Struggling to get noticed in the blogosphere? Writing killer content but missing out on the traffic you deserve?
If promoting your WordPress blog feels like a slow and futile process, perhaps you’re not taking full advantage of the tools at your disposal.
With the right combination of plugins, you can automate most of the important tasks and essentially let your blog promote itself.
These are 8 handy tools that take the grueling legwork out of publicizing your content and let you focus on creating it.
1. Digg This Button
A highly customizable solution for adding ‘Digg This’ buttons to your blog and getting your content seen on the popular social bookmarking site. The plugin allows you to specify where on your site the buttons are displayed, and gives you a choice of ‘skins’ that alter the visual style.
Featured Plugin - WordPress Ecommerce Shopping Cart Plugin
2. Floating Social
Adds a ‘floating’ social sharing bar to your blog that moves downward as readers scroll through your post. Allows readers to share your content on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google +, Reddit and Del.icio.us, and can be customized to fit the style and design of your own website. Want to see this plugin in action? Look to your left.
3. Ezine Articles Plugin
Integrates with your Ezine Articles account and allows you to submit blog articles for syndication directly from your WordPress dashboard.
4. WP to Twitter
Allows you to automatically tweet new blog posts, as well as new pages on your site and revisions to old posts. WP to Twitter also integrates with a number of different URL shortening services. We reviewed this plugin a few days ago – check out the article here.
5. Socialize
Another plugin for adding social sharing buttons to your blog. Socialize gives you the option to place buttons right inside your blog posts, or in a bar at the bottom of each article.
6. Comments Plus
Allows your readers to comment on a blog post using their Facebook, Twitter or Google IDs. Very handy for encouraging non-WordPress users to get involved in the conversation. By default, comments left on your blog are posted to the Facebook or Twitter accounts of their respective author, which means more eyeballs on your content.
7. Tweet Old Post
Another Twitter-specific plugin. This one is designed for people who started blogging before they started tweeting. Randomly selects old blog posts from your archives and tweets them at a time and frequency of your choosing.
8. Ultimate Facebook
If you’re making a serious attempt at promoting your blog with Facebook, this is the plugin you need. Allows you to automatically post new blog articles to your wall or fan page, place customized ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons on your site, plus a whole lot more.
Featured Plugin - WordPress Facebook Plugin
Have we missed anything?
If you can recommend any more WordPress plugins for promoting blog content, please let us know in the comment section below.
Image credits: Colorful social media, Promotion roadsign and Social media wordcloud from Bigstockphoto.
You missed FanPage Connect at http://www.fampageconnect.com. Free and premium editions.
Interesting – thanks for the tip!
Cheers
Tim
Wow, thanks for putting this great list of useful WordPress plugins together Tim.
Sometimes it’s not easy keeping up with what’s out there, but informative posts like these always help highlight little nuggets like the Tweet Old Posts plugin & the other that make integration with social networks easier, they’re super handy.
Yeah I thought the Tweet Old Post was a pretty novel concept too. You can find some weird and wonderful stuff with a bit of digging through the plugin directory.
Thanks for the comment – glad you enjoyed the list.
Cheers
Tim
Nice list!!!only they can have a successful blog!!!!
Yeah!!!!!
How about a newsletter or email alerts.
For emails alerts: Feedburner or the plugin WP-Responder.
For newsletters: Tribulant’s newsletter (premium) or Wysija (disclaimer: we are the authors).
Cool cool – thanks for the tips.
Cheers
Tim
Wysija now also does autoresponders and post notifications. See 2 min video on how easy it is: http://www.wysija.com/email-subscription-wordpress/
Great list! I like the floating social … my fav
Thanks Victoria! Yeah, floating social is great – are you using it on your site?
Cheers
Tim
This may just be me, but I find that that floating social thing is extremely annoying for two reasons:
1. It distracts people from reading the post and
2. It keeps following you and its persistence can get so irritating you just don’t share at all.
Just my 2 cents.
Will this works even if there is Commentluv premium?
Which plugin are you talking about?
Comments Plus Tim, I have Commentluv premium at my blog, will it still works?
Yes you should be able to use both of these plugins together without any problems, because the perform different functions. Let us know if you have any issues.
Cheers
Tim
Thanks for the quick response btw :D
Thanks! Tim. For your work.
You’re welcome! I hope you found something useful.
Cheers
Tim
This should be a big help! design-iy.com Yall
great post and information…thanks for posting this useful article…
visit http://www.hyindia.com for latest news and updates…
Anyone know if there’s a plugin to link both twitter and facebook to a wordpress blog or do i have to install separate plugins?
Very useful list!
I can append this list http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/atcontent/ — content protection, free backup and one click repost for your blog!