe, tell them to hit that share button, too! It might only take one or two readers to hit that button and net you more readers, more subscribers, and in the end, more support for the stuff you love doing, and the stuff you love reading.
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