Why You Need Social Share Buttons for WordPress

There was a time when a great blog post coupled with well-done SEO was enough to get your blog noticed. These days promoting your blog post in social media is a must. That is why you need social share buttons for WordPress.

With blogging, you want to be both relevant and reputable. Reputable means what do people say about you? With social share buttons for WordPress, your blog can reach more people. Imagine how that can impact your website traffic?

SEO is simply not enough to bring the amount of traffic you need for your blog to get noticed.

In this post I will share the most effective placement (sidebar, top, or bottom) and the best social sharing buttons for WordPress.

Effective Placement for Social Share Buttons

I struggled with the best placement for social share buttons in WordPress. Usually you can place them at the top, bottom or sidebar of a post.

I noticed that when I only placed the social share buttons at the bottom, not too much was happening! So I did some research and came across a great article from Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com. According to Neil, his detailed testing showed that “If you want to get the most social shares, consider placing social media buttons at the bottom of your blog post in combination with scrolling social buttons like the Sharebar.” Click here to read more about his test results.

After moving my buttons, I started getting some shares in social media!

Which Social Share Buttons are Best?

So which WordPress social media plugin should you use? I installed and tried many! Here are the top 4 share buttons that I found.

Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress – $14

These are my favorite. I love the look of the buttons, simple and clean! You can share, monitor and increase your social traffic and popularity.

18 Social Networks.
9 Native social buttons with options to skin them
12 built-in templates
9 display locations
3 button styles and 8 counter styles
Social fans counter
Social metrics
Simple and advanced customization of share messages.

Click here for details on Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

Social Sidebar for WordPress – $10

These are great looking social share buttons for WordPress!

Custom color and CSS options
Automatic site integration
4 Themes, 2 link styles
2 sizes, 3 label styles
129 available icons
Left/right side

Click here for details on Social Sidebar for WordPress

Jetpack – Free

Jetpack Sharing gives readers the tools to post your content to their networks from the bottom of each post and/or page. Some services have an additional option letting you display ‘Official’ buttons that show the number of times the post has been shared in real time. Click here to learn how.

DiggDigg – Free

DiggDigg is an all in one social sharing plugin for your blog. Display all social sharing buttons nicely on your blog and make it look amazing, just like Mashable.

Display all popular social sharing buttons with count, such as Twitter, Buffer, Facebook Share, Facebook Like, Digg, LinkedIn, Google +1, Reddit, dZone, TweetMeme, Topsy, Yahoo Buzz, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Sphinn, Designbump, WebBlend, BlogEngage, Serpd, Pinterest, Pocket and Tumblr.
Facebook Like (Iframe or XFBML), support thumbnail generation, multiple languages, show faces and send button.
Lazy loading to increase website performance.
Left or right scrolling effect like Mashable.com.
Support in excerpt mode.
Support for email and print services.

Click here for details about DiggDigg.

There’s your roundup of four great social share buttons for WordPress!