Eva Marie Everson, a writing colleague, e-mailed me a question about her Blogger blog:

How can I encourage readers of my blog to share my posts on other social networks?

I asked Eva Marie whether she wanted to add a “widget” so people who like a particular blog post can re-tweet it or post it to one of their social networks OR whether she wanted to add social media icons to her blog’s sidebar (when people click an icon, they’re linked to Eva Marie’s Twitter or Facebook account, so they can begin following her).

Many people don’t realize these are completely different functions, so I needed to make sure I was answering the right question.

Eva Marie did, indeed, want her fans to be able to re-tweet her blog posts on their own social media sites.

To do this on Blogger, you add a “gadget.”

• Click the “Layout” tab from within your Blogger admin area.
• Then click “Page Elements”
• Click “Add a Gadget”
• In the upper righthand corner of your screen, you’ll see a “search for gadgets” form.  Enter the search term “share”

Here are several sharing gadgets you can experiment with:

TweetMeme Retweet –  useful for people who want to re-tweet your post.

UpTweet - does the same as TweetMeme.

Share it – a helpful gadget that allows your fans to share the post on either Twitter or Facebook.

Sociable – allows users to share your blog and posts on social networks and social bookmarking sites like Google Bookm arks, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Facebook, Twitter and others.

Facebook Share – allows your fans to share your post on Facebook.

• Once you’ve selected the gadget you want, click the big “plus” sign on the right side of your screen.
• A pop-up form will offer you some configuration options.  Configure the gadget, click Save, and then drag and drop the gadget where you want it to appear in your blog’s sidebar.

Eva Marie went through the process, and e-mailed me:

I DID IT!!!!

You have no idea how BIG this moment is.

Do you have a question for the Blogging Barista? Ask away; I regularly feature reader questions on my blog.