Like something you’ve read or watched on the internet? Sharing it with others is a good idea because:

1. It helps get the content to a wider audience. Whether it is to share the interest and enjoyment that you got from the piece, or whether it is for publicity purposes because you think it should be seen by more people, sharing the content via sources such as Digg or Facebook is a good way to achieve that.

2. Using one or more of these routes builds up a history for your own future use of what you’ve found and liked.

3. Sharing content through social bookmarking sites can also help make that content come up higher in search engines – indirectly driving more traffic to it.

4. Producers of content often like it when their content is shared, so it’s a way of giving them a small ‘thank you’ for putting online that which you liked.

With the myriad of different sharing options, it can however be cumbersome to work through the different services. Some content has a list of convenient links to help you do just that, but what if they aren’t present?

This is where a tool such as Shareaholic (a free extra for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and others) comes in. It is reliable and uses very little of your computer’s resources. It works with a very wide range of services.

Indeed, the range is so wide that my top tip for using it is to hit the “Customize” option in its menu after installation and cut them back to the ones you will be using.

One feature it lacks is the ability to share via Lib Dig, but you can get the LibDig bookmarklet for your toolbar here.

But for the core of what is needed – Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter – Shareaholic does the job quickly and well. Over the years I’ve experimented with several different programs and add-ons that do similar things, Shareaholic is the one I like best. You can get Shareaholic for your computer here.

(I’ve mentioned Shareaholic in the past as I’ve always liked it, but since then its got even better supporting a wider range of web browsers and services. So if you didn’t try it  then because it didn’t support a browser or service you wanted, it’s well worth giving it a second look now.)