3 social media tips for your WordPress blog

You’ve worked hard to create quality content for your WordPress blog or website, and now you want to make sure people actually see that content, right? One channel for distributing your website’s content will obviously be social media, but WordPress themes can be hit or miss when it comes to presenting you with great social media integration options. Here are some basic guidelines for giving your WordPress site a better social media presence, and some suggestions for plugins that will get the job done.

1. Link to your primary social media accounts in your site header or sidebar

You’ll want to find some real estate on your site where these links are consistently visible. Whether someone is on your homepage, a specific content page, an about page, or some other destination within your site, the social media links should always be in the same place.

Imagine that a first-time visitor has arrived at your site, and likes your existing content. They want to see what you do next. You want to send the message, “This is where you can find me on Facebook,” or “This is where you can find me on Twitter.” You’re essentially showing people where they can subscribe to you on social media.

How to make it happen

• Experiment with any social media widgets that might be included in your WordPress theme. Any custom theme worth its salt should have built-in social media options. They’ll be styled to mesh well with the rest of your site, and you won’t have to go digging for plugins. The built-in options might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s a good place to start.
• Use a plugin to create a social media widget. If your theme’s social media options aren’t cutting it, plugins like WP MashSocial Widget and Social Media Widget offer plenty of options for adding a customized social media widget to your site. You can also add widgets that are designed for individual social media networks, such as Twitter follow button or a Facebook page “Like” button.

2. Use a plugin to make social sharing options available on each post

The site header and sidebar are great for linking to your specific social media profiles. Next, you’ll want to provide sharing options for individual posts, so it’s easy for your readers to post about your content on their social media networks. Here are a few great plugins, but there are many, many more out there.

Sociable for WordPress

Sociable is one of the most popular social media plugins for WordPress. The main appeal is that it gives a ton of sharing options, from the most popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to lesser-known (but perhaps important to your readers) networks.

Shareaholic

The cool thing about Shareaholic is the style—it adds animated “Sexy Bookmarks” to your posts, and is a lot more attractive than some of the other plugins available.

Social Media Counters

This plugin shows how many times a post or page has been shared on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

3. Write your own posts to promote new content

This may seem like a no-brainer at first, but the point is to be a human. It’s pretty clear when a link to content was automatically generated—it reads like it was written by a robot (because it was!). People don’t want to hear about content from robots. They want to hear about new content from the content creator, so take the time to craft your own posts and don’t rely on auto-posting.

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