Social networks have become an integral part of the web, and a hugely effective method of driving targeted traffic to our websites.
But what can you do to ensure you get more traffic from social networks?
The first step is to make it as easy as possible for people to share the content on your website.
Sure, you could go with the typical native social sharing buttons that look horrible, disjointed and only hinder the look of your site.
Or you could go for a WordPress plugin that displays visually attractive and well-designed social sharing buttons.
That’s what you’ll find in today’s post – the best social sharing plugins around. They’ll make it easy for readers to share your content, and look great in the process.
First we’ll talk about which paid plugins are out there and move on to some awesome free plugins you can use right now.
Premium social sharing plugins for WordPress
Below you’ll find the most effective and eye-catching social sharing plugins that we’ve tried here at WP Superstars. They’re packed with features and have the potential to encourage social sharing on your website.
Social Warfare
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If you are serious about driving more traffic to your website from social networks, you’ll love the Social Warfare plugin.
For starters, it makes it easy for you to add eye-catching social share buttons to your content. You can choose whether to add them to posts and/or pages as well as customizing their look and feel.
You have control over whether share counts are displayed and you can set a minimum amount of shares to reach before counts are displayed.
You’ll also find post specific options with this plugin. For example, you can upload a Pinterest-friendly image to your posts without having to change your featured images.
Then there’s the option to add “click to tweet” style widgets within your content like this:
Are you looking for a social sharing plugin for WordPress? Try one of these handy pluginsClick To TweetFeatures:
- Various attractive designs
- Control over how share counts are displayed
- Change hover states of share buttons
- Supports posts, pages and custom post types
- Option to add “click to tweet” widgets in your content
- Post specific social sharing options including Pinterest specific images
- Support for Bitly
- Responsive layout
Price: $24/year
Monarch by Elegant Themes
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Monarch is an incredible fast and functional share plugin from the folks at Elegant Themes.
Elegant Themes are best known for creating some of the most visually attractive themes on the web and having an attractive subscription model that gives you access to everything for a low monthly fee.
With this plugin you can easily add share buttons to various locations along with some of the less common placements.
This includes the likes of fly-ins and popovers which can be a great way to encourage social sharing.
The user interface is visually stunning with helpful statistics enabling you to easily monitor how much traction your blog is getting on social media.
Features:
- Supports 20 social networks
- Built with performance in mind
- Various placement options including fly-in and popover
- Monitor your social reach with helpful statistics
- Display share buttons on images
- Add follow widgets to your sidebar
- Customizable button color
- Support for custom CSS
- Import/export settings
Price: $89/year (You get access to all other plugins and over 87+ WordPress themes)
Easy Social Share Buttons
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If you are looking for a social sharing plugin that is highly customizable then Easy Social Share Buttons may be the plugin for you. It comes with a large selection of button designs which makes it far easier for you to give your share buttons a unique look. There is support for all the main social networks as well as more niche networks such as ManageWP.org.
You have a nice amount of control over how share counts are displayed or you can turn the counter off completely.
Easy Social Share Buttons also has a URL shortener support which will make your links look nice and tidy.
This is one of the most feature-intensive social sharing plugins out there, and that does come with a cost – performance. That said, there are some very unique features that come with this plugin.
Features:
- Supports over 35 social networks
- Add sharing buttons in 19 different locations including floating share bars
- Display share buttons anywhere on your blog with shortcodes
- 22 built-in templates including an easy to use template customizer
- Different button styles with 4 different animations
- 11 counter positions and 6 total counter positions
- And much more…
Price: $19
Free social sharing plugins for WordPress
One of the great things about WordPress is the wide availability of plugins in certain categories, in this case – social bookmarking plugins.
But, this also makes it extremely difficult to sift through them. So we’ve put together a list of the best and most relevant.
SumoMe Share
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SumoMe Share is available for any websites that support HTML, but it comes with a handy WordPress plugin to get you setup fast.
What stands out about this plugin is how well it supports mobile devices.
With most social sharing plugins, you’ll find that some are either just not built to deliver a positive experience for mobile users. Or, you’ll have buttons that are responsive but can be difficult to see – also making for a less than desirable experience.
So, you can choose from a variety of locations to add social share buttons to for desktop users. Maybe you want them to float on the left hand side, or you want them to appear on the bottom right hand side of your content.
That’s possible with the click of a button, but you can also select where share buttons will be displayed for mobile users.
SumoMe Share supports all of the popular social networks, including WhatsApp which still isn’t seen all too often.
Features:
- Supports over 16 social networks
- Filtering options allow you to hide share buttons on particular pages, or for particular devices
- Provides an exceptional experience for mobile users that could encourage social sharing
- Various placement options including floating and fixed positions around your content
- Smart share feature displays most used share buttons at the top
Price: Free
SumoMe Image Sharer
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As the saying goes; images speak a thousand words.
So, it makes sense to provide an easy way for your readers to share images from your website.
With SumoMe’s Image Sharer, you’ll have a free and easy way to add share buttons to your images.
You can choose where on the image these share buttons appear, and have the choice of 4 social networks. These include Pinterest and Facebook.
Another nice feature, which is a mainstay with SumoMe apps is their filtering options.
For example, you might not want the share buttons to appear over images on your homepage or a specific landing page – the pages where you have specific goals you’d like your readers to complete such as joining your email list or purchasing a product.
This means you can keep the share buttons on the pages where you need them.
Features:
- Choose from any combination of Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Yammerly
- A graph will show you how many share you get on each network
- Display rules allow you to disable image sharing buttons based on specific criteria that you decide
- Supports a variety of placement options for the share icon on your images
- Can include your @username in images that your readers tweet to their followers
Price: Free
Cresta Social Share Counter
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If you are looking for a simple and easy to use social sharing plugin, Cresta Social Share Counter is ideal.
What is immediately apparent about this plugin is that the buttons have a stylish flat design that looks rather unique.
You can choose to show individual share counts or total share counts. If you prefer, you can turn them off entirely.
You can choose to have share buttons above or below your content, or floating down the side of the page.
Features:
- Supports 5 different social networks
- Fade animation is shown as you hover over the social buttons
- Display share buttons in several positions including as a floating bar
- Shortcode placement of share buttons is supported
- 9 different button styles to choose from
Price: Free
Sharify Social Share Buttons
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Sharify is a simple plugin that lets you add sharing buttons to your site that are eye-catching and responsive.
The plugin includes sharing buttons for the big social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. But you also get a Pocket button – it’s a great tool that can be used to save articles to read later on various devices.
One particularly unique feature of Sharify is it gives you control over how share counts are saved. Instead of frequently pulling the data from social networks, the plugin gives you the option to cache these counts and choose how often to update them.
Inside the admin panel, you’ll find all of the options you need to configure the plugin, select which of the 9 social sharing buttons to display, and where to display them.
Features:
- Social sharing buttons for 9 different social networks
- Buttons are mobile responsive
- You can change the color of your social sharing buttons to match your websites branding
- Share counts offered for Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (Twitter discontinued their share counts recently)
- Add share buttons via a handy shortcode
- And more…
Price: Free
Social Media Feather
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Social Media Feather is designed to be super lightweight and be as basic as possible.
Yet, still include the sort of functionality that allows you to choose which post types your share buttons will appear, and which networks you’d like to display.
One other helpful feature of this plugin is that you can add “follow us” style social icons to any widget area on your website.
Sure, some themes offer this feature already but not all of them do. This gives you the opportunity to make it easy for your readers to follow you across the social networks where you’re most active.
Features:
- Supports the following social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, reddit, Pinterest, tumblr, Linkedin and e-mail
- Follow on – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Linkedin, YouTube, tumblr, instagram, flickr, foursquare, vimeo or RSS Feed
- Only enable the social networks you want to display
- Add share buttons for different post types (or hide them)
- Selective exposure for each social network
- Various social icon sets included
Price: Free
Conclusion
The new native share buttons meant bad news for those who want to display tweet counts – Twitter doesn’t offer that ability anymore.
The truth is that the end of tweet counts isn’t the world. But it does mean that it’s a good idea to pick a social sharing plugin that gives you the option to ensure counts can be disabled. That way you can avoid the negative impact of showing no counts on tweet buttons and counts for other networks.
Although, how much difference that could make to social sharing remains to be seen.
The bottom line is that you’ve now got a list of some of the best social sharing plugins around – now it’s time to identify exactly which features you need, and get started.
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