When it comes to plugins, the most important types are the sharing plugins. It is great to have a bunch of people reading your blog, but if you really want to leverage your readers then you have to make it easier for them to help spread the word. Here are the top 10 WordPress sharing plugins for 2013.
- Sharebar – This WordPress plugin appears as a vertical floating bar on the left or right side of the blog posts. It can also be placed above or below the content in static form. The good thing about the Sharebar is that you can add your own sharing widgets but that bad side of it is that there does not appear to be any support offered from the developers.
- Social Media Widget – Appears on the sidebar of the WordPress blog. There are icons for all of the major social media networks. The icons can be linked to each corresponding social media page. Earlier versions were susceptible to a trojan horse, but that seems to have been fixed now.
- Sexy Bookmarks – Provides a similar function as the Sharebar but is positioned within the content of each post. A lot of bloggers use this as a complimentary plugin to the floating sidebar because the graphics are more pleasing to the eye. It also comes with built-in analytics.
- AddThis – This is one of the earlier forms of sharing for social media, which is sometimes forgotten amongst all of the clutter. It is still a great plugin, though. The nice thing about this is that it can be very compact. It also has a counter which is nice. The downside is that it does not appear to work well on mobile devices.
- Lazy Social Buttons – When it comes to search rankings, page load speed is key. Having a bunch of social media buttons actually slows down the page load speed. This plugin takes a different approach to loading the social media buttons. It optimizes the loading of the buttons to make the whole page load faster.
- WP Socializer – This sharing plugin offers one of the largest collections of choices in layout and function. It is also highly customizable and offers shortcodes for placement anywhere. It does not work with themes that have drop down menus though.
- Slick Social Share Buttons – The thing that stands out about this plugin the most is that it expands and collapses, so it is not as in your face as some of the other plugins. It does seem to slow down faster as more social media links are added.
- Slim Jetpack – Takes the original Jetpack from WordPress and makes services like web contact forms act independently of each other. This can help to increase the overall speed of the blog.
- Custom Facebook Feed – Stay engaged with Facebook followers by providing a feed of the activity on your Facebook page. This encourages more interaction.
- WordPress Notification Bar – Drive sales or more interaction by displaying promotional messages at the top of each page. The only downside is it does not yet have the ability to set dates for certain promotions.
The plugins should definitely be considered for the blog website design. Just keep in mind the WordPress compatibility of the plugin for your web design. And, if you aren’t quite sure of which social sharing plugin is best for you, simply drop us a line and we’ll point you in the right direction.
