6 Useful WordPress Sharing Plugins To Drive More Social Traffic

The Social Media game is being shook up once again. With Pinterest being added to the mix, keeping up with all Social Networks can be a big pain.

Yet, at over 250 million Tweets posted each day and 4 billion updates posted on Facebook, the massive impact Social sharing can have is more obvious then ever.

In order to make your articles part of those huge number of Social Media sharing, optimizing your site with sharing buttons is absolutely key I found. So without further ado, here are the top 6 WordPress sharing plugins to help you drive more traffic to your site:

1.) Digg Digg – The all in one Floating Share Bar

The first plugin I want to mention is Digg Digg. By installing it, you will get a beautiful and easy to use floating bar. On top of the floating option, you also have the chance to show the buttons before and after your posts.

The plugin is constantly being updated and maintained and has recently added the latest sharing options. You can now easily add the Pinterest and Buffer button to the collection of buttons for it.

2.) SimpleReach – Slider widget just like the New York Times

Are you familiar with the sliding widget that pops in at the bottom right when you are reading an article on the New York Times? Well, you can now do the exact same thing with The Slide plugin from SimpleReach.

If you install it on your blog, there will be an algorithm figuring out the most relevant article complimentary to the one people are reading. It will slide in as people scroll down and keep people longer on your site.

3.) Facebook commenting plugin

Although the Facebook commenting plugin works for any website, I believe it makes for a particularly great add-on for wordpress sites. With over 400,000 sites that have installed it already, it is quickly gaining a lot of traction.

What is most interesting is that you can set it by default that any person commenting also posts the article to their wall. This means a great opportunity to get more shares and also invite more people to start commenting, as they are already logged in to Facebook.

4.) Sexy Bookmarks – Great number of sharing buttons

Another great plugin to highlight is Sexy Bookmarks from Shareaholic. The plugin is a very stylish solution to allow your readers to share the article at the end of your posts more conveniently.

What I like best is the large number of sharing services Sexy Bookmarks has incorporated. There is definitely no button you wouldn’t find amongst their offering. The counting is also very slick and you are able to customize the text to prompt readers to share very conveniently.

5.) ShareThis – awesome sharing and powerful analytics

A sharing plugin that needs very little explanation is ShareThis. It gives you a great option of slightly different looking sharing buttons you can place on your blog very easily.

What I like best about this plugin is the awesome built in analytics. You can track all sharing of your posts in a dashboard and find out which posts are performing the best.

6.) Wibyia – an easy to customize toolbar for your blog

Wibiya is another quite different solution to allowing your readers to share your content. It places a toolbar at the bottom of the page that you can fill with whatever sharing options you prefer.

A great advantage of this is that you can also add the Twitter follow or Facebook subscribe button in that bar and make it very prominent for people to follow your more easily. And in return you can pick up more shares through these newly gained subscribers very easily.

These are my top 6 plugins to use, to optimize the sharing options for your readers. The good thing is that it doesn’t need to take a long time to prep your site with some great sharing options. And once it’s done, the benefits of doing so are huge.

Over to you now. What are your thoughts on the plugins above? Do you think some of them could be useful for your writing too?

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