10 Free Plugins to Integrate Social Media With Wordpress

With the popularity of social media, it is not a good idea to become too dependent on the search engines for traffic. One update in the search engine algorithm may reduce your traffic, but there are other ways to get traffic. Social media, in particular, is an important way to get traffic to your website for long term success. A strong social following and highly shareable content allow you to drive your own traffic to your site. I know most of you already have social sharing buttons on your website, but that is not the only way to make your website more social. There are some plug-ins which add a slightly different function to your website, helping you to really get the most out of social media.

1) Shareaholic

One of the most popular social media plugin which is widely used for business and personal websites. It is also known as ‘Sharing is Caring’. This plugin not only shares the social content but also provides other unique features like recommendations along with related content to increase the time and engagement of visitors on the website.

Key features:

• Share counter for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more

• Support for Google URL shortener

• Localized in more than

15 languages

• Related Content support for post keywords specified in “All in One SEO Pack”, “WordPress SEO by Yoast”, etc plugins

2. Social Media Feather

It is a free social sharing buttons plugin. It is simple lightweight yet modern and allows you to add a stylish set of social sharing buttons to your website. It also allows you to add social media follow buttons. It supports Retina along with some high-resolution displays. The plugin supports all the major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, and Tumblr.

Key features:

• Supports Retina along with high-resolution displays

• Fantastic yet lightweight social sharing as well as following

• Complete customization for titles as well as URLs available

• Full-fledged modernized social sharing icons and buttons

• User can customize with some cool effects like graying and fading of social icons

3. Share Button Mashshare

This plugin puts a Share Button on top of your posts which helps you to get a possible social share. Mashshare Share Buttons show the total share counts on Facebook and Twitter at a glance.

Key features:

• Performance improvement for your website as no external scripts and count data is loaded

• Privacy protection for your user – No permanent connection to Facebook, Twitter and Google needed for sharing

• High-Performance caching functionality. You decide how often counts are updated

• Automatic embedding or manual via Shortcode into posts and pages

• Works with every Theme and Much More.

4. Floating Social Bar

Floating social bar is a lightweight WordPress plugin that adds a horizontal floating share bar to your blog posts, pages, and other posts. This social media bar’s floating ability helps to get you maximum shares.

Key features:

• Slim and fast

• It allows you to drag-and-drop the social buttons that you want to display

• It loads scripts when necessary

5. Flare

Flare is a simple yet eye-catching social sharing bar that gets you followers and lets your content get shared via posts, pages, and media types.

Key features:

• Adds a Follow Me widget

• Easily order your icons, and customize their icons’ appearance

• Control which post types your Flare appears on

• Flare displayed on the left and right of your post follow your visitors down the page as they scroll and conveniently hide when not needed

6. DC Simple Share Buttons

DC Simple Share Buttons plugin is simple and loads pretty fast. The buttons do not rely on external resources to load, it’s written in PHP, HTML, and CSS. There’s an option to show the buttons on posts and pages automatically. If you want to add buttons manually in your template file you have to use PHP tag and if you want buttons in your post or page then you have to use the shortcode.

Key features:

• This plugin is very light.

• The buttons look prominent and easily noticeable.

• There is a template tag which allows you to place the buttons anywhere in your theme.

• There’s also a shortcode you can use.

• Share label can be configured.

7. NextScripts

It submits all your content to every social media network which you have configured in it, as soon as you publish it on your website. Regularly posting your articles on the website is the key thing to get traffic but you cannot share every article on each social media network manually. The plugin supports 27 different social networks at present — obviously, all the major ones are included in that list. You can also configure the plugin to add an article’s tags/categories to the social posts as hashtags, making your content easier to find.

Key features:

• Message Formatting Tags

• Assign categories to each Social Network

• Tags/Categories posted as Hashtags

• Auto-import comments from Facebook as WordPress Comments

• Auto-import replies and mentions from and Twitter as WordPress Comments

• URL Shorteners: bit.ly, goo.gl, YOURLS and built in WordPress URL Shortener

• Additional URL parameters

• Custom URLs for AutoPosts and much more.

8. Twitter Widgets

Twitter Widgets gives a slightly different social element to your website. This widget allows you to add a live Twitter feed to your website sidebar. It can display your own post and conversations, or any post with some specific hashtag. It is a great way to show your website visitors what the social media world really thinks about your website.

To add this widget just go to your Twitter account and from the settings of your Twitter account, select widget. From there, you will be able to play around with the settings and a number of customization options, before generating a code to paste into an HTML widget on your WordPress site.

9. Jetpack

Jetpack is a well-known plugin for WordPress and it comes with lots of powerful features. It is easy to install and comes with great customization capabilities. It has a light and mobile responsive design for phones and tablets. Automate your content by publishing it on different social media networks automatically.

Key features:

• Provide Customization with Custom CSS, Carousels, spam-free Contact Forms, Sidebar Widgets, Infinite Scroll, and Tiled Galleries.

• Instant and customizable lightweight responsive theme designed for phones and tablets.

• Create and publish richer content with Post by Email, Shortcode Embeds, Markdown, Beautiful Math, Spelling, and VideoPress.

• Increase your traffic and keep visitors coming back withEnhanced Distribution, spam-free Comments, Shortlinks, Likes, Notifications, Related Posts, Publicize, Social Sharing, Subscriptions, and Site Verification Tools.

• Speed up image delivery with the Photon CDN and access to visitorStats.

• Keep your WordPress site up, safe, and protected with Single Sign On, Jetpack Monitor, and Akismet anti-spam.

10. Scrolling Social Sharebar

The Sharebar plugin places a vertical bar to the left of blog posts, featuring links/buttons to popular social networking sites. The bar is fully customizable and dynamic, and it may be vertical or horizontal in its display. A scrolling social share bar scrolling plugin with 7 social icons i.e Twitter, FB Like, Google +1, Linkedin, FB Share, Stumbleupon, and Add this option to add your own custom buttons.

Key features:

• Very simple options to adjust the plugin as per your site design

• Option to add your own custom buttons

• Option to disable buttons that you don’t need.

• Very simple design.

• Option to choose from fixed and animated scroll

• Options to change the background color, padding, border, border-radius and shadow. Check out the styling example link below.