by The Computing Australia Group | You are reading an amazing new blog article and decide to share it on your social media handles. What do you do? Look for a share button for Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, right! On a WordPress website, these buttons are included with the help of social media (SM) plugins.
SM plugins are a super-effective way of including social share buttons on your site. Choosing the right social media plugin is very crucial for adding the perfect touch to your page. Our SM specialists list here the best social media WordPress plugins that can enhance your website functionality.
Pointers to keep in mind while choosing your WordPress social media plugin
Performance: It is essential to keep in mind that social media plugins can affect a website’s performance. This is because plugins require additional stylesheets and scripts, which slows down the page. So, even though features are important for a plugin, the performance of the website is also of equal importance. Number of Plugins: Deciding the best plugin for your e-commerce website is crucial as the number of plugins can slow your page down. Prioritising on a few is better than hauling in all of them. Choose the social media plugin most relevant to your content. Display: Depending upon the content of your website, you need to decide where the plugins will be displayed. Keeping it at the most suitable position also increases the chances of engagement. Now that we have a better idea about what we have to look out for, let’s go through the best social media WordPress plugins available. Social Snap
This is a popular option in WordPress, which has buttons for more than 30 social media websites. It offers placement features like inline buttons, floating sidebar, share hub, and sticky bar. Social Snap also offers a variety of shapes, colours, and sizes. From showing share counts for each social network to total share count, Social Snap is a highly customisable social media plugin.
Here are some advanced features of the plugin:
- Share posts to your social media profiles automatically
- Click-to-tweet boxes to increase shares and traffic
- Option to login via social networks for sites that require membership
- Device targeting to customise the list of social media buttons depending on the type of device.
Smash Balloon Social Post Feed
Smash Balloon plugins are excellent for integrating social media content into a website. It allows visitors to view the social media content in a popup lightbox directly on your website. In addition, you can create completely customised feeds or display them with the styles of your WordPress theme.
Some amazing features of Smash Balloon include:
- Allows you to view social media content directly on your website without clicking through Facebook.
- Allows you to tailor the style to your needs.
- Responsive and mobile-optimised Facebook feed layouts.
- Offers Instagram feed plugin, YouTube feed plugin, and Twitter feed plugin.
Shared Counts
Shared Counts is a simple yet powerful social media plugin that was created with performance in mind. It is used by large websites that get more than ten million views per month owing to its performance. It also has many share button styling options. Shared Counts provides an HTTP and HTTPS share count retrieval at the click of a button. However, it has a limited option of social network buttons, with just four of them supporting tracking.
Some add-on plugins for Shared Counts are:
- Shared Counts – Pinterest Image – Lets you upload a separate image for Pinterest Sharing
- Shared Counts – Cache Status – Build and check the status of the cache
Novashare
Novashare is an amazingly user-friendly new third party plugin that is quickly gaining attention. It has a versatile list of features with no compromise on performance. It only adds 6 KB and 2 requests to the front end of the site. It can be quickly configured and is up and running in minutes.
It has a Share Count Recovery feature that keeps social share counts even after domain migration. It has an option to set breakpoints. This makes the social share buttons hidden once the browser’s viewport is above or below the breakpoint.
Some interesting features of Novashare include:
- Click-to-Tweet feature
- UTM tagging for tracking
- Pinterest Pin images
Monarch
Monarch is another popular social media plugin that provides social share buttons from over 35 different networks. This plugin is developed by Elegant Themes. It can be placed in 5 different locations as well, including automatic popup and automatic fly-in, which can be customised on how to trigger the social share buttons. There is also an option for social counts as well as social follow buttons.
Some of the features of Monarch include:
- Social follow widgets for easy sharing to social media handles
- Monitor social statistics like share counts, likes, and followers.
Social Warfare
Social Warfare is another social media plugin that works with performance and speed along with an exciting range of features. It has an incredible range of colours, styles, and shapes to choose from for your social media buttons. Social Warfare also provides a range of options for the placement of the social buttons. It also provides a share recovery feature for domain migration.
Some notable features include:
- Customise image, title, and descriptions while sharing
- Easy to set up and user friendly
- Author and publisher attribution for social handles like Facebook and Twitter
- Features like link shortening, analytics campaign, and button-click tracking
The plugins mentioned above are available in both free and premium versions. The free version all the basic options, although advanced options might require payment. Choosing the right one based on your requirements, like speed and styles is important as social share buttons play a crucial role in prompting a visitor to share your content. These plugins are also great choices if you plan to start an e- commerce website. For more information on social media plugins and other web development topics, reach out to us at sales@computingaustralia.group.
Jargon Buster
Stylesheets and scripts – the technical term of designing the various elements of a webpage like fonts and colours.
Domain migration – moving all the resources from one website to another
Plugin – a software add-on that is installed to a host program to add additional features while not altering the host program itself.
E-commerce – Electronic commerce – Online Buying or selling products and the transactions involved in executing these processes.
UTM tag – Urchin Tracking Module tag – or UTM code is a snippet of coded data that you can attach to the end of a URL to track the performance of your content and campaigns.
