Connecting WordPress with Social Media

by on 07/09/12 at 7:40 pm

Screen shot 2012-09-07 at 3.58.40 PM

Get Connected!

Your brain has been excavated of all its creativity and profound ideas. The simple act of creating a WordPress Blog has liberated the thoughts held prisoner from the deep chambers of your head. You may have spent hours, even days, writing your masterpiece, and clicking the “update” button is the final step to emancipate your expertise to millions of eyes. Suddenly! “Post Updated” flashes onto your screen. You’ve done it! You have touched the lives of many, and have informed the ignorant; you have changed the world.

Ok wake up now! Let’s be real here; no one has any idea your post exists. Millions of people just like you have been “liberating” their thoughts for years. In reality, your post has about the same chance of survival as a baby Sea Turtle in the wild:

Many our born, but few survive. The best way to ensure survival of your post is to connect it with the biggest craze to hit the Internet, social media. Social media has become the new face of marketing, and more importantly a very useful tool in ensuring the survival of your blog. If you don’t have Twitter, sign up! Not on Facebook? Stop wasting time and get on! These are great mediums for marketing your posts.

Strategy

If you don’t have a plan, you might as well give up now. Figuring out your social media strategy is key to getting the most out of your social media profiles. The most important question to ask yourself is, “What social media platforms will best deliver my blogs message?”

For example, if your blog were heavy on pictures and other graphics, then Pinterest and Instagram would best serve you in getting exposure to your blog. That’s not to say that Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t be helpful, it’s just that the previously mentioned platforms would probably be worth more of your time and energy. Make sure to think this thru.

You will also want to plan out how active you will be on your social media profiles. Make sure that you are somewhat consistent in when and how you post, tweet, pin, etc. Give your following something to look forward to in a specific amount of time. Let’s say that you were a Webmaster for a gardening blog. You could tweet out a “gardening tip of the day,” or feature someone’s garden once a week. This is your chance to be creative and innovative. Don’t be afraid to try new things.

Useful Plugins

Now let’s talk about physically connecting your blog to your social media. Here is a list of useful WordPress Plugins for integrating your blog with your social media:

1) Digg Digg – This is a great sharing plugin that installs a great looking share bar on the side of your posts. The makers of this plugin are very good at getting frequent updates out because they are striving to bring WordPress users the best social media plugin  possible. So far they have done a great job. Highly recommended.

2) 1-click Retweet/Share/Like – I used this plugin for a long time before I switched over to Digg Digg. This is a very clean social media sharing bar. If your looking for a sharing tool that doesn’t float next to your posts, then I would recommend this plugin. The bar is placed neatly above and/or below your posts. For those with more simple taste use the 1-click plugin.

3) Fanciest Author Box – This is a great way to get some love to your social media profiles. The Fanciest Author Box is just that, fancy. You can feature yourself as an author while also displaying your social media profiles in a very organized way. This plugin isn’t free, so for a small ten dollars you can rock this plugin on your blog. Very nice product.

4) Shareaholic – This is one of the best looking share bars I have seen. This allows your users to share your post on MANY different social media sites, and comes with very clean, interactive buttons. Highly recommended.

5) Share This – Similar to 1-click, Share This provides a great share bar above or below your post. The pictures are a little bigger than 1-click. It all depends on what fits the best with your site and your taste. Youcancarry.com, for example, uses share this to integrate its WordPress blog with its social media profile. This is a snapshot from their site:

 

Well folks, this should be a good start to getting your WordPress blog up and running on the social media scene. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you get your blog to where you want it to be. Hopefully this post can give you a little boost in getting there. Thanks for reading!

2 Responses to “Connecting WordPress with Social Media”

  1. Tom

    Sep 7th, 2012

    Great tips! Don’t get baby-sea-turtled.

  2. Rubel Bogra

    Oct 6th, 2012

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