Social sharing is a great way to get your content out to the masses, and encouraging your existing readers to share your content with their social networks can be an effective means of increasing your traffic.
When your readers share your content with their circles, they effectively act as brand ambassadors – promoting your blog for you, while giving your content credibility. This kind of social proof is gold for bloggers, so ensuring social sharing is as easy as possible is crucial.
Want to encourage your audience to share your content? Here are 7 well-rated WordPress plugins to check out…
Floating Social Bar
This is the plugin we use to encourage social sharing here on WP Dev Shed (see the bar right underneath the title of this post?) and we’ve found it to be a simple and effective option.
Floating Social Bar adds a floating share bar to your blog posts and pages, for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. This plugin has been downloaded more than 50,000 times, and has an average user rating of 4.5/5 stars.
Cunjo Social Plugin
Cunjo Social Plugin allows you to design your own floating social share bar, that can be placed above or below your content to encourage social sharing. With this plugin, you also have access to free social analytics, so you can track who shares your content and compare the social activity of your pages.
Cunjo has been downloaded more than 53,000 times, and has an average user rating of 3.7/5 stars.
Social Login, Social Sharing, Social Commenting
Offering access to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, QQ and more, Social Login, Social Sharing, Social Commenting allows your readers to log in, comment and share via their social networks. Using this plugin, you’ll have access to user data and social analytics, to help you better understand your user database and see what content is shared most.
Social Login, Social Sharing, Social Commenting has been downloaded more than 159,000 times, and has an average user rating of 3.6/5 stars.
WP Social Share is a simple plugin, enabling your readers to quickly and easily share your content with their social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.
This plugin has been downloaded more than 17,000 times and has an average user rating of 3.7/5 stars.
Trackable Social Share Icons encourages social sharing, and tracks the number of share clicks in Google Analytics. Customizable, and with the ability to choose where and how icons display, this plugin integrates with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, and more.
Trackable Social Share Icons has been downloaded more than 66,000 times, and has an average user rating of 3.8/5 stars.
Tilt Social Share Widget easily enables sharing of your posts and pages, and connects your readers with Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, Digg, Tumblr, Evernote, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and more.
Tilt Social Share Widget has been downloaded more than 27,000 times and has an average user rating of 4.6/5 stars.
Compatible with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Buffer, Pinterest and more, Slick Social Share Buttons can be fully customized to display as a floating button or sliding tab, with various display speeds, directions and skins. This plugin also offers social share statistics.
Slick Social Share Buttons has been downloaded more than 333,000 times, and has an average user rating of 4.4/5 stars.
Are you using a social sharing plugin already? What tools do you find useful to encourage social shares among your readers?
