Social media plugins that get the content sharing ball rolling
If we created content just to share with our inner circles, then what we’d have is our own niche social network. The walls would be up, and there would be a big “NO TRESSPASSERZ” sign hung from a fence outside.
But we do create content that’s meant to be shared. We want everyone to read it. If we’re ad-driven and rely on page impressions for ad sales, then we really want everyone to read our articles.
That’s why it’s so important to be enablers. Every content creating site on the web should now be enabling their readers to share your articles within their own networks with the use of bookmarking and sharing buttons and plugins on your website.
Luckily, the largest social networks now make it very easy for you to share there content, by providing you with quick codes that you can install on any blog, that tracks how many shares you have on each respective network:
- Twitter TWEET Button
- Facebook LIKE Button
- LinkedIn SHARE Button
- Google +1 Button
- StumbleUpon STUMBLE Button
These types of buttons work best when shown at the top of an article where they’re most prominent.
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Secondarily, there are several bookmarking plugins for WordPress (and beyond) that you can also install on your blog that will get people to share your content more easily:
Sexy Bookmarks
This plugin is made by the good folks at Shareaholic.
Sexy Bookmarks is easily configurable so people can share your articles on the most popular social media sites. It does this in a very slick and—dare I say it—sexy way! You can configure it to look several different ways, including removing the text all together and only leaving the identifiable buttons.
SexyBookmarks will let users share your content on the most popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Email and RSS, but it also offers a giant selection of other social sites that might be relevant to your niche.
AddThis
AddThis is probably the most legit way to go about implementing sharing links on your website, because they use the official Facebook “like” button, Twitter “share” button amongst others, all in one tool. Its design is also discrete and page footprint is much smaller than Sexy Bookmarks. It also offers several different customizable options on appearance, including the options below.
You can also choose different sets of buttons to show up at the top of the article, versus the bottom of the article. This is good, because you may want to show the number of “likes” or “tweets” you have at the top of the article to get them to read, but then expand the users ability to share, print or email your post at the bottom of the article where users expect to find them. The best part about AddThis, is the analytics they offer.
So what plugins are you using for your website, and how are they working? Have any recommendations? Share them in the comments!
Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are now the leader and every blog should have these buttons