Social media has revolutionized the way business is conducted online – but executing a social media strategy and getting users to share your content doesn’t happen automatically.
If you want social media to become a source of traffic for your business, careful planning and execution are required. However, there are some plugins that can help simplify the process and streamline your social media strategy.
Below, we take a look at why having a social media presence is so important and highlight ten of the top WordPress plugins that can help you maximize your social media strategy.
The Importance of Having a Social Media Presence
In addition to allowing you to share photos of your cat, social media can be a powerhouse tool for your business. Whether you’re looking to grow your reach, improve your traffic, find new customers, improve your customer service, or just move more of your products, having a social media presence can help.
In fact, there are over 2.7 billion active social media users, so the chances are high your target market is out there, just waiting for you to find them.
10 Best WordPress Social Media Plugins
The plugins below will help make social sharing and social media management easier. If your readers have to work to share your content, they won’t do it. By reducing the amount of friction related to sharing and by making it as easy as a single click, you’ll surely see an increase in social shares.
1. Social Warfare
Social Warfare is a very feature-heavy social media plugin. It offers the standard social media sharing buttons. However, it also takes this a step further by enabling image sharing across Pinterest, which could be a large untapped source of traffic, and you can even add cool tweetable quotes and put your content behind a sharing firewall.
Beyond making it easier for your readers to spread your content, there’s also a backend that tracks all of your sharing data. That is a must-have if you’re curious about what kind of content your readers like to share the most.
There’s both a free and paid version of this plugin. The paid version starts at $29/year.
2. Sumo Share
Sumo offers an entire free suite of tools to help you get the most out of your website. They have a share option bundled with the plugin that allows you to add social sharing icons to your website. Best of all, you can do it with the click of a button.
You can even arrange your social media network list by the networks that get you the most shares, so your users can see these first. Plus, you’ll get access to analytics data that will show you what social media networks your users find the most valuable.
3. Easy Social Share Buttons
Easy Social Share Buttons is a long-running plugin that adds social-media-sharing buttons to your site. They offer support for up to 20 different social media networks so you can encourage your audience to share wherever they hang out online.
Plus, they offers tons of different customization options, so you can choose where and how to display the social icons across your site. It’s easy to set up and will run you $19.
4. Monarch
Monarch has quickly become one of the best social-media-sharing plugins on the market. It is a paid plugin, but it’s incredibly intuitive and offers very modern and elegant display options.
This plugin has a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to choose the design and layout of your social sharing buttons. Plus, there are multiple locations where you can activate the buttons so your readers don’t miss a chance to share.
Monarch also has the option to add image-sharing options on all of your website’s images, which is a nice plus.
To get the plugin, you’ll have to sign up for an Elegant Themes membership that costs $89/year and gives you access to all their plugins and themes. Or, if you’re a Automation Agency client, you can just ask us to install it at no charge as we have an agency license. 😉
5. Revive Old Post
You know that a successful social media strategy requires you to create and share a steady stream of content. But you can also revive your old posts, and share them again and again.
Digging through your old posts and sharing them across social media takes time, but with Revive Old Post, the plugin handles all the heavy lifting for you.
Once you set up the plugin, it will automatically share old posts to the most popular social media networks. Plus, it will do things like add hashtags, let you track your clicks, and even add images for each post.
The basic version of this plugin costs $75/year.
6. CardZ Social Stream
Instead of just adding social sharing buttons to your site, you might want to showcase your various social media feeds directly on your website. With CardZ Social Stream you can do just that.
This plugin lets you create custom social media streams for networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more, and easily embed them directly into your website. These feeds also have great visual effects and will encourage users to share your content.
This plugin will cost you $22.
7. Jetpack
If you’re using WordPress, there’s a good chance you already have Jetpack installed. It’s one of the most popular WordPress plugins and has a ton of features you can access. One of the main features is the ability to add social sharing buttons to your website.
All you have to do is activate the option from with your WordPress dashboard, and you can choose which social networks you’d like to display, and where you want the buttons active on your site.
8. MashShare
MashShare is a plugin that’s inspired by the social sharing options on the site Mashable. The display options are big and bold, and will help to draw your visitors’ eyes to the social sharing icons.
The free version of this plugin is equipped with Facebook and Twitter sharing, with more options if you opt for the premium version.
There’s also the option to add a subscription box to your site, which is a nice addition if you don’t already have the capabilities.
9. Sumo Image Sharer
Images always perform incredibly well on social media. For that reason, you’ll want to make it easy for your readers to share any images you have on your website.
If you already have Sumo installed, then you can activate the option from within the plugin’s settings. But if you don’t, just install the plugin and choose the networks you’d like your readers to be able to share the images on.
With this plugin, you’ll notice the sharing icons whenever you hover over an image. Plus, you can even choose which devices you want the sharing icons enabled upon.
10. ARSocial
ARSocial is a plugin that acts as a full-fledged social media suite. Beyond the ability to add social media sharing buttons, they have a stat counter, and even a social locker. The social locker feature requires users to share your content in order to gain access to the rest of it.
This feature alone makes the plugin worthwhile. You’ll definitely see your social shares start to improve by hiding some of your content behind a firewall.
Keep in mind, you don’t need to install every plugin on the above list just to be successful and the more plugins you install the slower your site will become and more at risk to hacks and attacks. Just pick the plugin that suit your needs, or consider if all you need is a social media scheduling tool like MeetEdgar instead.
If you’re looking for a team that can help you install, configure, and optimize your wordpress plugins, then get in touch with our team today.
