7 Best Social Networking Plugins for WordPress

As I get more and more familiar with WordPress, I become completely overwhelmed by all of the options out there that will enhance this program’s functionality — there are thousands of WordPress plugins.  When I go into overwhelm,  I begin looking online for lists of the best of whatever it is that I’m seeking.  If I find a great recommendation, or see something recommended on multiple lists, that’s the option that I will try.

My latest search has been for social networking plugins for WordPress.  As usual, I found hundreds of WordPress plugins offering a variety of options for social networking. I managed to narrow the options down to seven.

Here are my 7 best social networking plugins for WordPress:

1. Follow Me.   The Follow Me plugin allow WordPress bloggers to stick the widget on the side of their web site.  This widget widget allows you to display links to all your social media profiles in one, easy-to-access button or window. You can also add your Google buzz profile along with an RSS icon.  I like it because it’s visible, yet unobtrusive, and it can be customized to display whatever social media profiles you desire.

2. Sexy Bookmarks.  Although I was initially turned off by the name, I like how this plugin offers a variety of options to share a post at the bottom of a page.  You can customize which places you want it to show for sharing, and choose from a variety of sayings, like “Share the knowledge” instead of the “Sharing is sexy” that I’d seen on so many sites.

3. Smart YouTube.   While there are a number of ways to share YouTube videos in a blog post, I chose this one for its simplicity as well as customization features from size to border color to how the video is displayed.  And, best of all, you simply grab the URL of the video from YouTube and add a V or VH to the http URL and the video appears in your post.

4.  Twitterfeed.  This isn’t a WordPress plugin but a separate service that makes it easier for your blog posts to appear on your various social networking platforms.  All you have to do is add your RSS feed and link to the social networking platforms where you want your blog posts displayed, and you’re done.  Under advanced settings, you can set how often it checks for updates, and what prefix you want to attach to your blog posts when they appear in your status updates.

5.  TweetMeme.   Tweetmeme creates a button that lets blog readers easily retweet your blog posts to their followers.  I like that you can change the default setting from “RT @tweetmeme …” along with your post title and URL, to list your Twitter username, changing the tweet to “RT @YourTwitterIDHere … (via @tweetmeme).”  This lets people see both your post and your Twitter ID.  You can also customize the position and size of the button.

6.  Facebook Social Plugins.  Rather than changing the CSS files of your blog theme, I wanted a plug-in solution that would make it easy to add the Facebook “Like” button to every post.  With Facebook Social Plugins, adding the social plugins to your plugin as simple as a few clicks.  You can determine where you want the “Like” button to appear and how it appears.

7.  Twitter Profile Widget.  This isn’t a WordPress plugin, either, but I wanted to include it because it makes it simple to include your Twitter stream on your WordPress blog.  You can customize how you want your Tweets to appear, the color of the stream box, and whether or not the Tweets recycle.  Once you have completed your customization, you simply copy the code into a text widget on your blog, and your Twitter stream appears.

Take Action Strategy

Out of the thousands of social networking plugins and options available for WordPress, choose a few just to get you started. Limit the number of plugins that you choose, as you don’t want your readers to be distracted with cool plugin features and decide to explore those rather than read the content of your posts.  I prefer simple plugins that aren’t flashy so that my blog can do its primary job — serve as a platform for educating my target market about authentic online promotional strategies.

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Introvert Marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps professional service businesses stop the client chase and create online businesses that drive clients to them. Want to learn specific Internet marketing strategies that get results for introverts? Discover how to increase your online visibility in this free ecourse, Introvert Marketing Toolkit: 9 Strategies to Make a BOLD Impression Online, at ==> https://www.IntrovertMarketingToolkit.com