Here are three WordPress plugins so that readers can share what you’ve written on social media sites.
I’m currently teaching Evolving Educational Technologies at Azusa Pacific University. Social media is a big part of this course. Actually… social media is a big part of life. It occurred to me that my website needs to do a better job of connecting with social media sites. Here’s how I do it using WordPress using three simple plugins.
Matt Harzewski created the Tweetable Twitter Plugin that allows readers to quickly tweet your blog post. It even shortens the url automatically. Additionally, Tweetable can display recent tweets in your sidebar.
My custom settings: I added the TweetMeme button(small version) to each blog snippet on my front page. Here’s how: go to Appearance > Editor > home.php. Add
[sourcecode language=”plain”]<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>[/sourcecode]
where you’d like it to appear. I added it just under
[sourcecode language=”plain”]<?php the_content(__(‘Read more’));?>[/sourcecode]
Now, the Tweetable button appears at the bottom of every post on my main page.
Josh Jones created SexyBookmarks to allow readers to easily share your blog post to a variety of social media sites. Currently, there are 77 possible sites that you can display in this plugin. I chose my top 6 bookmarks so that this plugin would take up just one row. The most compelling reason I switched from ShareThis to SexyBookmarks is that SexyBookmarks has a fantastic user interface. When you mouse over a half-way hidden social media icon, javascript takes over and pops the icon up to full view. It looks great, and it works great.
My custom settings: Much like my Tweetable plugin, I wanted SexyBookmarks to appear on the main http://www.billselak.com/ page. Originally, it only appeared when users clicked “Read More” and went to the post’s page. I pasted in
[sourcecode language=”plain”]<?php if(function_exists(‘selfserv_sexy’)) { selfserv_sexy(); } ?>[/sourcecode]
just under the custom code (above) for Tweetable. That’s why you see the Tweet Button first and the Sharing Is Caring buttons second.
As a reader, Disqus (pronounced “Discuss”) allows you to track comments you make over the web. Whenever I leave a comment on someone’s website, I usually have the desire to go back and see what other people say about my comment. I have never returned to a website again just to see if someone else commented on my comment. It would be nice, but I don’t do it. Disqus makes this easy to do. Just go to their website and your profile displays all your comments.
As a website creator, Disqus makes it easy for your readers to leave comments. They can log in with a variety of social media credentials (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), so that they will be more likely to actually leave a comment. This step has the added benefit of making is simple for your readers to share the post with their social networks (since they’re already logged in).
These are a few simple ways for readers to share what you’ve written. Which social media WordPress plugins do you love?
