WordPress is a great CMS that makes it easy to have a blog, business website, or other online presence. There are thousands of free and paid plugins available that can help webmasters, marketers, and bloggers customize their website to serve whatever purpose is needed.
One type of plugin that is very popular with many WordPress users who write blog posts and other content are social media sharing plugins. These allow website visitors that ability to share blog posts and pages on their social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn. These plugins can be customized to only include certain social networks and may also allow site owners to only display sharing options for certain social media sites.
Sociable: Sociable has over 1.8 million downloads and is rated 4.1/5 stars. It offers a variety of options, including different icon colors and sharing layouts. The Sociable Skyscraper places the sharing buttons to the side of the content, where as Sociable Classic places the icons at the end of the blog post or page.
ShareBar: ShareBar is similar to the Sociable Skyscraper layout and allows users to customize the order of the icons in the ShareBar. Users can also add custom buttons that can input custom code. For instance, if Pinterest is needed, adding the Pinterest button code can generate a Pin It button into the custom button field.
Shareholic: Shareaholic offers a variety of options and perks for users, including social analytics, content recommendations for readers, and the majority of main social networks. Installation and set-up is fast and easy. Shareaholic offers 3 different layouts– Top Bar, Classic Bookmarks, and the “Sharing is Sexy” option, which features hovering animation.
Lockerz/AddtoAny: This plugin has almost 2.4 million downloads and is very popular, as the AddtoAny widget was one of the first social sharing widgets available for website installation for free. This plugin is available for localization for 19 languages and includes the majority of social media networks and websites.
These are just some of the options available for WordPress website owners that want to add the capability for their users and readers to share their content. By making it as easy as possible, your content is more likely to be shared, thus increasing traffic and readership. Become the example for your readers and users by utilizing these sharing plugins yourself on your own accounts after content is published.