Social media sharing is an important part of online web marketing strategy. Nowadays every content on internet features extensive social sharing options featuring various social media services. Social media sharing allows you to generate more readerships for your content and also drives more organic traffic to your website. Potential customers generally perceive your facebook and twitter followers as a social stamping on the credibility of your service. When you get more facebook likes, shares, twitter retweets, image repins, google plus shares, tumblr reblogs etc your content appears more trusted and known in the digital universe.
Many website owners use WordPress platform for their business websites and blogs. WordPress platform offers various plugins for your website that make it easy for readers to share your content online. While choosing from among the various social media plugin options available, it is important to be careful of your own marketing priorities. The chosen plugin must feature all the social media platforms which your product/industry actively uses. For example, if you offer online catalogs, it is better to choose a plugin that offers image sharing options on social platforms such as Pinterest. If your product is actively geared towards people aged 18-30 then you must include a plugin that allows you to share on Instagram and Tumblr. The plugin you use must also complement the theme and look of your website and maintain its speed.
Here is a list of some of the top social media plugins on WordPress that you must try!
Flare
Flare offers eye-catching share buttons that are customizable in coloring and style. These buttons can be placed at the top or bottom of your post or can be made into a left scrolling floating bar as well. Another attractive feature is the Follow Me widget which allows you to get more followers for your social media channels right from your website. Flare currently supports 10 social services – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Reddit, Buffer, Hacker news and allows users to email your content as well.
Floating Social Bar
Floating social bar was developed by Syed Balkhi for WPBeginner and is the most popular social media plugin in which a horizontal social bar floats and scrolls along as the visitor scrolls down the content. Thus the sharing bar is visible to the visitor at all times. The social sharing bar is fully customizable and can be configured to include five social sharing platforms of Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. The best advantage of this plugin is that it does not slow down your website. It displays fast loading icons while the official sharing buttons are loaded only when a user moves over an icon. Thus the initial page load time is not affected.
Shareaholic
Shareaholic is not just a social sharing plugin. Initially known as Sexy Bookmarks, it can also submit your blog to various social bookmarking websites and capture more readers. Shareaholic currently supports all major social platforms such as Facebook (both like and share), Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and other major social platforms. This plugin offers 4 different styled of sharing icons: Classic, Flat square, Flat circle, and Sexy. The buttons can be placed either at the top or bottom of the page or as a floating bar on the left side of the content. It also features a Recommendations & Related post option which allows users to engage more with your content and spend more time on your blog. The plugin also provides a built-in Social Analytics for your content sharing activity and Google analytics which provides reports on the social media performance of your content’s URL such as who’s sharing it, and through which channels.
Share Buttons by AddToAny
AddToAny Share Buttons is another popular and widely used social media plugin for WordPress with almost 3 million downloads. It offers over 100 social share platforms, email service and bookmark options along with 3rd party interactive icons for Facebook Likes, a Tweet button for Twitter, a “Pin It” button for Pinterest, a +1 button for Google+ and more. This plugin also hosts an email service which allows use of any web-based or desktop email program. The buttons can be placed either on the top or bottom of the post or as a floating share bar on the left side of the post. The plugin can feature content in over 19 languages. It can be integrated with Google analytics to track social media performance of your content. There is no integrated URL shortner.
Ultimate Social Deux
Ultimate Social Deux is a premium social sharing plugin. It is available at CodeCanyon for $12. The best part about this plugin is that it does not slow down your website as it uses lightweight JavaScript and CSS to load the social sharing buttons quickly. It offers color-customizable, social sharing buttons which can be placed wither as a floating social media bar or on the top and bottom of your content. The plugin currently supports 10 popular social media share counters and no URL shortner.
Besides these, there are thousands of other wordpress plugins for social media sharing. The most practical way to discover the plugin suitable for you is to install different plugins and test which one works for your marketing goals. It does not also make any sense to install several social plugins simultaneously as they will slow down your website.
Do leave us a comment to tell us which social sharing plugin you use and share your experience with others.
Smith Joanna is currently working as a senior PR manager at likesandfollow. She regularly writes blogs on digital web marketing