This article talks shows how you can have attractive social icons with counters and a Print Friendly feature. It's smart to have these icons on your post to encourage people to refer your blog on their social networks. As word spreads, you gain visitors and hopefully readers.

Edgy Bookmarks

The most recent release of  SexyBookmarks from Shareaholic has a beta feature so that you see counters for Twitter, FaceBook, and other social networks.  The counts are very (maybe too) discreet since the digits are partially obscured. There are various headings(in red) to select and many social site icons. You can also omit the heading for an even cleaner look.

Print Friendly

Having a way to print long tutorials can be very useful. Many visitors may want to print your recipes without the images, etc. While attractive the printer friendly icon takes up quite a bit of space:

Use Bookmarks to Replace Print Friendly Symbol

Select the Print Friendly bookmark icon and you can remove the WP Print Friendly plugin freeing up space below your posts.  If you select the Shareaholic printer icon then readers can invoke the same print or pdf options that the Print Friendly plugin provides.  I suggest you move that bookmark icon to the front of the row for better visibility.

The pop-up text guides your readers as the mouse hovers over each icon. The first one would read "Print with Print Friendly."

Resources

For Blogger:

1. How to add sexybookmarks on Blogger -  I found this post with the template hack to add the Shareaholic bookmarks (without counters). Brings back memories of my hacking days and realization that you have to really want those gadgets in Blogger!  I can't guarantee the hack will work for you but I can try to help if you leave a question here.
2. Best Social Bookmarking Widget for Blogger (With Counter Button) - a different set of social sites with counters.
   
3. Adding Custom Social Bookmarks to Blogger - Here's a hack using custom icons but there are no counters.
   

For WordPress:

1. SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic) - WP plugin that adds the list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. Select the PrintFriendly icon so visitors can see the same choices as outlined in item 3 below. i.e. the same software is invoked.
2. If you decide not to use Shareaholic plugin above, there are some bookmarking plugins that include a PrintFriendly icon. You may have to look for it in your options. Be careful, some have print icons that go directly to the printer with out options.
3. Print Friendly - Use the WP plugin if you want the standalone  icon for more visibility. When visitors click the icon they go to the site where they select print (with or without images, etc.) or create a pdf.
   

   to print a post found on couponproblog.com

Be sure to leave a comment on what you use and how these resource work for you! Good time to test that 'add to Twitter or FB' icon below this post [Hint, Hint]

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