Which Social Share Plugin Should I Use?

I suddenly realized that since I gave my blog a makeover I did not have a social share plugin. I had added the Twitter and Facebook follow me buttons at the top of my blog but I did not have any share buttons at the end of my posts.

Free Traffic & backlinks

Having a social sharing plugin is another way to get free traffic so I really need one.  If by any chance someone shared one of my blog posts they liked and it, by some miracle, hit the front page of one of the sites then I could get a ton of traffic.  Then there’s always the possibility that someone might refer to it on their blog and I would get some backlinks too. Well, I live in hope!

I searched the internet for the best plugin to use which resulted in lists of the top 50, top 35,  20, top 10, top 5, and the top 3 share plugin that are available for WordPress blogs. How am I going to decide? Does it make much difference anyway?

Decisions Decisions

I want something that is easy to set up,  that looks inviting and is easy for my reader to use. I decided to look at some popular blogs and blogs of internet marketers that I know of to see what sort of share plugins they used.

I saw some that looked neat and attractive and some that quite frankly looked a bit of a mess.  I came across one that was a horizontal bar that got in the way of what I was reading. How annoying. I wouldn’t want one like that!

Marc Milburn’s Q & A webinar was coming up this week so I thought I would wait and ask him what he recommended. He holds a Q & A webinar twice a month which is a great help. It’s a lot easier to ask a question verbally than to write it down in an email. You get a fuller answer that way as well.

SexyBookmarks Plugin

Marc  said that he has tried a few and had just installed the SexyBookmarks plugin. He showed us what it looked like on his blog and it was one I have seen on other blogs. I liked the look of it and decided I would go for that.

I did a bit of research on it first and it was listed as one of the best in quite a few of the lists of top share plugins. It has 88 social site options, and now also includes the all important Google +1.

According to SexyBookmarks plugin own site ” it has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites”.  Quite how that has been proven I don’t know.

I installed it and then had to choose which sites I wanted to show up on my blog. You can choose them individually or with one click choose the most popular, which I did. That resulted in 11 being chosen.

Google +1

I also chose to add a Facebook like and Google+1 buttons which when I looked at it on my blog were hanging underneath the others and didn’t really look right. I played about with the settings but it seems I can’t have the Google+1 button without the Facebook like button even though Facebook is already in the selection.

One review I saw recommended only choosing only 5 – 7 so as not to confuse your reader. I think that is probably good advice. I went back to the plugin and unchecked a few sites to get it to look better but it hasn’t made much difference.  I think I will have to play about about with it a bit more.

I noticed that Marc has 10 showing on his blog but has not included the Facebook like or Google+1 on that particular  plugin. He’s got a different plugin for the Facebook like button.  I might do that with mine too. Facebook is very popular right now.

What’s your favourite social sharing plugin?

Do you have a favorite sharing plugin? If so tell us about it in the comment box and if you like my post please share it!