Without any sound social media marketing strategy for your WordPress sites and digital properties — You’re leaving a large gap in the promotional multimedia campaigns of your business. You’re likely to find it more difficult and costly to inform lots of your ideal customers and viewers about your latest products and services. Keep in mind, this 2019 report from Statista indicates that there are more than 2.4 billion people all over the world who use the most popular social media platforms each day.
This mainly points out that social media isn’t likely to go anywhere. The same report from Statista states that there’ll be around 3.08 billion social media users worldwide in 2021.
So now the WordPress plugins we’re going to discuss can provide you with cost-effective ways to build your social media presence without spending a fortune,. These plugins can also help you save lots of time, allowing you to focus on other important things to grow your business.
Top 11 WordPress Social Media Plugins of the Year
Remember, an efficient social media marketing campaign enables you to boost your presence in particular industries and niches across a specific set of geographic locations. For example, imagine you run a language academy. Now you can advertise your online classes to students all over the world by simply using the social media platforms where many of them hang out on a regular basis.
It often costs more to reach the same number of your target customers and ideal viewers through advertising networks other than social media. These are private ads in traditional platforms like TV, radio and print, or even through digital platforms like Google, Bing and various blog networks. So through these WordPress plugins, you’ll be able to quickly and cost-effectively enhance the social media marketing campaigns of your business this year:
1. Shareaholic
Shareaholic lets you add floating and in-content share buttons. You also have the option to put share buttons on individual images. Plus, there’s an option to track your shares and analyze how your content is performing with Google Analytics.
These statistics are shown in your WordPress dashboard. You can also automatically insert affiliate links, include banner adds and even sponsored content in your posts and images.
Through Shareaholic’s set of configuration options, you can change the design of your page and preview it to make sure it looks right. There are more than 100 social integrations that you can add to your sidebar. They are all free, including WhatsApp.
You also have the option to follow other user-profiles and to directly share your content. You can follow users of sites like Youtube, Meetup, BBB, Flickr, Skype, and Tripadvisor. On the other hand, you can share on Amazon Kindle, Google Classroom, Blogger Post, and Viber. These are just a few examples. You have all the usual favorites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
There are 4 different versions. Each is aimed at different types of users. Its starter version is free. For bloggers and new businesses, its standard version costs $8 a year. If you run an e-commerce or a small agency, then its advanced version costs $40 a month. Meanwhile, its premium version is ideal for large organizations,and it costs $500 per month.
Lots of well-known companies use Shareaholic. Some of them are Strava, Vistaprint, Smithsonian.com and Orbit. Many bloggers really like it because it’s quite easy for readers to share blogs and customize how their content shares look.
Shareaholic Pros
- Over 100 social integrations;
- Share count recovery;
- Privacy features to help comply with GDPR;
- Works with Google Analytics;
- It doesn’t slow down your WordPress site; and
- Available in 10 languages.
Shareaholic Cons
- Not as simple to use, especially if you’re quite new to WordPress social media plugins;
- There’s no “Click To Tweet” feature; and
- Some Webmasters complained about this plugin’s sponsored ads, although you don’t have to use them.
2. Swifty Bar
Swifty Bar is great for WordPress sites and blogs with a lot of content. This WordPress plugin adds a “sticky footer” to the bottom of a post. Here, viewers will see the usual options to share the post.
Also included in this sticky footer are some cool extra features. Users will see the title of the post and its author. It even shows them the estimated remaining reading time as they scroll down the post. Plus, there are forward and back buttons to move through posts.
Swifty is quite quick and simple to set up. It’s important to make sure that the disable bar is unchecked. But after doing this, each option is quite self-explanatory. As you customize the Swift bar, you can choose from one of seven colors.
This plugin is free for everyone. There are no pro, company or team versions. Many users also claim that Swifty Bar won’t slow down your site in any way. They also say this plugin won’t just allow your readers to share your posts. Instead, it can provide your customers with a much better viewing experience.
Users can easily share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Its development team says they’ll be adding more to new versions.
Swifty has an advantage over many other WordPress plugins. Share buttons aren’t hidden while viewers go through a post. This means readers are much more likely to share your posts because they can always see quick and easy options to do this.
Swifty Bar Pros
- Floating bar plus visible author and the blog post title;
- Remaining reading time as viewers go through the post;
- Forward and Back buttons to move through posts; and
- Easy to use.
Swifty Bar Cons
- Currently, it only comes in English; and
- Not a huge range of sharing options.
3. Easy Social Sharing
Easy Social Share has so much to offer at a bargain price of just $19. Again, there’s no pro or free version, so you know exactly what you’re getting.
There are over 50 social media buttons, including usual favorites like Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. There are also 28 display locations. And when it comes to customizing these buttons to best match your WordPress site, there are 50 templates and 25 animations to get the attention of your viewers. The more you can customize your share buttons, the better they’ll stand out from other sites.
If you’re looking for more than just social media sharing, then this plugin also provides tools for mailing list subscription management. You can send out regular newsletters with updated information on your products and services through Easy Social Share.
For viewers to conveniently share your posts, the share buttons have to be easy to see. With Easy Social Share, you can choose from a variety of positions. Share buttons can pop up, fly in or float. Meanwhile, floating bars can appear when a user performs a certain task, or after a certain section of the page has been viewed.
CodeCanyon developed Easy Social Share in 2013. They’ve constantly been making improvements to this plugin since then. This is why it is still such a popular plugin that’s used by over 500,000 websites, such as Kinsta and Blogging Wizard.
Easy Social Share lets you track the number of followers and shares you’ve gained. This is great if you are working on a marketing strategy because you can see which social sites are generating the most interest in your content. You can also run A/B split tests on social button placements. This is to see what type of content produces the best results for your business.
Easy Social Share Pros
- Excellent value for money for a trusted plugin;
- A large number of options to customize your share buttons;
- Easy button for clients to subscribe to newsletters, increasing business exposure;
- Social media counters to let you see what’s working for you; and
- It doesn’t have any effect on the speed of your site.
Easy Social Share Cons
- No “Click to Tweet” feature; and
- Setting up is a bit tiresome, so you you’ll need a little patience in the beginning.
4. MashShare
MashShare is proud of their privacy policy. The plugin is DSGVO compliant. Neither IP addresses nor any personal data is sent to third parties. This is a brilliant thing to mention because while viewers are browsing, following and sharing our content — They aren’t always aware if their data is protected. And while we want our content shared, we certainly don’t want the private information of our target customers to be shared.
MashShare is free. You don’t even need to set up an account. There are some add-ons like share buttons for Twitter and Facebook, and also a button for mailing list subscription. All of these features are perfect for a business that wants to increase their social media interaction, but doesn’t want to use too many social buttons.
If you want to use Whatsapp, Pinterest or LinkedIn, then MashShare offers paid add-ons. With these extras, you can add YouTube Video Share Popups, Google Analytics and a sticky share bar.
Prices vary, depending on how many add-ons that you want. This is better than many pro versions because you can choose the add-ons that are going to improve your site. It also means you aren’t bogging down your site with features that you won’t use.
Unlike some plugins, you don’t have to just put the share buttons at the side or bottom of a post. Shortcodes allow you to put share buttons anywhere on your site. But it might take you a while to get used to the settings on MashShare, even without additional add-ons.
Though without buying any add-ons, you’re still likely to notice an increase in the number of shares that your content gets. And if you want to really increase your presence on social media, then you can use filters and actions that allow for more advanced development.
MashShare Pros
- The free plugin has enough features to make a difference;
- It has an excellent privacy policy, so no data is shared;
- The new dashboard lets you see the total share counts; and
- Share buttons work through a quick and easy drag-and-drop interface.
MashShare Cons
- Individual add-ons can cost around $25; and
- It has a fake share count, which enables Webmasters to fiddle with share numbers.
https://www.alltechbuzz.net/7-essential-iphone-apps-that-every-user-should-know/
5. Social Pug
Social Pug was developed by DevPups. They’re dedicated to developing social media plugins for WordPress. Many Webmasters say this plugin’s fast and lightweight, so it won’t cause slowdowns to your WordPress site.
Also, it’s considered the plugin with the best looking buttons. Plus, the team behind DevPug is extremely helpful and ready to assist with any type of issue.
Social Pug has a free version. There’s also a premium version. The former lets you add share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. This is mostly enough for many individuals, small and large businesses.
The free version also lets you place buttons before or after your posts. Its floating sidebar follows the reader as they scroll up and down, making it quick and easy for them to share your content. The buttons are of high-quality design with sharp-looking icons. You can edit any labels to appeal to your viewer’s tastes and preferences.
If you want the Premium plugin, then you’ll be able to add over 10 other share buttons. This includes WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr among others. You can also set your buttons to pop up. There are also follow buttons for Youtube, SoundCloud, Instagram and all the usuals.
Another great feature of Social Pug is its Google Analytics integration. You can learn where your content’s getting the most social media attention. Also, you can use this data to optimize your marketing strategy, focusing on social media platforms that give you more highly convertible traffic.
Social Pug’s “Click to Tweet” feature is great for Webmasters who focus on promoting their content on Twitter. Place your quote in the Twitter box, and your readers can easily click to share your quote on this social media platform. But take note that this is a feature bundled with its premium version.
The version you choose depends on the size of your business. The free version will suit many bloggers, content publishers and businesses. But if you’re looking for more, then you can choose from any of these editions of Social Pug’s premium version:
- Blogger: $34 – This is suitable for 1 WordPress site;
- Freelancer: $69 — This is ideal for up to 5 WordPress sites; and
- Agency: $159 — This is for an unlimited number of WordPress sites.
All editions come with Pro features, updates, and support. If you have any doubt, then there’s a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Social Pug Pros
- You can change the shape of your buttons to round, rectangular or circular;
- The free version covers the five main social media sites; and
- Designed by expert WordPress Social Media plugin developers, Social Pug won’t slow down your site.
Social Pug Cons
- The free version is only suitable for basic use; and
- Some beginner WordPress admins say it took them a bit of time to learn how to correctly configure this plugin’s settings.
https://www.alltechbuzz.net/social-media-monk-perfect-platform-for-social-media-management/
6. JetPack
If you’re familiar with WordPress plugins, then you’ve probably heard of JetPack. You might have already have it installed in your WordPress site for its other features, such as heighten security, improve site performance and customize your design.
This plugin was created by Automattic, the same people behind WordPress. And as part of JetPack’s features, you can easily share your content through 6 key social media platforms. These are Facebook, Tumblr, Path, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Other supported platforms include Reddit and StumbleUpon.
If you haven’t used these social media features, then you can look on your dashboard under Settings. Click “Sharing”, and you’re ready to go. You can decide whether you want to display buttons as texts or icons. You can also choose between your buttons being displayed after or before content. There’s the option to display buttons on multimedia content, too.
Before you publish any changes to your site, you can use this plugin’s Live Preview feature. This gives you a chance to see if your changes look exactly how you want it.
There are two features that many Webmasters find unique to JetPack. First is the Google Translate Widget. Through this, your site won’t be limited to just English-speaking users. This is an excellent feature if you want followers from around the world.
Second is the My Community Widget. Here, you can see which users have interacted with your site. Knowing the users that visit your site can help you develop specific content and marketing strategies.
For e-commerce sites, there’s a Milestone Widget. If you have a special offer or a sale, then viewers will see the time left on the offer with a countdown to the date. This feature isn’t just useful for e-commerce. Instead, it could also be used for charities raising money or businesses with a new product about to be released.
JetPack Pros
- JetPack’s free version offers a lot more than Social Media sharing options;
- Its premium versions can provide excellent value for your money because again, you get more than just social media sharing features; and
- JetPack is regularly updated, and their development team keeps adding lots of new features.
JetPack Cons
- It has a massive footprint, and some Webmasters claim they’ve noticed their sites running slower than usual after installing JetPack;
- A few users say they’re a bit confused on how to use certain features of this plugin at the beginning, primarily because it provides too many options.
7. AddtoAny
AddtoAny has been around for over a decade as of this writing. This has allowed plenty of time for its developers to fix possible issues and also to further optimize the plugin. To date, there have been over 10 million downloads of versions in 10 different languages.
This plugin lets people share your post or page to over 100 social media sites. The most popular sites are:
- Tumblr
Its share buttons are standard or floating. Floating buttons can run horizontally or vertically. You can also add follow buttons for sites like Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. You can track the number of shares through counters in the same style as your icons. Plus, AddtoAny comes with 4 official buttons:
- Facebook Like
- Twitter Tweet
- Pinterest Save
- LinkedIn Share
For those who need email sharing, there’s a universal email sharing option that allows you to share content through Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and AOL. There are other email sharing options if readers don’t have one of these. It’s also compatible with WooCommerce, in case you want to set up an e-commerce site.
Once your sharing buttons are in place, you can decide if you want to display share counts for others to see, and also whether you prefer to study your statistics through Google Analytics. Moreover, AddtoAny is free. There’s no premium version, so what you see advertised is exactly what you get.
This plugin’s extremely lightweight. You won’t have any issues with a slow site, according to many WordPress admins. It’ll also automatically adapt to mobile users, and your content will always load at the same time as your share buttons.
AddtoAny Pros
- There are plenty of sharing, liking and following options;
- Some options like compatibility with WooCommerce and Google Analytics usually are only found on paid plugins; and
- There’s a universal share button that enables viewers to choose how they want to share your content.
AddtoAny Cons
- There isn’t any option to add share buttons to individual images; and
- You can’t customize button design.
8. Sassy Social Share
Sassy Social Share is a completely free plugin. There are no hidden costs, and there’s also no need to register. Another bonus is that there’s no need for integration with the APIs of third party sites, of course aside from supported social media platforms.
This means it works directly on your site. This plugin’s also GDPR compliant. Its creators make sure that your private information stays secure.
There’s a total of over 100 social and bookmarking services available in Sassy Social Share. You can choose between popular ones, as well as those that are quite newer. Share count tracking is also supported for major social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a few others.
When it comes to your icons, you can choose the shape from round, square, or rectangle. You can also change the logo and background colors. Even its size can be adjusted to a minimum of 16 pixels. Once you finish customizing your icons, you can also change your share count options.
Your buttons can be placed before or after your posts. Certain content can have specific sharing buttons to personalize what you’re publishing for different sites.
If you run an e-commerce site, then Sassy Social Share is ideal for you. It’s compatible with WooCommerce. You can enable sharing options for your WooCommerce products. This plugin’s also compatible with BuddyPress and BBPress, along with almost all WordPress themes. It’s also integrated with mobile responsive features.
Those who have used many social media plugins prefer Sassy Social Share. For them, this plugin’s so easy to use. They also say that it has more sharing options than other free plugins and is available in 4 different languages.
Sassy Social Share Pros
- More social media sharing options than most other free plugins;
- Their developers take your opinion and your privacy seriously; and
- It’s completely free.
Sassy Social Share Cons
- It can drop GPSI score because of its footprint; and
- Some Webmasters claim that it doesn’t provide enough options that they need for their social media marketing campaigns.
9. Social Warfare
Social Warfare raised the bar for plugins, according to many Webmasters. It’s both attractive and highly effective. Lots of professional bloggers have been able to increase their site traffic by up to 300% without affecting the speed of their WordPress sites. You can easily share your posts on the following social media platforms through this plugin:
- Google+
- Mix.
Buttons can be placed above, below, or manually on your content. Its floating share button follows the reader as they scroll up and down your post. Also included in the free version of this plugin is the “Click to Tweet” feature. You can take small parts of your site (like quotes or images) and send them straight to Twitter.
There’s a variety of design options in Social Warfare. You can choose between 75 different colors and styles to make your news completely personal. Social Warfare is also designed to automatically adapt buttons to any screen size.
Social Warfare includes a minimum social proof feature. You can choose to only show the number of counts once a minimum number has been hit.
One thing we particularly like about this plugin is its built-in Frame Buster. Quite often, a business website will have hijackers trying to add adverts on top of the content on their site. Frame Buster stops attackers from being able to do this.
This plugin’s Pro option is available at $24 for one website. It’s a little pricey at $200 for ten sites, but you do get some awesome extras. You can add share buttons for WhatsApp, Reddit, and Tumblr, just to name a few. And with its Click to Tweet feature, you’ll be able to track and display tweet counts.
It’s Pro version also offers Pinterest. There’s an image hover pin button. You can add titles and descriptions. If you want to track your stats, then you can use Google Analytics. This can help you tailor your posts to your audience.
Social Warfare Pros
- After a little bit of playing, it’s quite easy to use. If you have any issues, then their support team will be happy to assist you;
- Both free and premium versions provide excellent value, according to many Webmasters;
- Pinterest extra widgets are really helpful for lots of WordPress admins who are targeting this social media platform; and
- It can help you recover share counts when you change from Http to HTTPS.
Social Warfare Cons
- If you have multiple sites, then using this plugin can get quite expensive for some Webmasters; and
- Other WordPress admins, particularly ones with beginner skills, say it takes them a bit of time to understand how to configure this plugin’s settings to best suit their requirements.
10. Monarch
Monarch is highly rated as an elegant way to share content on social media. It is ideal for anyone, from Bloggers to business owners, but it’s more aimed at those who want to customize the design of their social sharing options for viewers.
Monarch focuses on increased sharing and better designs for more platforms at a higher speed. You can add share buttons from 20 different social media sites. All the top favorites are included. Once you select the social media platforms that you want to include, you can then choose the style of your buttons and any of the five different locations to place them.
There’s also an option to have a floating side bar. But what adds to its elegance according to some Webmasters is its pop-up and fly-in options. From here, you can set a time delay. This means your buttons will appear after a viewer has been active on your content posts for a certain period of time. Also, these can pop up once someone has left a comment, after someone has bought something, and even after inactivity. All of these options help remind people to share your post.
Your buttons can have an icon, the name of the social media site, or both. While we all know that Facebook is blue, and Pinterest is Red, you can change the shade of the color to match the look and feel of your website.
It might sound quite complicated to do all these things through this plugin. But this isn’t the case, according to our tests. Its configuration panel is built into the WordPress dashboard. From here, you can easily make any changes to the appearance of your social buttons, and to manage your statistics and data, which are displayed in easy to read bar charts.
What’s clever about this plugin for many WordPress admins is its Import and Export features. If you’re running various websites, then you can export the settings you have and import them onto another. To do this, simply export and import what is working for one site onto another.
Also, Monarch is a premium plugin. The annual fee is $89.
Monarch Pros
- You can set your social share counts to visible once you reach a certain number; and
- When viewers access your site through mobile devices, your share buttons are automatically scaled down in size to best suit the viewer’s mobile device.
Monarch Cons
- There’s no free version; and
- It can be quite expensive if you have many websites.
11. TweetDis / Click to Tweet
These 2 plugins are quite similar and also offer very simple ways for your viewers to share your content on Twitter, so we put them together here. They’re ideal if you want your viewers to share snippets of your posts, or for you to publish your latest offers and promote it in this social media platform.
Click to Tweet has a lot of big business users. MTV, Yahoo! and Babble all use Click to Tweet to keep readers informed. Some Webmasters say using Click to Tweet has increased the Twitter shares of their content by up to 23% in just a few months.
This plugin also offers the option to share images. There’s a dashboard to manage your Tweets, and you can keep track of your clicks through its analytics panel.
If you choose the Premium pack, then you can change font styles and also remove nofollow links and urls. The Premium package costs $49.70 per year.
You can also use Click to Tweet for free when linked to a maximum of 5 websites. To support more sites, you need to upgrade to the Premium pack.
Meanwhile, TweetDis is very similar to Click to Tweet. It also has several designs that you can add to your Tweet box. But TweetDis isn’t free. The annual subscription is $37. For five websites, it’s $47. And for $77, you can use this plugin for an unlimited number of websites.
Because they only share your news on Twitter, lots of Webmasters recommend using any of these plugins with another that supports more social media platforms. Keep in mind; Twitter has 330 million monthly users. This is quite massive, but you don’t want to limit yourself to just one social media site. So by doing this, your viewers can share your content on Twitter and also on other sites like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, inShare, and so on.
TweetThis & Click to Tweet Pros
- Any of these two plugins are quite useful for Webmasters who have lots of target customers and ideal viewers on Twitter;
- Tweet Boxes can be designed for very professional Tweets. They’re small and look sharp, which can immediately captivate the attention of your viewers; and
- They’re quick and easy to install and set up without slowing down your site.
TweetThis & Click to Tweet Cons
- If you’re serious about social media sharing, then you’ll need to use this alongside other plugins in this roundup; and
- A few Webmasters say they’ve encountered buggy functions when they tried using TweetThis and Click to Tweet.
So What’s The Best WordPress Social Media Plugin Today?
Overall, we have looked at Social Media plugins that are free, a tad pricey, have all the extra features or just the basic functions. With so many different options out there today, it’s easy just to choose the cheapest or the first one you see.
But keep in mind, social media can have a massive effect on the way your business works. So take the time to completely understand and carefully choose one that’s going to suit the needs of your business.
We summed up the best social media plugins for different purposes in this roundup. This could be what makes a difference between getting ten followers from nurturing an active community of 10,000 social media fans. So to help you out — Here are our findings:
Highly Recommended WordPress Social Media Plugin for Bloggers
If you’re a blogger, then we advise you to take a closer look at ways to increase your social media presence through a combination of Swifty and Click to Tweet. The former is a lovely, unique plugin that’s ideally designed for blogs with lots of different content. Viewers can easily see the title of the post and its author.
Forward and back buttons also allow them to conveniently navigate through your posts. Now there aren’t numerous buttons to share on a lot of social media platforms, but this plugin does cover the following:
- Google+
And if you combine Swifty with Click to Tweet, then this allows you to share important snippets and images from your blog on Twitter and across other wildly popular social media platforms. This can help drive more social traffic back to your blog.
Our Most Recommended Free Social Media Plugin for WordPress
This was quite challenging, but we went with Sassy Social Share. Even the name makes you feel all excited about getting started. Its development team managed to create a plugin that combines social media marketing features with optimal speed, all while seriously taking into consideration the privacy of your viewers and subscribers.
Sassy Social Share offers a lot of useful options. Plus, this plugin’s a great tool if you want something to work with WooCommerce.
Our Most Recommended Paid Social Media Plugin for WordPress
The fact that it is just so elegant puts Monarch at the top of our paid plugins. This gives you the chance to completely personalize your share buttons. Lots of viewers have grown accustomed to the click/like and share options on many sites. This is among the main reasons why most of them just tend to ignore these buttons.
So if you can customize them so that they stand out from the buttons on other sites, then more of your viewers are likely to pay attention to them. You can even change the shading styles of your icons through this plugin.
Apart from this, Monarch has a brilliant dashboard that many Webmasters find quite simple to use. This allows you to see all of your data in a straightforward way. Their bar charts are ideal for those who prefer visual diagrams to numbers. Plus, the fact that you can import and export data to and from other sites makes it even easier to use.
Monarch may not have 100 or more sharing options. But it does cover 20 of the most popular ones as of this writing. This is quite sufficient for small to medium-sized businesses. And at just $89, lots of WordPress admins say they get excellent value for their time and money.
But whichever of these 11 social media plugins that you choose to install in your WordPress site — don’t forget to make the most out of all the fantastic features they offer. So you’re advised to take time in learning how to properly configure its settings to best suit your requirements.
