Why should you use WordPress social plugins?
Are You a Blogger ?, Have you been searching for plugins that will allow you to control the total look of your content, and exactly when, and what, can be shared with social media? If so, then read on to learn about some of the best WordPress social plugins that will make your content look terrific on every social site.
You wrote a great, useful and original content, added images, media and links to your content, you need to spread this content, you have to make it easy to your visitors to share through social media websites, also you need your content to appear in a good and attractive look when it shared.
WordPress offers users a wide variety of options of easy-to-use social plugins. In order to attract attention to your social shares you need to make it look great. WordPress plugins will allow you to optimize your content so that it looks fantastic everywhere, especially in search results.
1. Facebook Open Graph Protocol
When you share your blog posts on Facebook you always have the option to edit things like the link’s title, the descriptions and the preview image. However, when other people like your post they get random things from Facebook – not what you previously edited. Facebook may give them random words, sentences, and any image that appears on your page.
With Facebook Open Graph protocol you control what is posted on Facebook from your own link. This way, people share the information you want others to see and, hopefully, find interesting enough to click on to visit your website.
Facebook always recommends that you use the official Facebook plugin for Open Graph Protocol integration. Not only will you be able to create the perfect updates for Facebook, you can also use this plugin to learn who your target audience is through Facebook Insights, the offers you a range of data on all your content shares.
You can also make use of the WordPress SEO by Yoast to implement Facebook Open Graph protocol on your own website. This does include the option to track through Facebook Insights.
2. Google+ Authorship
With Google+ Authorship you use your Google+ profile to create a presence in search engines. It is a fantastic way to optimize your website for social sharing and search results. Imagine your name, photo, link to your Google+ profile, and all content you have authored right there for everyone to see at a glance. You couldn’t ask for better search results. 
You can manually set the Google+ authorship if you have a WordPress website. Or, you could use the Google Author Plugin.
This plugin handles all the code placement so you don’t have to worry about that. All authors can place their Google+ link in their profile in your WordPress panel.
You can easily check to see if authorship has been set correctly by checking out the author’s links to your website in the Contributor link section. This is easy when you use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Use this tool to be sure that your content appears correctly in search results, and to see that authorship is set correctly. If you have an email associated with the domain where you publish your content, then you will be able to use the authorship email verification tool to troubleshoot any problems you may encounter.
Jay Wessman has a great video tutorial about Google reach snippets here
3. Twitter Cards
If someone shares the content of your website on Twitter, you are hoping for a couple of outcomes:
- You are hoping that their tweet will make other Twitter users want to visit your website.
- You want to be sure that your username is added, listing you as the publisher or author.
Unfortunately, far too many tweets you will see about your content will look like this:
With Twitter cards it is possible to have both rich media elements and the link to your Twitter handle as a part of every tweet of your personal content. Notice the difference in this tweet that uses a Twitter card:
The tweet above includes the title, the description, and the feature image for the blog post it shared. Also included are the author’s Twitter handle and a link directly to the publication of their Twitter handle.
To include this function on your own WordPress site, Twitter has recommended these plugins:
Jetpack: Most WordPress.com users are already familiar with this plugin since it is a part of the free version of the blogging platform. The Jetpack offers dozens of enhancements to use with WordPress.
JM Twitter Cards: A very simple plugin that handles only Twitter card implementation.
*WordPress SEO by Yoast: This top SEO plugin handles Twitter cards, Google+ authorship and Facebook Open Graph.
Please refer to the CMS Integration Guide from Twitter for all direction on implementing Twitter cards using these plugins.
After you have successfully installed your plugin, you validate your content simply by using the Twitter Card Validator.
Sign into your Twitter account and click the Validate & Apply tab, then test a link for your website. You should make sure that all the tags check out and that there is a button available to request approval from Twitter to use the Twitter cards. Once approved, all tweets from your website will contain rich media summaries on Twitter.
4. Customize the Text
What do you do if you want to control the text on social networks but you don’t want to use either Twitter Cards or the Open Graph Protocol for Facebook?
Simple answer: WordPress SEO by Yoast.
You choose the SEO title tag and meta description for all your posts. See descriptions below:
When you enter your meta description and SEO title into the WordPress by Yoast plugin you will be sharing these on Facebook, Google+ (will show title only), LinkedIn, Pinterest (again, will show title as only description) and other social bookmarking networks, and various other social networks, allows you to easily preview what text will appear in your shares and search engine results.
As a sweet bonus, both the SEO title and the meta description will be used in search results.
Do implement this plugin, especially if you don’t have Twitter Cards or Open Graph. This plugin allows you to control how your posts are going to look when shared and in various search results.
5. Social Sharing Buttons
Adding social sharing buttons from some of the top networks onto your content pages will encourage more people to share your site. If you are on a desktop, you should be able to see the social sharing button floating on this page.
Plugins like Top 25 Social Icons or Digg Digg help you add social sharing buttons with ease. Manually you would have to enter the code from every popular network on the internet. Digg Digg gets the job done quickly and lets you put the social sharing buttons on a floating toolbar anywhere on the page.
After setting up Digg Digg, visit the Global Config to add your Twitter username to all the Twitter sharing buttons that you added to your website. Doing this will ensure that your @username will be included with all tweets of your content.
6. See What Gets Shared the Most
Social Metrics Pro: This premium WordPress plugin measures all of your content’s social sharing in your WordPress dashboard. It is very helpful to know this information because it will allow you to create content that you know your target audience will love.
This plugin measures all shares on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Digg and StumbleUpon. It allows you to sort these shares by social network, letting you know just what social networks are sending the most visitors to your business. You can also sort by date, category or author.
Conclusion
It’s a long labor of love when you create your online business and content. After you publish your site it is vital that your contents are shared far and wide, and that people everywhere can easily see all the benefits of your brand over others.
All the WordPress plugins mentioned will help ensure that your content is optimized, and includes every element you wish it to contain. Finally, you want your content shared with as many search engine results and social media networks as possible. Let WordPress plugins help your business grow.