Share your articles in style with one of these social media WordPress plugins guaranteed to increase tweets, likes and +1’s
Before the Internet, one of the ways we shared information was by talking on the telephone. You know – a landline. If someone wasn’t home, you had to wait for them to get home. If you got lost driving to their house, you couldn’t just give them a buzz on their cellphone – you had to start asking strangers. Any message you wanted to deliver, you needed to do it with preparation and well in advance.
Thankfully today we have smart phones that make it even easier to share on the go. If someone gets lost on the way to your house, you can text them directions or an address which will open in a GPS-enabled application. If we have a party, we can make a Facebook invitation and send it while sitting on the bus, rather than buying invitations and licking stamps all afternoon. We share pictures, directions, locations and websites every single day.
Making websites easily shareable to social sites like Twitter and Facebook is one of the easiest ways to drive new traffic to your website and to your articles. Just like sending a Facebook event invitation to your party is more likely to get a one-click “yes” RSVP than a phone call.
Here are 10 WordPress plugins will make the content on your website easier to share, distribute and implement the one-click marketing technique that has become so instrumental to our online marketing campaigns.
Sexy Bookmarks
This plugin is made by the good folks at http://www.shareaholic.com/.
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. In the WordPress plugin preferences, you can choose which platforms you want to enable users to share with.
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Another feature of Sexy Bookmarks is that it lets you configure how you want to share your posts on Facebook. This is a very handy because we are learning more and more about how important Facebook “likes” are to getting higher rankings in search engines.
Pros:
- Easily to install and configure
- Ability to show at top or bottom of blog post
- Tons of sharing options
Cons:
- While very simple, the share bar might not be an aesthetic match for your website because of its size
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TweetMeme
TweetMeme is a Twitter-only share button that conveniently displays a tweet button within your post. You can see TweetMeme in action below, just look to the right of this article headline—thanks for sharing!
TweetMeme is special because it let’s you add in you Bit.ly account information so that when someone tweets your article using the TweetMeme button you can easily track the number of times the link to the article has been clicked, because it shows up within your Bit.ly account.
Pros:
- Easily installed
- Integrates well with Bit.ly and other URL shorting services
Cons:
- Can be difficult to get the placement of the TweetMeme button just where you want it
- Easily susceptible plugin-conflicts when operating many plugins on your website
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 and Google “+1” button. 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.
You can show the buttons in your excerpts on the homepage to show off your stats, or you can hide them, only to be shown on the individual post. You can also include your share buttons on other pages, like landing pages category pages.
Pros:
- Easy to install and configure
- Uses official buttons from social networks
- Small footprint on your site
- Lots of sharing options
- Signing up for a free AddThis account gives you analytics on your buttons
Cons:
The # of likes only shows up when you have a number, unlike the Tweet and Share buttons. This creates a little gap between the Like and Tweet button, which you don’t get between the Tweet and Share button. Only a minor aesthetic blemish.- Requires a little more loading time than I’ve noticed on other plugins
Which plugin you choose for your site is up to you, but making your articles easily shareable is practically guaranteed to increase your website traffic, so you might as well choose a plugin that resonates well with your readers.
