Social media is one of the most popular traffic sources you can have for your website. If your content is good and attention-worthy then people are likely to share it via Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus, or submit the story to sites like Digg. A lot of sites don’t take too much notice at the importance of having a powerful social media list of followers and a lot of those that do, make their buttons very small and hard to notice.

Granted, you don’t want your “Share this” popping all over the screen, but you do want to use nice, catchy buttons to increase the chances of your article being shared. Oh, and remember that you should first have an actual quality content article.

AddThis, Social Media Plugin for WordPress

There are a lot of good plugins out there for social media, but one of the best when it comes to having a single plugin handle several sites is probably AddThis which provides a lot of functionality and room to edit as you like.  You can control which buttons you want, how big they should be and what style they should follow. Registering on their official website and linking it with the plugin you installed on your WP blog will allow you to keep track of free statistics regarding your content.

Social Media Tabs

Another great plugin is the Social Media Tabs which follows a different logic in displaying the sharing buttons. The tabs give a lot of functionality and allow the user to focus on their preferred website of choice. If they are interested in following you on facebook then they will open up a corresponding tab and get all the info that is needed.

The fact that it takes a little more effort and work to set all of this up and get all the needed links, IDs and pages set-up is perhaps one of the downfalls of the plugin. If you are a patient and serious webmaster then this won’t represent a problem.  Some of the more interesting features are:

• Multiple language support
• Clean, stylish icons
• Like, Tweet, +1 options
• Easy to edit and change all aspects of the plugin
• Comes with a slider

1-click Retweet/Share/Like

If you are looking for a much simpler plugin for your website that supports all sorts of social media then you will no doubt enjoy the 1-click retweet/share/like social media plugin for WordPress. The plugin is easy to install and works right of the bat. You can choose where you want the button to appear (top, bottom or both)! It supports:

1. Google +1
2. Facebook Like
3. Facebook Share
4. Twitter button
5. LinkedIn Share
6. Google Buzz
7. StumbleUpon
8. Digg
9. Email

Shareaholic – Sharing is Sexy!

Shareaholic installs sexy bookmarks on your WordPress site and lets you connect with your users easily! The plugin supports many different services and social websites and is a real pleasure to have.

These icons are small enough, useful, load fast and look good, especially with the animation. They are especially designed to look on mobile devices as well which comes as a bonus feature.

GetSocial on Your Site!

Do you want a floating social media widget for your website? GetSocial is a fun, lightweight plugin that gives you just that! The floating effect is easy to edit and is compatible with just about all web browsers, especially the leading ones.  The plugin supports many different social media websites, including the most popular ones such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus etc. You can even create your own button if you wish to link to other content.

The biggest problem with these floating/sliding plugins is that some people don’t notice them or find them too aggressive and choose to ignore them. Luckily, a lot of sites are using these even more and more so users are getting accustomed to them.