It is one thing to create a useful post and another thing to get it across for people to view and share with others. The social media have made the later quite easy.
Social shares is one of the most reliable and consistent source of traffic to a website. In many cases, the traffic is targeted and can be very rewarding when the social media group had been built around people with common interests. Being able to share your posts on social media drives traffic which can also affect ow your website ranking in the search engines.
In this most, we outline the steps involved in setting up the popular social media platforms including Discuss, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, and more.
Further reading:
How to Optimize and Speed Up Your WordPress Website
WordPress Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
WordPress image optimization tutorial
Connect to Social Networks with Jetpack
Jetpack is an extremely popular WordPress plugin, originally created by Automattic for WordPress.com websites. While Jetpack offers a bunch of different functionality, the Sharing module allows you to easily add social share buttons to WordPress – and your blog posts, so readers can quickly share your content on their social media channels.
Currently, Jetpack supports:
- Google+
- Tumblr
- many more networks
Installing Jetpack
To install the Jetpack plugin, select Plugins → Add New from your WordPress menu. Type Jetpack into the search function and then select Install Now → Activate.
You will now be asked to connect your website to WordPress.com to enable Jetpack to work on your site. To do so you will need to register with WordPress.com, or simply log in if you already have a WordPress.com account.
Next, you will be asked to Approve the syncing of your website with WordPress.com. Once connected, click the Start for Free button to continue (you don’t need to pay for the Sharing functionality). You will now be returned to your website where you will find a Jetpack menu has been added to your WordPress dashboard.
Activating Sharing Buttons
To activate sharing buttons, navigate to Jetpack → Settings → Sharing. Under Sharing buttons, turn on the Add sharing buttons to your posts.
Next, from your WordPress menu, select Settings → Sharing. Under Sharing Buttons, drag the services appropriate to your website into the Enabled Services box. There is also the option of hiding services behind a generic share button.
Further down the page, you can:
- Modify the look and position of your sharing buttons
- Alter the button style
- Change the labeling
- Decide whether you want your buttons displayed on posts, pages, homepage, and/or media
Once you’ve made some selections, you can check your changes under Live Preview to see if they work with your website’s design.
Once finished, select Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
That's it.
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Connect to Social Networks with Orbit Fox Companion
The free Orbit Fox Companion plugin, created by Themeisle, incorporates a number of modules focused on enhancing your WordPress website’s functionality. Social Media Share Buttons is one of these modules, enabling you to add beautiful buttons to your blog.
Orbit Fox provides over 20 social buttons for you to choose from and add to your WordPress website. You can take control over your sharing buttons, selecting their position on screen, and turning them on and off depending on the device being used to view your website.
Setting Up Orbit Fox Companion
To get started, open your WordPress dashboard and install Orbit Fox Companion (this plugin can be installed in the same way as the Jetpack plugin or any other plugin).
Once installed, you will find Orbit Fox in your WordPress menu under Orbit Fox . Here, under Available Modules, activate the Social Sharing Module.
Configuring Sharing Buttons
Scroll down the page and you will find the Social Sharing Module under Activated Modules Options.
Here, you can configure the sharing buttons.
Customizations include opting to display the sharing buttons on the right or left side of desktop and mobile devices, and whether to show each network’s name when users hover over a button.
You can then choose which social buttons to activate and decide if you want to display the buttons on desktop, mobile, or both. Remember to click Save at the bottom of the page, before checking out how your sharing buttons look on the front end of your website.
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Connect to Social Networks with Social Pug
This is a free plugin that adds customizable social sharing buttons to your WordPress blog.
It supports five networks:
- Google+
We hope that updates to the plugin will expand the number of networks it supports. Social plug can be placed before and/or after a blog post, as well as in a floating sidebar that follows your visitors as they scroll down the page.
Adding Social Pug Sharing Buttons
Install and activate the Social Pug plugin. Then select Social Pug → Toolkit from your WordPress menu. Next, choose whether you would like sharing buttons as Inline Content or as a Floating Sidebar. Activate your preference and then click on Settings.
Here you can customize your buttons to suit your site’s needs. Under Inline Content, click on Social Networks and then on Select Networks. Then choose the social media platforms you would like to display sharing icons for.
You can alter the shape, position, and spacing of your buttons, choose to display them on mobile devices, and much more. Once you have completed the necessary alterations, select Save Changes. Then preview your new buttons on the live side of your site.
More WordPress tutorials:
WordPress image optimization tutorial
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Shared Counts
Shared Counts is an awesome, lightweight social media plugin for WordPress. It shows how many shares something on your site has gotten on different social media platforms.
- Lightweight plugin – Doesn’t slow down your site and is super straightforward.
- Easy to use – A simple tool even beginners will love.
- Developer-friendly – Hooks and filters if you want advanced customizations.
- GDPR-friendly – Doesn’t use cookies.
- Custom post types – Easily enable the plugin for custom post types.
- Helpful buttons – Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yummly, Print, and Email.
Revive Social
The Revive Social plugin is another one on our list of the best social media plugins that you should check out if you want to get into marketing automation. It lets you automatically share your WordPress content to your social media.
Features:
- Scheduler – Automatically set a schedule for how often you want your old content (and new content) to be shared and save on costly social media management tools.
- Hour timer – The paid version lets you decide how many hours you want between posts, great if you’re sharing a lot of backdated content.
- RSS to social media – Share posts from any RSS feed to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and more.
- Auto WordPress post share – Automatically share posts to your social media as soon as you hit the publish button, even if a post is scheduled.
- Social media analytics – Discover a ton about the source of your traffic without manually adding UTM tags to posts.
- Hashtags – Create your own hashtags for post shares from your tags, categories, or even custom fields.
- Exclusions – Choose to keep certain posts out of feeds and social media if you don’t want them there.
Social Warfare
Another one of the best social media plugins on our list is the feature-heavy Social Warfare. This lets you control what people share on social media (and how they share it).
Features:
- Customizations – Add custom titles, images, and descriptions to your posts that get more clicks and traffic.
- Analytics – Track how your social shares are doing with Google Analytics.
- Popular posts widget – Display your most popular posts from your blog right in a widget and automatically calculate which ones are doing well.
- Easy Recovery – You can recover share counts when switching permalink structures.
AddToAny Share Buttons
AddToAny Share Buttons is a great social media plugin for WordPress if you want a simple plugin with universal social sharing.
Features:
- Social media share buttons – They offer tons of social media platforms.
- Social sharing bars – Floating and standard social sharing bars
- Universal sharing menu – Makes it so easy to keep track.
- Global social sharing buttons – Everything you and your visitors need to easily share your content.
Simple Social Icons
Simple Social Icons shows simple social media icons in a sidebar widget. It’s straightforward and insanely easy to set up and get those powerful social icons in your WordPress sidebar.
Features:
- Customizable button styles – Simple ability to choose your own colors.
- Lightweight – Won’t slow down your site and runs very fast.
- Limited icons – But still has the most popular social platforms.
- Reorder icons – Move around the placement of each one of your social media icons so you can put the more important ones front and center.
- Add your own – Gives you the ability to add additional icons to use.
Sassy Social Share
More than just a fun name, Sassy Social Share helps your visitors share your content on their favorite social media platforms easily. This plugin supports a ton of different sites.
Features:
- Great compatibility – Will work with BuddyPress and WooCommerce.
- Featherlight – Won’t take up a bunch of your website speed to run as it’s optimized for blazingly fast performance.
- A+ customer service – Great support team known for their quick and helpful answers.
- 100% responsive – Will look great and professional on any device of any size.
- Tons of sites – Supports 100+ social media and bookmarking sites.
- Page reload support – Compatible with AMP.
Seting up Disqus for WordPress
The Disqus plugin makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenter’s across a thriving discussion community. The Disqus for WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates using the Disqus API and by syncing with WordPress comments.
The advantage of using a third-party commenting system like Disqus is that you shave that server load off from yours and send it their way. Even if your site is getting attacked by a malicious user, it won’t impact your server because it has to go through Disqus first.
You can always revert back if you don’t like the platform because it syncs with your WordPress database. If you’re running a fairly large site across multiple servers, then having a third-party commenting system helps with redundancy. You don’t have to worry about syncing comments because they are not tied to your database.
To use Disqus instead of the default commenting system,you should:
- Step 1: Create a Disqus Account
- Step 2: Install and Activate the Discus plugin for WordPress
- Step 3: Configure Disqus
Create a Disqus Account
Adding Disqus commenting system to WordPress is fairly easy. The first thing you need to do is go to Disqus website and Sign Up for a new account.
Now input your registration details and click Sign Up again.
After your account has been successfully created, you will need to clock on the Option button (Gear Icon) and select the Add Disqus To Site option.
On the next screen, you need to click the Start Using Engage button.
This will take you to a signup form where you need to provide your website’s information. Fill in the title of your blog or website, choose a unique URL for your website’s Disqus commenting system and a category for your website.
When you are ready to proceed, click on the Finish Registration button.
After the registration, you will be asked to choose your platform.
You will need to click on WordPress, and it will show you further instructions on how to setup Disqus commenting system on your WordPress website.
Activate the Discus plugin for WordPress
Now that you have an account, you will also need to install and activate the Disqus Comment System plugin. In order to do that, you will need to be logged in your WordPress admin dashboard. From there navigate to Plugins → Add New.
Here you should search for Disqus, find the official plugin and select Install Now.
After the installation process has been completed you will need to click on the Activate Plugin link to enable the plugin.
Configure Disqus
To enter the Disqus menu you will need to navigate to the Comments→Disqus section of your main admin panel.
Here you will need to Update your website’s database so it can work properly with Disqus.
To install the Disqus comments system to your WordPress you will need to connect it to your Disqus account, so input your username and password and then select your website.
The installation process is now completed. Click on the link Continue to the moderation dashboard to view and moderate your newly created Disqus section.
That’s all. You have successfully added Disqus comment system to your site. The Disqus Comment System plugin will completely overrides the default WordPress commenting system and then replaces it with the Disqus system.
