With over 10 thousand plugins available for download in the WordPress.org plugin repository, it can be difficult to know where to begin!
There is actually more than 10here but some go together and a few alternatives are all about personal preference and you can pick the one you prefer!
For this post though, I want to focus on how you can greatly improve the number of shares and awesomeness of your blog, with some of the latest WordPress plugins.
Here are my top ten picks for you, to increase Social Media sharing of your articles and blog performance.
1. Digg – Powerful and simple social sharing buttons
The first plugin I want to introduce is the well known Digg Digg sharing bar, which recently received a major face lift. Social Proof of sharing is one of the most important things for BlogSpot I found. From Bright Edge’s research, it has proven to increase social sharing by up to 7 times if included.
2. Akismet
Akismet is such an awesome plugin, that WordPress decided to package it with every new install. It’s great for spotting spam and works really well without having to annoy your commentors with unreadable CAPTCHAs.
3. Hello Bar
Hello Bar allows you to add a simple message above your blog to get the attention of your readers. It can be useful to promote a big event, giveaway or to keep an important blog post at the top of your site, so both old and new visitors can see it.
4. WP Touch
WP touch takes your site and makes it friendly for mobile devices such as smart phones running Android and the iPhone. You can customize the layout so it appears optimized for mobile viewing without loading excessive content.
5. Contact Form 7
Great plugin this, adds a contact form (if you hadn’t already guessed) to your site. You simply add in your email address that you want emails sent to, and any other info you require then copy and paste the simple code it gives you into a page. Give the page a name like hmmm ‘Contact Me’ hit publish and you are done.
6. The Slide
The Slide slides an article on your page in the middle of an article you may already be reading. Using a carefully created algorithm, a relevant article appears to keep the attention of visitors.
7. Follow Button and Subscribe Button
Since social networking is so important, it’s not surprise that a button to follow you on twitter and subscribe to your Facebook fan page made the list.
8. All in one SEO Pack
Although, there exist tons of great SEO solution out there, one of the most reliable and well maintained plugins is the “All in one SEO pack’. Especially if you are not too familiar with any SEO tactics, this plugin makes it dead simple to understand the most important ones.
The plugin automatically generates Meta tags, optimizes your post titles for search engines and helps you to detect and avoid duplicate content. Even if you have very little SEO knowledge, this plugin will be of great help for you.
9. Google Site Map
You must have a sitemap to get good results with the search engines. The process used to be all complicated and involve uploading files and all sorts of nonsense. Now this plugin makes it super simple to generate a sitemap for your site. (Don’t worry about the Google name, the sitemap works for all search engines just fine.)
10. Social media widget
The social media widget allows you to place convenient links to all your social networking profiles in one single location.
