It’s so very true that wholesale changes can take place in a very short period of time, and the way social media has altered the landscape of marketing is a really good example of that. The ‘social’ aspect it may be something that’s more pertinent for younger generations, but even if you’re the furthest thing from young but in business of any sort you need to be onboard with social media marketing. All of you are going to have a website for your business, as that’s been a necessity for 2+ decades now. If you are active on social these days the data on click-throughs are going to show you that so many of the people that arrive at your homepage do so through a link on social media. This is in part why Canadian managed WordPress hosting for small businesses.
That’s assuming you have a WordPress website for your business, but that’s true for a lot small businesses in Canada and it often makes sense as it’s a cost-effective means of putting together as simple yet fully functional and attractive website. Often times these business DIY webmasters are going to be very open to getting additional included help for optimizing their website, and it’s for that reason too that Toronto managed hosting for bloggers and brands will be a good choice for anyone in Canada’s biggest city who’s looking to get the most of their active involvement in social media for business.
The same can be said for Canada’s other big city and Vancouver managed WordPress hosting for social media sites. With managed hosting your hosting provider will take care of most of the small details that will have your site coming back higher up in SERPS - search engine results pages - and that works well in conjunction with having other site visitors arriving via a social media platform. SEO is a broad and very worthwhile topic of discussion for improving any business website’s visibility with would-be new customers, but what we’ll focus on exclusively with this blog entry is the social media end of it and what are the best social media sharing plugins for WordPress websites.
Choosing the right plugins and then using them effectively is the most central aspect of putting together a WordPress website that’s going to serve you best and appeal to customers to the greatest extent. The second part of that equation tends to be the most important one, and if you can make it easier and more intriguing for them to click through to your site AND share it with others then there really is a lot to be gained.
List Criteria
It may be a good idea to first explain the criteria we’d use to determine which social media sharing plugins are best if you’re moving ahead and choosing to implement them into your site along with having it backed by Canadian managed WordPress hosting for small businesses. We start with Personal experience and the ones we’ve read that people are most confident recommending to others on a daily basis. Next up is ease of use, evaluating how user-friendly and intuitive each tool was. It’s also a good idea to check whether a tool can integrate directly into the WordPress dashboard since this makes it easier to manage social media feeds from one place.
Full network and platform compatibility is going to be important too. Some tools integrate with a whole suite of social platforms, while others specialize in just one. Feature array should be a consideration as well, and what you’ll want to see are tools that let you add social share buttons to your site and plugins that allow you to easily display your social feeds directly in WordPress. And then of course we need to be evaluating the performance of the plugins. Since some plugins have to load additional stylesheets and scripts, they may slow down your website.
The final consideration will be user reviews, and many of the ones that look favorably on Toronto managed WordPress hosting for bloggers and brands will have the same positive view of select WordPress plugins here. So let’s get right to listing out the consensus top 5 that make the grade for both performance AND speediness.
Social Pug
Social Pug gets the nod as the overall fastest social sharing plugin. It’s also good because it is available in a generous free version that comes with stylish share buttons for all the most popular networks and multiple placement options for before/after content and floating share buttons. Total and individual share counts is a nice feature too, and if you choose to go with the upgraded $29 USD paid version of this plugin you will gain greater social network compatibility, mobile share button placements, pop-up social share buttons based on visitor behavior, and extensive analytics integrations.
Social Warfare
Social Warfare is a popular option available with both a limited free version at WordPress.org, plus a much more feature-rich premium version that starts at $29 USD. The free version covers all of what’s going to be needed for most small business websites, including the ability to add share buttons for the most popular networks as either in-content or floating buttons, along with an option to show share counts. Upgrade to the pro version with this one and you’ll gain greater access to more social networks plus advanced features that include:
- Pinterest pin buttons
- Control over how your content looks when shared
- Minimum share counts to avoid negative social proof
- Analytics tracking
MashShare
MashShare can be a good choice too and in large part because it lets you create shable-style social share buttons. Users who tend to like that look compared to others will be the ones who’ll choose this plugin over the other options. Vancouver managed WordPress hosting for social media sites is best if you’re going to have this plug installed, and there are other good free features available with it too. The include minimum or artificial share counts and URL shortening that make link URLs look less lengthy and more appealing if they’re to be copied and pasted elsewhere.
Upgrade to the paid version and then there are lots of premium add-ons for features like more placement options, Select-and-share to let visitors highlight text and share that portion, like Medium analytics, and floating buttons. One thing to be aware of is that MashShare only allows Facebook and X in the free version.
Social Snap
Social Snap is a comparatively new entrant to the social share plugin space. Like many of the other plugins it comes in a limited free version at WordPress.org and a premium version that starts at $39. Inline buttons, floating sidebars, and on media ( example - images) are all made available with the free version, and you also get access to all the most popular social networks plus other helpful features like social follow buttons and click-to-tweet functionality.
The paid pro version is like the other paid-options with these plugins - greater network access and positions along with control over how your content looks on social media, share count recovery, analytics. Then if you’re willing to pay a little more than that even, you get better non-sharing functionality with social media auto-posting, social login, and a content locker.
AddToAny
AddToAny is the final addition here to this list of the best and fastest WordPress social sharing plugins. It still makes the cut despite the fact it adds over 100 KB to page sizes and clocks in slower than the other four plugins we’ve highlighted here. But the huge gain you get with this plugin is universal sharing, which none of the other social share plugins on this list offer. This means it’s possible to add a single button that lets visitors share your content to any one of the hundreds of networks that AddToAny supports.
Then from there you have multiple placement options, including inline and floating buttons, share counts, social media follow buttons, and Google Analytics integration. And as is the case with all these plugins it is likely best to have the contributing to new business gained through social media when the website is backed by Canadian managed WordPress hosting for small businesses.
