Although there are a gazillion social sharing plugins to chose from, there really aren’t that many that are worth.
Believe me, if you just go for the ugly free option, it won’t work, I’ve tried that.
The free ugly version used to work in 2006, now it does not.
Me, I still copy and paste the link on Facebook when I like an article, but people are not like me, they need those slick looking social buttons to like a page… like if the others don’t do the same.
But hey, there’s a lot of things you and me don’t get, but we have to play by the rules… screw that, I didn’t mean that, we don’t have to play by no rules, we have to use what works to get the results that we want, that’s better LOL.
I learned that when I first installed a popup… I used to hate them because I had those crazy principles, you know, back when I thought people liked the things I did, and then one day I was like:
“I have to try a popup since all my friends talk about how many leads they get”
I installed the popup and I almost ran to the nearest tree to bang my hang against it for not installing it earlier.
That moment I was like:
“I have no principles, I’m using what works”
LOL
Well, I still do, but really try to stay on top of the game, cause marketing is a tricky business, weird tiny little things you’d think are totally ridiculous get people to take action, I have no idea why, and I’ve read a million books and articles, even wrote one, but they do.
Like for example, take my social sharing buttons – because they are awesome, huge and Mashable looking, they get 467% more shares than Flare (used flare before for a long time, back when I thought floating bars were the bomb)…
…kidding, you know I hate statistics, I have no idea whether it’s 467%, but you can see how many shares I have and I used to get about 100 shares only… will leave the math to you.
Cool, here are those social sharing plugins (have a new favorite, it just came out hot from the oven)
This is it, this is my new favorite… it is new, and the minute I saw it, I fell in love.
I can responsibly say it is the best on the market right now.
It has floating bars, above and below content buttons, automatic sharing popups, flyins, media sharing and… I’m really tired of listing features, it’s got a ton of them, you can go check out the demo.
It’s 89 bucks (get Monarch), but it comes with all elegant themes and a bunch of other cool stuff… I bought it, I buy everything, I have money…
…though I’m still using:
The only reason I listed Mashshare second is because it’s a bit expensive… the goodies come with the addons and they are 20-30 euros each, you can buy bundles to save, but it’s still a bit expensive, I don’t care, I love it.
It has share counters, animated features, sticky widgets, content lockers, performance widgets, analytics integration, video post popup (which I have no clue what is) page view counters… and maybe it is better than monarch, I like it, if you have the money, get it, me and a lot of other cool kids use it.
Update:
WPsharely is no longer available, they say they are working on something even better, we’ll have to wait and see.
To tell you the truth, I’ve never used content lockers… yet I know a lot of people who do, and can tell you they do wonders in terms of sharing.
For example, this guy (from Wpsharely) uses the plugin to lock the cheaper prices and everybody shares their sales page.
How cool is that?
You can use the plugin especially if you try to get social traffic to a fresh released offer just like this guy does, you can also write cool articles and lock the content upgrades (pieces of content related to the article one would get after sharing the article)…
…you can pretty much use it for everything and you can be sure you will get a ton of social traffic.
I have no idea what the prices are since I did not share the page, you have to check it out yourself if you are interested.
A few years ago no matter how cool the plugin was, it slowed the fuck out of my site and I had to switch.
They’ve made a lot of improvements and now it’s killer… the plugin is free, but you have the option to upgrade and use the floating sharing bar, audience targeting rules (like exit intent technology) and more cool stuff like that.
Addthis has been around since 2004 and you can be sure the plugin would be supported for a long time.
I don’t usually like free stuff that much, as free usually means “not going to get great results”, but this plugin is so simple and clean I just had to list it.
It won’t slow your site, it will look nice and clean and if you have some basic coding knowledge, you can style it to match your preferences.
I’ve talked about this one before, it is also free, written by CoSchedule and the easiest way to put a piece of content, you want your readers to tweet, in a simple cool box… you can also track the activity of each link over time.
Pretty simple and cool way to get more people to tweet quotes, or facts, or just something smart you thought of.
I believe you are ready for that social traffic, go get it.
Let me know if you liked this article and stay awesome.
Vladi
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