This is all about optimizing your self hosted wordpress blog. If you are still blogging on blogger, tumblr, posterous, wordpress.com or any other blogging platform, you might not have the same customization options and may want to consider getting some wordpress lovin’.
You have written an awesome post that you know is going to knock em’ dead.
A real hum dinger.
People come, read the post, agree with it’s genius, and leave. Oh no!
This is a blogging failwhale.
You want to make sure that your blog is optimized for social sharing. This is the simplest step toward getting more eyes to see your content. Make it as easy as possible for those that love your content to show it to others.
1. The Digg-Digg Plugin
One of the best wordpress social sharing buttons is the digg-digg plugin developed by Mkyong.com. With Digg-Digg, you can effortlessly add in social media sharing buttons to the top, bottom, or have them sexily float up and down your page to prompt users to share.
2. Backtweets Plugin
Backtweets is one of the best Tweet this buttons for WordPress. Unlike other WordPress twitter plugins, backtweets allows you to customize the look and feel of the buttons. It also allows for the clicker to travel right to twitter, rather than having to Oauth another application (I’m looking at you TweetMeme)3. Sexy Bookmarks Plugin
Adding bookmarking options to the bottom of your post is also a good idea to prompt sharing. Yu can do this with a number of plugins but Sexy bookmarks does what it says, Makes it sexy.
4. Adding in Facebook Like within your themes code
“Ahhhh, no! I’m just a social media jockey, I can’t possible add in something via coding” Suck it up, You can do it. Here is the code you need.<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:330px; height:60px”></iframe>Add this code to your wordpress blog in the index.php right after <div class=”entry_content”> and before <?php the_content(__(‘[..]’)); ?> (This may vary depending on your theme. Feel free to contact me if you are in need of some help) This will give you a nice little like button for your readers to click and add an optional comment for them to add some description of why they are sad that the like button isn’t a love button for this post.
Now Your Blog is Social
There are other wordpress plugins and tweaks that can be done, but if you get these 3 down you have your bases pretty well covered. I will cover more later. Stay tuned and stay social my friends.
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