It’s rather obvious that one of the hottest sectors of the online world is social networking. Many people have created accounts on popular sites like Facebook and Twitter to catch up with old friends, share ideas, network for business, and much more. If you have a WordPress site, one way to expand your presence is through social media. Luckily, there are tons of WordPress plugins out there that can simplify the integration of social media with your site. This list details some of the best social media plugins around to help you get started.
It’s rather obvious that one of the hottest sectors of the online world is social networking. Many people have created accounts on popular sites like Facebook and Twitter to catch up with old friends, share ideas, network for business, and much more. If you have a WordPress site, one way to expand your presence is through social media. Luckily, there are tons of WordPress plugins out there that can simplify the integration of social media with your site. This list details some of the best social media plugins around to help you get started.
ShareThis
Just as its name implies, ShareThis is a WordPress plugin that allows your visitors to easily share content from your site across a host of social networks and email. ShareThis isn’t exactly one of the new kids on the block, as its creators claim that it has already been used on over one million sites. With that much of a presence, installing this plugin on your site is a good idea, since visitors will probably recognize it and know how it works.
ShareThis adds easily recognizable icons to your posts that are large and vibrant in color. If a visitor wants to share your particular post, all they have to do is click on the icon that corresponds to their social networking site or sharing medium, and your content will be broadcasted to a larger audience.
One strong suit of ShareThis is that you can customize how icons appear. They can be large to make a statement, or you can select smaller ones if you don’t want to appear intrusive. Counters show you how many times your content was shared on a particular site and extras such as Facebook Like and Google +1 buttons help to form a truly integrated experience. You also get tracking reports that include statistics on your most shared content, page views, clicks, traffic sources, and more. The plugin’s graphs offer a nice visual representation of how your site is doing too.
AddToAny is a sharing plugin that is easy to implement and easy to use. It’s easily surpassed the one million download mark, so you know its developers have done something right.
AddToAny’s functionality is rather simple: it helps visitors use over 100 sharing and social bookmarking sites to spread your content’s reach. Just name the site, and AddToAny probably supports it. Even if you are new to WordPress plugins, you have probably stumbled upon a site that had AddToAny integrated. To keep from adding more clutter to your site, the AddToAny drop-down menu only appears when activated by a visitor. At that point, they can choose to share the content through services like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and MSN Messenger, among others. They can also email the content in a snap, or bookmark it. One of the plugin’s more interesting features is its Smart Menu. This detects a user’s browsing history and places their most frequently used services at the top of the menu for a customized experience.
AddToAny offers plenty of control behind the scenes so you can tweak the menu’s design and look to fit your site. There’s a color chooser, and you can also adjust the border, link, and background. If you are looking for a solid sharing plugin for your WordPress site but don’t know where to start, you really can’t go wrong with AddToAny.
No, this plugin has nothing to do with adult sites or anything of the sort. The sexy adjective in its moniker has to do with the creator’s aim in enticing site visitors to share your content on a variety of social networking sites. As you get more visitors, your sites presence can increase exponentially as they share content on social networking powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter. The plugin goes much further than just the top two social networks, however, so you really are not limited by any means.
Beyond the attractive, icon-filled “Sharing is sexy” box that SexyBookmarks places on your site, the plugin offers statistical tracking. You can see the visitors who share your content the most, see share counters for Facebook and Twitter, and the list goes on. SexyBookmarks also supports the Google goo.gl URL shortener to offer more visually-friendly links. If you want to employ the plugin on international sites, don’t worry, as it is localized in over 15 languages.
Sociable is another WordPress plugin for social media integration that has exceeded the impressive milestone of one million downloads. It places a small and attractive collection of icons on your page to allow for quick and painless sharing.
Sociable is a plugin that is extremely easy to use and has a backend that even beginners can master. It puts you in total control of how the plugin will appear on your site. After all, it is your site, and you should be able to dictate the design, right? You can create your own custom tagline to entice visitors to share the content, plus select which icons to include. Want email to be first in the list of options? Simply drag and drop it in the backend to the desired destination. Icon size can be adjusted, as can the style and color of each icon. The option also exists to use your own customized icons if you’d like.
Its name may not roll right off your tongue, but the I Love Social Bookmarking plugin for WordPress offers some nice functionality to help you spread your content across the Web. Simplicity is its strong suit, as it won’t use a lot of system resources and its design is one that won’t dominate your page.
I Love Social Bookmarking employs a drop-down list of icons to ensure clutter-free addition to your site. You can customize the plugin easily to mesh with your site, and its icons are easy on the eyes. Perhaps its most valuable asset is that I Love Social Bookmarking uses the nofollow tag to give your SEO a boost.
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