Your site’s precious bodily fluids 

We work for brands that work to convince us: the clothes we wear, the logos behind our screens and the choices. At times, we’d like to promote these choices, for they represent a state of being: financial prosperity, the intellectual coming of age, or simply the desire to be different. But mostly, we’re blissfully unaware, and heavily encumbered by tags, stickers, logos and word marks of everything we consume.

As an experiment, consider your own website: do you have a +1, Like, or Tweet button? And if so, why? As the author, editor and publisher of your own channel, why would you choose to give valuable media space to another brand? Especially one that at best watches over you, slows your site down and aesthetically looks like… well, this.

Glaze past the visual/technical issues, and there’s still a lot to be said about a piece or brand that doesn’t end with a line of icons. When I see a row of icons, the value of the content itself reduces immensely. It’s no longer a statement of permanent record: the timelessness of the story is lost, and is instead reduced to a high-score no one cares about, in a game that everyone’s playing.

In general, I would recommend this:

1. If you must use a social media channel, refer to it by name, and not a logo (unless they’re paying you by the pixel)
2. Choose your channels carefully. If you don’t need comments on a blog, drop it. If you can avoid a Pin It button, more power to you.
3. Ascribe a value (imaginary, if necessary) to your content and media spaces. And make sure you’re either taking full value from it, or are compensated for subscribing to brands. An Amazon link to a book you reviewed is perfectly acceptable if you’re collecting referral money. Otherwise, point to Wikipedia

There’s also the question of your audience — respect their intelligence, and you’ll naturally attract a smarter group of people. Oliver Richenstein articulates this well:

If you provide excellent content, social media users will take the time to read and talk about it in their networks. That’s what you really want. You don’t want a cheap thumbs up, you want your readers to talk about your content with their own voice.

Would you then, prefer a fling with your reader via a Like button, or instead establish a committed, longer and more meaningful relation with good old email?

De-brand yourself, and avoid the social media icon line. Just like fluoridation, it is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.