We get asked quite a lot about the plugins that we recommend for Social Media. There are loads on the market place and they all perform slightly different functions. So we have put together a quick check list for you so that you know you have got your bases covered.
So there are a couple of pieces of functionality that you will require on your WordPress platform when thinking about social sharing
- Letting visitors to your website know your social media ‘handles’ so that they can follow you
- Enabling ‘share’ buttons on the bottom of your blog posts so that your information can be easily shared, this can also be presented as a sidebar that floats down the side of your blog (useful if you write long posts!)
So what do we use? well in the main there are three that we use as standard
Letting visitors know your Social Accounts
The plugin we use for this is simple social icons. It’s easy to configure with the social profiles that you want and you can colour it to your brand. Once installed you’ll find it in the widgets area of your website, it will take you five minutes to get working!
Sharing Content
There are two plugins that are great for this, the most popular of all is by shareaholic, this is a great tool for enabling visitors to easily share your content on all the popular social media platforms, the tool also enables you to show related content to encourage the visitor to stay onsite a tiny bit longer. It also comes with its own analytics so you can see which posts have been the most popular.
The second plugin is one that floats down the page so that the social media icons are always visible and easy to use. The plugin we use for this is called Slick and you can easily configure to’float’ or ‘slide out’ on the side of your website. Again you can choose from the most popular platforms and place them in priority order according to your requirements.
All of these plugins have worked well, so if you’re not already ‘sharing’ we suggest you give them a try!