You can have a monthly budget for ads and other forms of paid marketing, but one of the most priceless (and free) marketing commodities would have to be social media sharing. User engagement with your website, blog posts, and products can help drive traffic and new visitors to your website which in the end should result in more leads, sales, or brand awareness. Social sharing buttons are an easy way for visitors to quickly share a webpage to their friends and followers. Providing shortcuts for users to easily share your content will help spread your website across social networks and increase the number of eyes on your product or brand. In this blog post I’ve compiled a list of the 5 best free social media sharing plugins for WordPress. It should save you time from having to filter through thousands of other plugins throughout the WordPress community.
Best Free Social Sharing Plugins For WordPress
1. Social Warfare – Social Warfare claims to offer faster loading speeds compared to other social sharing plugins. There are both free and paid versions available, but the free version will offer everything you need for the most popular social networks. Those wanting access to more options (like a Reddit share button or displaying Twitter share counts) should consider upgrading to the Professional version.
2. Jetpack – The popular Jetpack social sharing plugin was created by Automattic. It’s a core development plugin, so there are plenty of other features available within Jetpack. The company that created this plugin is very well known and they release frequent updates for it. With over 5 million installations and roughly 1,000 four and five star reviews, this plugin is a great free option when looking for a safe and reliable social sharing plugin.
3. UltimatelySocial – UltimatelySocial is the ideal option for anyone wanting specific social media buttons. They offer specific positioning of their buttons (top left, top center, top right..etc) and they provide various styles of buttons, with an easy to setup and use interface. The free version gives you access to all share buttons for the most popular social networks, and the pro version gives you access to even more. This plugin is highly recommended with lots of positive reviews, and the creators also push out frequent updates.
4. Sassy Social Share – Sassy Social Share offers a large variety of social sharing features, like the ability to display share counts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, and several other social networks. Keep in mind, that is actually a premium feature in many other plugins. There are also plenty of icon, background and logo color customization options. Although a premium version is available, it isn’t really needed unless you want access to social sharing analytics.
5. MashShare – MashShare was created by the globally popular Mashable site. If you’re a fan of how their website looks, now you can get similar social share buttons just like them. They boast a high install and update rate. In the free version, MashShare only supports Facebook and Twitter, but allow you to place the social share button above or below your content, or both. Their paid add-on allows you to show the share count and provides access to more social sharing platforms.
We encourage you to try more than one of the plugins listed above and take it for a test drive. This is the only way you will truly know which is the best fit for you. Don’t forget to consider the placement and style of the sharing buttons or floating bars that you require. Sometimes a site’s social sharing options can overwhelm the reader, leading them to forego the share because it could be cumbersome.
