5 WordPress Plugins for Social Bookmarking/Networking

Today I will post about plugins which will help your blog spread via social networking/bookmarking services. I personally think socializing aspect is more important than direct SEO, which I will discuss in tomorrows post.

Social plugins allow your blog visitor to spread a word about your blog posts. As this is what they say mouth-to-mouth publicity, its impact will be greater. Also links spreads naturally ranks good compared to evil SEO tactics.

So here is list of social plugins…

1. Sociable Plugin

This plugin automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Facebook, etc. You can choose any number of social sites from almost 100 networking sites.

You can also choose on which types of pages social sites icons to be shown. I selected full-posts & static pages. There is an option to put this buttons in RSS feed too. There are few advance options like “open in new window”.

You can see live example of this plugin on this blogs’ posts. There is a “share and enjoy” section after post content which is courtesy this plugin.

Link: Sociable by Joost de Valk

2. ShareThis Plugin

This plugin provides a simple way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.

It can be good alternative for above plugin with added option to track sharing stats.

I really have no good reason for not using this plugin. So check both and use one which you like more.

Link: ShareThis Plugin by Alex King & ShareThis

3. WP Conditional Digg This Badge plugin

There are many Digg plugins thanks to popularity of Digg. But one I like is WP Conditional Digg This Badge plugin. This plugin check if a post have enough Digg (default 10 Diggs) before showing Digg This button. I think this approach is nice as your is most likely to Digg a post with higher Diggs beforehand. Also this avoid showing Digg This button on each post which some visitors find annoying.

If you do not want to clutter your post pages at all then stick to one of above two plugins. They both support sharing via Digg.

Link:WP Conditional Digg This Badge by Brian Rock

4. Twitter Tools

This plugin allows you to automatically post a tweet to your twitter account whenever a new post is published. if you like twitter then you can use other options like sidebar widget included in plugin to show recent twitter updates in sidebar.

If you just want to use auto tweets for new post part, better use twitterfeed service.

Many top bloggers use dedicated twitter accounts for their blog posts. Even I will soon start this for Devils Workshop, as suggested by Rajat Arora

Link: Twitter Tools by Alex King

5. WP_LinkTools

You can use this plugin to add your newly published post to del.icio.us automatically. There are few more options which I really don’t find useful. I use tweetmarks service to achieve similar goals.

But using this plugin have one advantage. You can use post categories, tags, title as tags for del.icio.us links.

Link: WP_LinkTools by DCoda Ltd

If you use a really good plugin which you think must be included in this list, please let us know via comments.

Thanks. I will post more about SEO plugins tomorrow… 🙂

17 Comments

Pavan Kumar August 8, 2008

Share this makes loading of the page slower.

Conditional digg badge would be a great option.

I use twitterfeed for post updates.

Postaceous, would be a better alternative for wp-link tools.

Wow! Ajax Edit Comments added… great feature… It was a reader recommendation I think….

Rahul Bansal August 8, 2008

@Pavan Kumar
You are right Pavan about share this. It contains very heavy javascript and its one of the reason I prefer sociable plugin even though it has less features.

I had a look at Postaceous but it seems it pulls bookmarks from different site to wordpress blog. I would like to do other way round. Sort of WordPress Post to Delicious bookmark thing. Like it happens for twitter via twitterfeed.

And yes, Ajax comment edit is enabled by readers demand. In fact my own list of plugin is changing with every post I am writing in this series. 🙂

Gaurav August 8, 2008

I am loving it 😀

Rajat Arora August 8, 2008

Hey! The suggestion to have a separate twitter account for DW was an innocuous one… And lo! I find my mention on this post. Glad you remembered 🙂
Perhaps this why DW is soaring in popularity. Rahul personally replies to each comment, and remembers every suggestion. Better? He takes positive action. Such personal level interaction with scores of users makes sure that the author is accessible to its readers. This makes Devils Workshop unique.
I wish phenomenal success to Rahul and DW in future. (Wait, why only future, I wish DW is an instant success right now!)

For all those who read this:
DW ROCKS!!!

Rahul Bansal August 9, 2008

@Gaurav & Rajat
Thanks guys for encouraging comments… 🙂

Enbee August 20, 2008

I tested both Sociable and Sharethis plugins, and finally decided to keep Sharethis. Is it the right one?

Rahul Bansal August 21, 2008

@Enbee
I use sociable…

Sarbjit Singh September 5, 2008

Nice Series for plugins.. I enjoyed reading it..

BNS Hosting January 2, 2009

I am in the search for wordpress plugins that will automatically submit articles to the social networking sites. I would like to try Share This plugin but I read that it slows down the page.

However, I will search further.

Thanks for this post.

Rahul Bansal January 3, 2009

@BNS Hosting
Well I am not sur if such plugin exist in open-source but if you want we can develop if for you.
We do custom wordpress plugin development for clients already.
If you want to more details, p;ease let us know. 🙂

Indiasmash April 9, 2009

Great article buddies… thanx for the info…Will try the plugins listed for my blog and lets see how the tweek for SEO works well..

Rahul Bansal April 21, 2009

@Indiasmash
Your welcome buddy! 🙂

shani May 8, 2009

I’m in the middle of constructing a site thru wordpress and I’ve downloaded the sociable plugin, so I’m glad to hear that it works well. However, I would like to have just the facebook, twitter, myspace, rss feed, and youtube icons on my home page as a link to respective pages.

The sociable plugin takes care of the posts. however, I also want folks to be able to go to my facebook page directly by clicking on an official fb/twitter/myspace…icon/link.

How do I do that?

shani May 8, 2009

Similar to what’s at the top right corner of this page.

Rahul Bansal May 8, 2009

@Shani
It is part of theme we have designed for our site.
It is not using any plugin!

ken the tech December 20, 2009

it would be amazing this post to have some print screens with the listed plugins 🙂