Many people are using WordPress as their blogging platform these days, simply because it works so well. On top of that, the number of plugins that are available for the platform is impressive. While I would like to point out all my favorite plugins, it might be better if I just point out some of the best lists out there.
You have: the 20 Best WordPress Plugins with real innovative ideas. Then the 18 most downloaded plugins will give you an idea on what people consider to be most useful. If you have time and interest in this subject, then go to Top WordPress Plugins 2009 and the absolute best and comprehensive guide: Top 160 WordPress Plugin.
Incorporating social media into your WordPress blog is just one way to make use of these plugins. I’ve assembled my favorite social media plugins right here.
Antisocial: This plugin displays a number of small icons to make it easy for readers to share and bookmark your content on social media. The benefit of this plugin is that everything is no-follow, so all the link juice stays right on your blog.
Add to Any Bookmark Button: This creates a bookmarking button on your site that lets the user choose which bookmarking site they want to use.
Digg This: If you are a Digg user, you know how quickly something can go viral on this site. That’s why this plugin is so popular, as it lets visitors share your content directly with Digg.
Gregarious: With this plugin, you can easily promote your content on a number of social media sites, including Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. It’s also customizable so you can set it up how you want it.
I Love Social Bookmarking: With this handy WordPress plugin, your visitors can vote for your content. There is a drop down menu that keeps everything nice and neat and uncluttered on your blog and allows visitors to choose which social media site they want to vote on.
Notable: This is much like Antisocial in that it places a number of social media icons on your blog for visitors to vote on. It doesn’t use no-follow links, however.
Share This: When you want to target specific social media sites, this is the plugin to use. It will let you decide which sites to let your users bookmark your content on. This is particularly useful if you are looking to do a campaign directed at a specific site.
SphinnIt Button: For those who use Sphinn to promote their internet marketing blogs, this plugin works well to encourage visitors to use Sphinn.
Sociable: This is actually another version of AntiSocial . . . just without the no-follow links.
WP Super Cache: Once you start to get a lot of traffic, you can end up crashing your server. No one wants that, so this plugin is a good idea before you start getting too much traffic. It will cache your pages and load them as static pages if you get too many hits, preventing a crash.
While writing this post, I just installed:
Comment Luv: Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
BackType Connect: Show related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.
You might not need more than one or two of these plugins at a time, but depending on what your intention is and which social media sites you are aiming to get higher rankings on, you can choose which plugin works best. Which ones are you using?
