If you are a blogger, then sooner or later you will face the need to select the tools to integrate your blog with social networks. WordPress is an open platform, therefore it has a large number of plug-ins and widgets for all social networks: Twitter & Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and even such exotic ones, as Orcut and Vkontakte. In this review we have tried to cover most of the wordpress plug-ins for social networks and split them into categories. For some of the plug-ins we have also added comments and reviews, quoted from various popular publications.

Social media tip #0:

Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to spread your content.

WordPress social sharing plugins

The primary and major benefit that you can get from working in social media is a viral distribution of your content. That’s why the sharing plug-ins are the basic functionality, that each and every website needs.
This is the largest group of plug-ins. There are a lot of them already, and new ones appear every day. Therefore here we’re going to present you just a few of the most popular ones, and give you the links to the rest of them, providing short descriptions of their major benefits.

DiggDigg

Most of reviews on other blogs say that this one is the best tool to give users the ability to share your posts. In general, it is really hard to stand out from a huge number of similar buttons, and DiggDigg does not offer any super-functions or astonishing design. But it integrates really easy and works very fast, that’s for sure.

DiggDigg is one of the most popular and versatile WordPress social media plugins. DiggDigg makes it extremely easy for visitors to your blog or website to share content with their friends, family or casual acquaintances. You have the option to place sharing buttons above your content, below your content and in a floating bar off to the side.

The DiggDigg plugin can be readily adapted to include a number of social media platforms. You can also modify the sharing buttons to include nearly any customization option that you would like. Originally an independent enterprise, DiggDigg has since been acquired by Buffer, which worked to revamp the plugin with enhanced functionality.

source: http://www.inboundnow.com/top-five-wordpress-plugins-to-increase-social-media-exposure/

Shareaholic

This plug-in wins a first prize in our “share buttons” nomination. Firstly, it shows related posts in addition to social buttons, and secondly, it integrates with Google Analytics, and does it very well!

Shareaholic is another plugin that allows you to include share buttons for multiple social media platforms. Unlike DiggDigg, it does not feature a floating sharing bar on the side; however, it does feature a floating sharing bar at the top of a post. Shareaholic also allows you to display related posts. If you have a Google Analytics ID, Shareaholic will aggregate data from your blog or website to create charts that illustrate incoming traffic and both the raw numbers and percentage of visitors generated by various sources, including search engines and social media. The charts also illustrate the top individual sharers on your blog or website, a handy feature if you wish to offer bonuses or prizes to your most loyal readers or active sharers.

source: http://www.inboundnow.com/top-five-wordpress-plugins-to-increase-social-media-exposure/

ShareThis

This plug-in supports the largest number (over 120) of social networks. However, such a large number of social buttons looks confusing. That’s why we recommend to use this plug-in only if you need integration with some exotic social networks (Orcut, VK, Xing), which are not supported by any other plug-ins.

This social media plugin enables WordPress users to seamlessly allow visitors to share the site or blog’s content on up to 120 different social channels, including email, Facebok, Twitter, Google+ and more. With ShareThis, users can do more to engage their audiences and increase traffic. Plus, the plugin features customization functionality that means it can be seamlessly integrated into a user’s site.

source: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/themes/blogs/wm1/post.aspx?App=posts&y=2012&m=12&d=05&PostName=the-25-best-wordpress-plugins-ever

Floating Social Media Icon

A large collection of beautiful and diverse social buttons.

Floating Social Media Icon is an easy to use plugin which allows you to configure essential social media profile links, like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube and Linkedin.

This same developer also has a plug-in with a floating menu:
Floating Social Media Links

Trackable Social Share Icons

Another set of icons for social networks. The design is not that brilliant, but the set of supported social networks and the number of options is significantly larger. You can also add sharing counters to increase user confidence in the material.

The Trackable Social Share Icons plug-in enables blog readers to easily share posts via social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

The Trackable Social Share Icons plugin enables blog readers to easily share posts via social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

WordPress Social Share Buttons

Supports 10 social networks (including Xing) + it has a print button and a button to send the link via e-mail.

This is the plugin that Inbound Now uses on all of our projects. It’s very slick and has a ton of rendering capabilities. It’s not free though. But 8 bucks is a bargain!

source: http://www.inboundnow.com/top-five-wordpress-plugins-to-increase-social-media-exposure/

Sociable

In our opinion this one is an absolutely ordinary plug-in, however it has almost 2.000.000 downloads. There definitely has to be something great about this plug-in, but we didn’t find it special.

Sociable plugin from Startups.com on Vimeo.

Make your content more social with Sociable, which will automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and RSS feeds.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/themes/blogs/wm1/post.aspx?App=posts&y=2012&m=12&d=05&PostName=the-25-best-wordpress-plugins-ever

Social media tips#1:

You know who your audience is
What are their problems, concerns and interests? Answer their questions and show you care.

http://www.contentrobot.com/how-do-i-integrate-social-media-into-my-blog

Plugins for wordpress comments

Disqus

All fields for Disqus comments are tied in a single system, so that every user can see all comments and responses. This allows users to conduct long discussions, and gives blog owners a chance to form reader communities around their content. Moreover, the number of comments in Disqus is much larger than in other plug-ins, because users do not need to enter their details every time, if their browsers are already registered in Disuqs.

Don’t let the punny title fool you, Disqus is one of the best comment systems available. The tool allows users to add comment functionality to their site/pages, giving visitors an opportunity to engage with the content (and the brand). Those interested in building a community of users on their sites should get Disqus ASAP.

source: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/themes/blogs/wm1/post.aspx?App=posts&y=2012&m=12&d=05&PostName=the-25-best-wordpress-plugins-ever

Facebook Comments for WordPress

Of course, this plug-in could not fail to exist. If you want to get the maximum number of comments under your posts, then this has to be your no.1 pick. We don’t know why, but it seems like the word “Facebook” itself causes people to express their opinions in comments. One more advantage of this plugin is that it’s almost completely spam-free, which no captcha can do. Along with spam you get rid of anonymous comments, which helps to better study your audience. However in some topics people prefer to remain anonymous, so if you write about something, that is not usually discussed openly, it would be better to use another comment system. By the way, there are some useful add-ons for this plug-in:

• Ultimate Facebook Comments Email Notify
• Facebook Comments :: Red Rokk Widget Collection
• SEO Facebook Comment

Twitter Mentions as Comments

Twitter users tend to share almost everything interesting they see, this is the specific of the microblogging format. But for you, as the owner of the blog, there is a problem that your other visitors do not see what the Twitter users write about you on their microblogs. This plug-in successfully solves this problem, adding all mentions of your article as comments to the post.

Twitter Mentions as Comments scours Twitter for people talking about your site & silently inserts their Tweets alongside your existing comments. (source: http://www.freshtheme.net/20-best-free-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media.html)

There is an alternative plug-in with the same functionality. So if Twitter Mention as Comments does not satisfy you, try this one: Twitter Comments - Twitoaster

Akismet

Comments do not always have to be social. Akismet is a basic plug-in for posting comments in your blog. If you just need to set up an easy way of commenting your posts, then Akismet is the best choice. It has good spam protection and convenient moderation of comments. Moreover, this plug-in is made by the WordPress developers, so the smoothness of performance is guaranteed.

If building a community is an important part of your Web strategy, you no doubt allow your visitors to comment on and discuss your content. Unfortunately, as your traffic increases, so will the amount of comment and trackback spam you receive. Luckily, this popular plugin from Automattic checks comments and trackbacks against the Akismet Web service, and if they’re found to be spam, they’ll automatically be moved into your WordPress installation’s spam folder. You’ll never have to get your hands dirty.

source: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/themes/blogs/wm1/post.aspx?App=posts&y=2012&m=12&d=05&PostName=the-25-best-wordpress-plugins-ever

Comment Plus

This is an extremely functional (capable of doing almost anything), but a bit difficult to set up plug-in.

Social media tip#2:

You understand it’s not “the-all-about-me show”

Don’t just jabber about yourself and your company. Better would be provide valuable, interesting and entertaining content that puts the reader first.

http://www.contentrobot.com/how-do-i-integrate-social-media-into-my-blog

WordPress auto post to social networks

Next Scripts

A plug-in that automatically reposts your entries in a range of social services: Twitter, Facebok, G+, StumbleUpon, Diigo & Delicious, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr and etc. Plugin makes 100% White Labeled Posts. Before you start working with it, you have to create your own accounts and link them to the plug-in, so that all publications will come from you. This allows you to use all benefits of social networks - people subscribe to your feed in social networks and your sphere of influence is constantly expanding.

Stumbleupon & Digg Thumbnail Maker

StumbleUpon and Digg are absolutely vital services, if you want your content to become really viral.

Stumbleupon & Digg Thumbnail Maker is a simple WordPress plugin that allows you to specifically select a thumbnail for a post when your post is submitted to some social media sites.

http://www.freshtheme.net/20-best-free-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media.html

WordTwit

If you do not want to manage a large number of accounts, you should focus only on Twitter. WordTwit will help you with that.

WordTwit is a plugin that uses the Twitter API to automatically push a published post to your Twitter account as a tweet.

http://www.freshtheme.net/20-best-free-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media.html

Social media tips #3:

You are staying focused

While we mention five platforms – and we know that new ones will spawn daily – you don’t have to use them all. To grow your business better, invest your time and energy on one or two networks and dedicate yourself to making them work for you.

http://www.contentrobot.com/how-do-i-integrate-social-media-into-my-blog

Embedding social media content to your blog

How to embedded a tweet on your blog

Perhaps you did not know, but you can put any tweet to any post on your blog. It will look like this:

Hi there! We really believe in the power of social and are lucky to have you as a follower here, have a great weekend, jackals ;D #goodmood

— LikeHack (@MyLikeHack) October 28, 2012

To insert a tweet, just click on the “More” link in the bottom-left of the tweet and you will see this menu:

With a minimum set-up you will get a code to be inserted into the body of your article.

Storify

A powerful tool that allows you to create stories on certain topics, using various content from search engines, social media, video and photo sharing services. Once you have created a story, you can get the code to embed it in any post. As a result, an embedded story looks like this:

Sidebar social media wordpress plugins

You can perform a variety of tasks using widgets, placed at the sidebar on your blog. It usually contains a blog sections menu or a tag cloud, but most of the times it has enough space to be used to increase your presence in social networks.

Twitter widgets

There is a huge number of widgets for Twitter, which can be placed at the sidebar, and generally they are almost identical in terms of functionality. All of them are broadcasting tweets or feed from a specific account, or by a keyword, in real time. You can find all of them by searching at wordpress.org. Just type twitter widget. We recommend the followings:
MP Tweet List - most recent tweets, with support for multiple Twitter accounts - with no Javascript or Flash.
Rotating Tweets (Twitter widget and shortcode) - Twitter widget and shortcode to show your latest tweets one at a time an animated rotation
Recent Tweets
Display up to 20 of your most recent tweets easily with zero hassle in your sidebar as a widget. Options for following you and others included.

LikeHack: filtered content feed from your social networks

A wordpress plug-in from our team. You can read details about what is LikeHack on our About page, but put simply it is a tool that merges all links that you (and your friends, if you want) share in social networks into a single stream. You can also filter links by type of the content (media or articles) and keywords. Our plug-in for wordpress allows to broadcast this stream of links to your blog. Look to the right of our site to see how it looks like (at the sidebar of our blog).

Social Media Mashup

This one allows you to combine several RSS feeds and show them as a stream at your blog’s sidebar. If you are an experienced RSS user and you want to share your feed with the readers, this is a great way to do it. This is also useful if you want to broadcast multiple channels to one channel, but it is not that simple, because not all social networks easily give access to their RSS feeds.

Social Media Mashup provides a widget and template tag to display a combined social media & RSS stream.
source: http://www.freshtheme.net/20-best-free-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media.html

Social Media Tabs

Another element, which is vitally important when working in social networks, is a widget of groups, which allows to subscribe to your group. But if you manage at least more than 2 groups in different social networks, the place at the sidebar may not be enough. If such situation occurres – use social media tab. It will show all your groups one by one. However there is one “but” – conversion of visitors into subscribers through this mixed tab will probably be a bit lower than through a few unique ones, because some users may simply not understand that they have to switch the tab to subscribe to the social network they use.

Social media tabs allows you to add facebook, google +1, twitter, flickr, pinterest, YouTube subscription and RSS profiles and feeds to any widget ar.

http://www.freshtheme.net/20-best-free-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media.html

Social media tip #4:

You are putting in the time

As with anything, you’ll need to spend time with the platforms before declaring it’s not working. It could take 1,000s of tweets, 100s of Facebook or Google+ posts, before you are noticed among the noise.

http://www.contentrobot.com/how-do-i-integrate-social-media-into-my-blog

Several additional useful plug-ins to improve your integration with social media

Specific Social Notification Bar

Most of the social network widgets have the same disadvantage – they are not eye-catching. This is especially true for the advanced Internet users, which got used to the ad banners and just don’t notice them. The page becomes a big blind spot except for the article itself.
Notification Bar sticks to the top of your site and leaves you some space to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your channel on social networks. But the sweetest thing about this plug-in is that it allows you to target the message and the bar, depending on where the visitor came from. So the people who came from the Twitter will see an invitation to follow you, and those coming from Facebook – to like your page, and if someone comes from Google+, they will be offered to add you to their circles.

It’s purpose is to grow your social media following by getting the people who have found you on the various social media sites (who have then come to your WordPress site) to “follow” you (substitute for which ever action is appropriate: Like, Follow, +1, etc). So if someone finds you on Twitter then the notification bar changes to whatever message you want your Twitter sourced visitors to see – something along the lines of Following you on Twitter.

http://websitedecoded.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-social-media-plugin-specific-social-notification-bar/

This plug-in also has a complete analogue: Wibiya

Social media tip#5

You are being patient

Remember it takes time to build relationships, but stick with it. While there are stories of overnight successes, you know better.

http://www.contentrobot.com/how-do-i-integrate-social-media-into-my-blog

These, of course, are not all of the tools, that you can use to integrate your wordpress blog with social networks, but implementation of at least one tool from each category will allow you to achieve great results.
P.S. To learn much more about marketing in social networks, also visit the blogs HubSpot and KissMetrics