8 great plugins to integrate your blog to social media

Want to integrate your blog more fully with your social profiles? Plugins make it easy. First of all what is a Plugin?

In computing, a plug-in (or plugin, extension, or add-on / addon) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing software application. When an application supports plug-ins, it enables customization. The common examples are the plug-ins used in web browsers to add new features such as search-engines, virus scanners, or the ability to utilize a new file type such as a new video format. Well-known browser plug-ins includes the Adobe Flash Player, the QuickTime Player, and the Java plug-in, which can launch a user-activated Java applet on a web page to its execution a local Java virtual machine.

But with so many plugins now available online, how do you know which one to pick for your blog?

To help make that decision a little easier, here are eight great social plugins worth trying.

1. Sociable

Already downloaded more than 1.7 million times, the Sociable plugin calls itself “the fastest-growing leader in the sharing space of WordPress plugins.” After it’s installed, the Sociable plugin places a banner on your site that reminds readers to share your content.

What’s more, with Sociable, you can customize the sharing tool to your site’s style with text, color and length options.

2. Shareaholic

The Shareaholic plugin not only provides an attractive social bookmarking menu and a related-content widget, but it also offers analytics that provide actionable metrics about how your content is performing.

3. 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.

4. Jetpack

The Jetpack plugin does a lot more than social sharing, but as a plugin created by the makers of WordPress, you can bet it has good coding and strong features—among them, its social media tools.

Beyond its mobile optimization, WordPress stats in your dashboard, and extra sidebar widgets, Jetpack also includes a publicize feature that makes it easy to share posts on social media networks, through automatic posting. Simply integrate your dashboard with your social profiles and decide to which profiles you want to autopublish. After that, publishing a new post sends notifications where you want them to go.

Jetpack also includes sharing tools to post content on Facebook, Twitter, and other networks with a few simple clicks.

5. Floating Social Media Icon

The Floating Social Media Icon does exactly what its name implies: places a floating bar of social media icons/links on your site. Featuring over 20 icon styles (customizable in size and order), the ability to enable or disable floating, and easy configuration, this plugin gives you a lot of control in the way you encourage sharing.

6. Tweet Old Post

If you have ever wished for a way to breathe new life into old content, you will love the Tweet Old Post plugin. After it is downloaded, installed, and integrated with your Twitter profile, it automatically Tweets links to your old content on the schedule you determine.

With Tweet Old Post, you are even able to exclude certain posts, right within your dashboard, as desired. So if you have some content you donnot wish to reshare, you have total control over that, too.

7. Rel=Author Plugin

Thanks to changes to Google’s search algorithms and the importance of author authority, linking content to its author is more important than ever—and a plugin like the Related Author plugin makes that sort of linking easy. It places an author box on every blog post, which links the post’s author to his or her Google+ profile.

8. Pinterest Pin It Button for Images

If your blog or website revolves around images, you already know that Pinterest is a powerful source of referral traffic—and with the Pinterest Pin It Button for Images plugin, you have an easy way to make the most of that Pinterest traffic. After you have downloaded and installed the plugin, set your preferences about style of pin-it images, and so on, your site’s images will feature a noticeable “pin it” button when users hover over them. This encourages your readers to pin your posts to Pinterest, expanding their reach.