I'm working on an online magazine, and we are considering which pages in the sitemap should have social media sharing icons.
We have looked at four examples of related precedent sites throughout this design process:
GOOD and McKinsey Quarterly provide social media sharing icons only on article pages. Wired and The Huffington Post place social media sharing icons on the homepage as well that allow users to share or "like" the entire site.
The main goals behind this consideration are encouraging existing readers to engage with the content and also attracting new readers, but we also don't want to add clutter to the homepage if it is not useful. Unfortunately, we will most likely not have a chance to do multivariate testing - this is more of a "one and done" scenario.
What are the recommendations here?
Update: A couple of conflicting opinions have been given, but does anyone have data or other references to support or challenge the value of using 'share this' features on a site's homepage?