The sharing of content is an important element of engagement on a social platform. In today's fast-paced world, people want to be able to share quickly and easily, and with Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla), this feature is built into your community (and with some added benefits).
Share a post or comment
When viewing any post or comment, you can copy its URL via either of the two icons that are highlighted in the image below.
- Click the link icon above a post or comment to copy the URL to your device's clipboard.
- Click the Share icon below a post or comment to view a dropdown with two options:
- Copy Link copies the URL just like the link icon.
- Email Link opens your default email application and auto-populates the message with the post's title as the email subject and adds the post or comment's URL in the email body (an example is provided in Email Link example, below).
✔️ TIP: Both of these methods have an added reporting benefit: the UTM parameter utm_source=community-share is automatically appended to the URL. This enables you to report on sharing engagement across your community in Vanilla's Analytics. Check out Referrer & UTM Data for Analytics to learn more.
Email Link example
FAQs
Q: Why should I use these share features when I can just copy a post's URL in my browser?
- A: There are two reasons:
- First, Vanilla automatically appends the UTM parameter
utm_source=community-share to links so admins can report on sharing metrics across your community. Check out Referrer & UTM Data for Analytics to learn more. - Second, when copying links for comments, Vanilla automatically appends an anchor to the URL that takes users directly to the comment on the page, making it easy for them to jump right to the content.
Q: Can I use these features on my mobile device?
- A: Yes. On mobile, clicking the Share button will copy the URL and suggest sharing it to your most used application (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Text, etc.). You can, of course, choose any app on your device.
