Explore 7 essential social media plugins to connect your blog or website to your social sphere and help you to get more followers, likes, shares and drive more traffic to your blog or website.

Social Media is the most important source to drive traffic to your blog. In order to drive more readers to and from your social media channels, share your posts and content regularly on your social feeds and also in your communities. Once your readers visit your site, you need to hook them to your site and to your social media channels, encourage them to share your stuff and to regularly drive them back to your site. You might need some smart tools to help you with these tasks.

Social media plugins will assist you by integrating some smart features directly into your WordPress blog or website.  However, there are tons of options to choose from. There are plugins for enabling your readers to follow your social streams, to like, share, pin and comment on your posts, and others to schedule and share your posts on all your social media accounts.
3 basic social media plugin functions to promote your blog and your posts on social media

Social media follow button plugins to encourage your blog visitors to follow you on your social media accounts.
Social media share icons plugins to encourage your readers to like and share your posts and your images.
Social media automation plugins to save time for scheduling and sharing your posts on your social media profiles, pages and in groups to get more attention for your post and drive more social media traffic back to your blog.

Social media follow and share icons and buttons can be complemented with more features to make it easy for your readers to follow, like, share and comment. For example, if you provide outlined quotes and facts in shareable Twitter boxes. Or, if you show your social streams on your blog or website. This will encourage visitors to follow you because they can actually see your activities on social media.

If you provide give-aways on your site, like downloadable checklists or whitepapers, you can collect your visitor's email address, or you can make them pay with a social media action, like a share, follow or like to get more engagement and endorsement for your content.

Social media automation will save much time for scheduling and sharing your post. However, when choosing social media automation, make sure you use tools that allow you to cross-promote by tailoring your social media posts for your communities to make them look like a human and not like a robot.

We have structured our list into
7 basic social media plugins features for your blog or website

Plugins for social media follow icons
Social media share buttons for your posts and pages
Social media share icons for your images
Plugins for shareable quotes and facts on Twitter
Social media automation plugins for scheduling and sharing your posts
Social stream plugins for displaying social updates on your site
Social media plugins for social comments

We have researched and tested virtually hundreds of social media plugins ourselves and picked out the very best for you. Most of them are free, some of them are paid or offer paid premium features, but they are worth the money for the value you will get.

So here is our list of the very best social media plugins for your blog.

7 Very Best Social Media Plugins for Your Blog + 55 Alternatives
1. The Best Wordpress Plugins for Social Media Buttons
First of all, you need social media buttons on your site. Your website visitors are your most likely fans. Once you get people to visit your blog or website, you need to hook them to your site. You can do this by asking them to subscribe to your blog or newsletter, but many people are reluctant to leave their e-mail addresses these days.

Turning website visitors into followers is the best way to keep them updated and make them return to your site.

Make it easy for them to follow your social media profiles to get them hooked on your social streams. Placing social media follow buttons on your site will help you generate the number of followers on your social profiles. Social media plugins for follow buttons help you to encourage your website visitors to follow your social media accounts.
My Plugin TIP: Simple Social Icons (free) 


Social media plugin simple social icons studiopress

The Simple Social Icons plugin created by Studiopress is a very simple and basic plugin to display social media follow buttons on your site. Its free and very easy to use. It will display social icons on your site that will take your visitors straight to your social profiles and make them follow your streams.

You can choose which profiles you want to link to, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and RSS.

You can customize the color and size of your icons as well as align them to the left or right.

You can choose all settings from a simple widget form.

You can also add these icons to your header right section, your sidebar or even your footer widgets with a few clicks.

Get the social media plugin Simple Social Icons for your blog.
Alternative choices for social media follow buttons:

Social Media Follow Buttons Bar  (free)
Creates a simple button bar for your site. You can choose the size of icons, choose to open link in a current or new tab. Also, you can have the social media follow buttons automatically added to the bottom of all post or/and pages, and can position the link buttons using either a widget, a shortcode or a template action hook.
Easy Social Icons (free)
Allows you to upload your own custom social icons or create multiple icon sets with different settings, set your social URL, icon width height or margins and choose position and alignment. Insert the icons with a shortcode, a template tag, or a widget. It’s fully responsive and customizable with PHP code. lets you choose the order in which the icons are displayed.
GetSiteControl (free)
An easy-to-use set of 7 engagement tools for your WordPress website. Follow and share social media tools combined with online surveys, live chats, contact forms, opt-in forms and promo messages,  – all managed from a single dashboard.
WP Flat Social Profile Blocks (premium plugin at $ 14 on CodeCanyon)
Places a block of follow me buttons on the sidebar for people to follow without leaving your site. The buttons come with a unique flat design and are highly customizable.
Metro Style Social Widget (free)
Another design focussed plugin which displays your social channels in one configurable widget on your sidebar and links to your social network profiles. The like / follow button on the social icons allows your users to immediately like and follow your page or profile without leaving your site.
Monarch (ElegantThemes membership bundle at $ 89 including 87 premium themes and six premium plugins)
Offers elegant looking Social media follow & Social media sharing buttons. You can add buttons from 20 social networks, add it as a widget at any place on your blog. It offers floating bars, image icons and automatic pop-up and fly-in triggers.

2. The Best Wordpress Plugins for Social Media Share Buttons
Next, you need social media share buttons on your site. There are practically hundreds of plugins for social share buttons to choose from. Hardly any other function for WordPress offers more choices for plugins than social media share buttons.
My Plugin TIP: Simple Share Buttons Adder (free & premium from $ 9.99)


Simple Share Buttons Adder

Simple Share Buttons Adder is a very simple sharing solution that allows you to automatically insert social media sharing buttons above, below or above and below the content area of your posts, pages, homepage or category pages.

The plugin supports 15 popular social media services for free, including Twitter, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, XING, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, WhatsApp and many more.

You can choose from nine unique button designs, define the number of shares to be displayed and change the text displayed next to the sharing buttons.

You can also customize the styling of buttons, as well as their position and alignment.

The premium version is available from $9.99 and offers additional advanced features such as click tracking, and sharing statistics.

Get the social media plugin Simple Share Buttons Adder for your site.
Alternative social media plugin options for social media sharing buttons

WP Social Sharing (free)
Simple plugin to add sharing buttons for 6 popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to posts, pages, media and custom post types, also via shortcode. Allows you to customize social button text, add Twitter usernames. Very simple but effective.
Ultimate Social Share Icons & Social Share Buttons (free & premium from $25)
16 stylish design styles for your social share buttons for Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, RSS, and more networks in the premium version. Place the share buttons before or after posts, floating, via widget or shortcode, or define the location on the page. Define several actions to one share buttons, add animation or counts.
Sharify (free)
Another excellent simple free plugin for beautiful buttons for all popular networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Pocket, VKontakte. Place them above or below your content, or manually via shortcode. The buttons are responsive and the share counts work without external scripts, so you don't have to worry about page speed.
Share Buttons by AddThis (free & premium at $99/year)
One of the most popular social sharing plugins with 200 popular social networking and bookmarking sites (like Facebook Share, Facebook Like, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and more). The simple share buttons are unobtrusive, quick to load and customizable. Some of the networks, widgets, positions, and analytics are limited to the premium version, as well as more follow options and recommended content tools. To use the premium options, you need to register with the AddThis website.
Super Socializer- WordPress Social Share, Social Login and Social Comments Plugin (free)
Integrates fully responsive social share buttons from more than 100 social networks and social counts for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Buffer, Reddit, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, and Vkontakte, with multiple free customization options for size, shape, background and logo color, and more. Icons can be positioned at the top or bottom of your content or with horizontal or vertical floating bars. Enable visitors to log in with 9 social network accounts for checkout pages and customer login forms and social comments for Facebook Comments, Google Plus Comments, Disqus Comments.
Custom Share Buttons with Floating Sidebar (free & premium)
Adds basic share buttons and floating sidebars for popular social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ at the top or the bottom of your content on your homepage, pages, posts or categories/archives. Floating bars for mobile devices are available with the Pro version as well as many other options.
Social Media Share Buttons | MashShare (free & premium)
Highly customizable without any impact on page speed, because the plugin works without any external script dependencies. The free version supports Facebook and Twitter and displays big and bold social media icons above and/or below posts, pages, and other post types. Mashare counts the total number of shares and views, which can be optionally displayed. Nine premium add-ons (at €19 per year each for a single site license) offers a wide variety of options, including 17 other networks, analytics, side, bars, widgets, floating bars and many more options.
Social Warfare (free & premium from $29/year)
Displays visually stunning sharing buttons in a variety of locations on your blog without slowing down your site. You can add share buttons above/below your posts or via shortcode, floating share bars and share counts. The premium option offers more networks for sharing, hover 'Pin' buttons for Pinterest, Tweet quotes and fully customizable share texts and many more.
Sumo Share (premium at $20/month)
Premium plugin, included in a SumoMe suite of apps to help you grow your blog traffic. The "Share" plugin can be edited from a clickable interface to customize and add social buttons to any place on your website, from a wide range of social services including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and more.
AddToAny (free)
One of the many plugin solutions that offer a universal hover over buttons to share on a large variety of networks and email sharing. You can choose between several different icon sizes, custom styles and places for showing the button, including a shortcode to place it anywhere. The drawback is the use of external scripts which redirects users and may impact page speed.
Swifty Bar (free)
Displays a sticky bar at the bottom of your posts, with the usual social sharing buttons supporting Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest with or without share counts. It also displays the post title, author, category, comments, and links to previous/next posts, which is really cool.
Floating Social Bar (free)
Displays a simple row of sharing buttons for Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest at the top of posts, pages, and images or videos. When a user scrolls down the page, the sharing bar remains fixed at the top.

 
3. The Best Wordpress Plugins for Social Media Share Icons for your Images
In addition to general social sharing buttons on your posts and site, you can encourage users to share your images. You should do so especially for your infographics and other pinable images. With the help of a simple plugin, you can increase social shares for your images.

Visual content such as photos, infographics, and videos can have a tremendous impact on the attention you get for your content. There are many sites and search engines just for the image and video searches, such as Pinterest, Flickr, and Instagram, not to forget Google image and video search which is directly displayed in the regular search index. If your images are shared they will drive additional traffic from all these sources.

Whenever your blog post is shared on social media only your featured image will be shared. But most blog posts have more than just one image. Social Sharing Buttons for your images make it easy for your website visitors to share your images separately from your post. This is most important if you display infographics on your site.

Some of the general social media sharing button plugins also offer buttons for your images. However, it's worth looking for a plugin to take special care of your images.

My Plugin TIP: Cool Image Share (free)


Cool Image Share

The plugin adds social icons to each image in your posts, with different animation effects to attract the attention of your visitors and make them want to use the icons for sharing your posts.

The plugin supports popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Reddit, Linkedin, Tumblr.

You can select different styles, sizes, and positions on the images as well as hover effects and CSS3 animations.

When a user hovers on the images, they will see the social media icons which they can use to share those images.

You can also define a minimum size for images to prevent the icons to be displayed on small images, not suitable for sharing. The plugin can automatically reduce icon size if the panel does not fit in the image.

Get the Cool Image Share social media plugin for your site.
More alternative social media plugin options for image sharing buttons

WWM Social Share On Image Hover (free & premium from $10)
The plugin adds 6 social media icons to your post images: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ Pinterest, and Tumblr. It will show the social media icons automatically on hover the post images on your site. You may align the social icons on the top left, top right or the bottom left or right.
Pinterest Hover Pin It Button (free)
If you are opting just for Pinterest, the official Pinterest Hover Pin It Button for Wordpress enables a Pin It button over all of your images that are at least 120 x 120 pixel. You can choose the shape, size, and color of your Pin It buttons.
WordPress Image Hover Lite (free & premium from $19)
Allows you to easily add social share icons for 8 social networks on every image you’ve added via WordPress editor. However, you have to activate the hover for every new image you add to your gallery. WordPress Image Hover premium version has more options and features like fully customizable buttons, a widget for image hover as well as full control on visibility and hover effects.
WP Easy Social Hover (Code Canyon premium plugin at $10)
Premium WordPress image sharing social media plugin. You can add multiple on hover effects with social network sharing buttons to their images using standard WP media tool. This plugin offers 12 hover effects and 10 hover backgrounds to choose from, which helps to attract visitors to share your images.
Share This Image (Code Canyon premium plugin from $29)
Simple and flexible options to share your images on 11 most popular social networks. It has a powerful admin option to customize and see all the setting on one page.

 
4. Best WordPress Social Media Plugins for Tweetable Quotes (Click to Tweet Quotes)
Twitter is one of the most popular social networks. Click to tweet plugins make your post easily shareable for your readers. By placing ready-to-share, "tweetable" quotes on your site, you can create micro-content into your blog post that makes your content more shareable and brings extra traffic from Twitter. The tweet will have a link to your page or post.
My Plugin TIP: Better Click2Tweet (free) - ready to use tweets for your readers


Better Click2Tweet Wordpress plugin to create twitter boxes into your content

In order to encourage your readers to share your posts, you can add ready to use Twitter boxes to your posts or pages.

The plugin is very easy to use, fully customizable with CSS.

The link to your post will be automatically added to the tweet text. You can define your Twitter handle and choose whether the plugin will use the full page URL or a shortened one. The "via" and URL can be easily removed the URL from the resulting tweets, and links can be turned into nofollow links.

The plugin uses the official shortcode API for better security and compatibility.

Here is an example of you the Twitter boxes will look on your post. Just give it a try, click and share this post on Twitter:

Get the Better Click2Tweet plugin for your site.
Other social media plugin options for click to tweet boxes


TweetShare (free)
Create, customize and insert tweetable quotes and inline tweets. Just insert a shortcode with the tweetable quote and in no time that text will be enlarged and made tweetable. Both the “Click to Tweet” and “Inline Tweets” have different shortcodes, you can add your “via @username”, enable/disable URL shortening, change the background/text color to go with your theme. Select from various pre-designed themes and check the performance.
ClickToTweet.com (free)
Allows inserting different texts in the quote box and in the tweet in order to shorten some quotes. You have to fill in the link (or shortened link) manually, as well as a twitter handle, next to the tweet text. So if you want your tweet to have a link to your post, you have to edit it to make sure what the page URL will be.
Awesome Click to Tweet (free)
Inserts customizable click to tweet boxes with customizable fonts, templates, button text and animations to your WordPress posts or pages. The Plugin comes with a click to tweet shortcode builder which could be accessed straight from within the edit screen of your post or page. Add as many click to tweet boxes as you like on a single page! Each tweet box could contain different text and animations without slowing down your website.
TweetDis (premium plugin from $37)
Provides 16 design templates for quote boxes, which can be adjusted to match the style of your site. The plugin can make any part of your text and your images tweetable. Just prepare the text you want to quote in your editor, select it and click the TweetDis icon.
Inline Tweet Sharer (free & premium from $25)
Allows you to share links to memorable quotes and shareable facts on your WordPress website. You can also add prefix and suffixes, as well as attribution to twitter users. By default, the links are styled as links on your site, but they the style is customizable with CSS.

5. Best Wordpress Plugins for Social Media Automation Plugins
Don't wait for other people to share your content. Use every opportunity the social media world provides for sharing and promoting your content yourself. Cross-promoting your post on multiple social networks will help you to drive a consistent stream of traffic to your site. There are many social platforms, special groups, and communities, where you can share your posts. Sharing your content manually every time you publish a new post can become quite tiresome and time-consuming, especially if you publish regularly. Social media automation plugins can help you to automatically share your post, whenever you publish a new blog post to save time and work. There are multiple choices for tools and plugins for auto-publishing your posts. However, social media automation can boost or bust your valuable work, if done wrong. Don't just shoot and forget. Careless automation can turn your social media accounts into a lifeless robotic content stream.

Each social network offers different options for promoting your blog post. Each network is used for different purposes and at different times. And, the communities react differently to post formats. Hashtags work fine for Twitter and Instagram, but they perform less on Facebook and LinkedIn. Google+ users read long comments, while on Facebook short comments perform better. You may also need to address your LinkedIn business contacts differently than your Facebook friends.

To effectively cross-promote your blog post, don't just cross-post the same message on every social network. Use tools that help you to optimize your social media posts to fit each social media platform and community.
My Plugin Tip: Blog2Social (free & premium from $79/year) - schedule and share your blog posts to social media


Blog2Social Social Media Automation: schedule and share your blog posts automatically on your social media accounts

Blog2Social is a very powerful dashboard application for Wordpress with a whole bunch of options to schedule, share and cross-promote your blog posts across multiple social media channels at once. The plugin allows you to auto-post and to customize your posts individually, and to schedule your posts for the best times on each network.

The plugin supports 15 popular social networks, such as Facebook (profiles, pages), Twitter, Google+ (profiles, pages, groups), LinkedIn (profiles, pages), XING (profiles, pages, groups), Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr, Medium, Torial, Reddit, Bloglovin, Diigo and VK.com for auto-publishing your posts, as well as your images.

The plugin automatically turns your blog posts into an adapted format for each network with pre-filled comments and hashtags. You can edit all social media posts with individual comments, hashtags, handles or emojis, select specific images for your posts, choose link post or image post formats, define Facebook OG and Twitter and many more.

The premium version provides more options for scheduling and sharing your post with custom formats.

A social media calendar allows you to keep track of your scheduled posts and re-arrange or add scheduled posts per drag&drop. You can schedule your posts for one-time or multiple-time postings or schedule your evergreen content recurrently for up to one year in advance.

You may also re-post your old post and pre-schedule your scheduled post for auto-posting.

This plugin really saves a lot of time and legwork every time you publish a new post and helps you to get more outreach for your post in less time. It helps you to create human-looking, engaging social media posts to attract your followers for more likes, shares, and comments.

Blog2Social is free for sharing and customizing your social media posts, but you might also find it worth to try the premium version for advanced scheduling and sharing

Get the Blog2Social social media plugin for your blog
Alternative options for social media automation plugins

Facebook Auto Publish (free)
Lets you publish posts automatically from your blog to Facebook. You can publish your posts to Facebook as a simple text message, a text message with an image or as an attached link to your blog. The plugin supports filtering posts based on custom post-types as well as categories.
The prominent features of the Facebook Auto Publish plugin are highlighted below.
Medium (free)
The official Medium plugin that lets you publish posts automatically to a Medium profile. It provides auto-publishing, but no customizing or scheduling.
Tumblr Crosspostr (free)
Posts to Tumblr whenever you hit publish a post or save a draft. It can also import your reblogs on Tumblr as native WordPress posts and downloads the images in your photo posts and saves them in the WordPress media library. It also syncs posts when you edit or delete your WordPress post. Scheduled WordPress posts will also be scheduled for Tumblr, but cannot be posted on a delayed schedule.
WP LinkedIn Auto Publish (free)
Lets you publish posts, custom posts and pages automatically from WordPress to your personal LinkedIn profile or your LinkedIn company page. Enables simple text-based sharing or more advanced sharing with your featured image. You can set up a default share message format for all your posts, filter items to be published based on categories or post formats, but posts cannot be scheduled.
JetPack (free & premium)
A simple automatic sharing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, and WhatsApp is integrated with the JetPack plugin package which also provides you with several other free and paid tools for your site, like subscription and contact forms, security features and widgets, site stats and analytics, and more. It provides auto-posting, but no customizing or scheduling.

6. Best Social Media Plugins for Social Streams
Social media follow buttons are important means to turn your website visitors into followers. However, for new visitors, they might feel like buying a "pig in a poke" because they don't know what to expect from your social media updates.

Social feeds are an easy way to share your social networking updates on your site to attract your website visitors to your social media accounts. You can do this by implementing social feed widgets for each of your networks into your sidebar or your content. However, if you manage multiple social networks, your sidebar might burst with a whole bunch of widgets. You have to choose due to lack of space for too many widgets on your sidebar.

A social stream combining multiple social feeds can be a better alternative for your blog to show off all of your updates and contents in a single lifestream. Social stream plugins collect, optimize and present your entire variety of content from social networks in a more organized manner. It displays your status updates along with items that you’ve shared like links, images, and videos. Some social streams even display your social engagement with your followers.
My Plugin TIP: Flow Flow Social Streams (free & premium at $35)


Flow Flow Social Streams

The Flow Flow Social Streams plugin lets you aggregate and stream social feeds in a customizable responsive social media wall on your WordPress website.

You can select any combinations of social feeds from multiple accounts, connected with the same single stream. Your website visitors will be able to observe all of your latest network updates in one social flow without slowing down your site.

You can display social media counters like comments, likes, views and sharing buttons to increase user engagement, users can sort and search networks on top of your stream. You can also exclude posts by words, usernames or URLs.

The admin settings provide a drag & drop card builder or you create your own grid style.

The free version provides Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, the Pro version provides a total of 14 networks including Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Vine, Dribble, Flickr and others + WordPress posts and RSS feeds, additional stream layouts, a lightbox with comments loading for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, inclusion filters for feeds (include only by words, usernames, URLs), lightbox galleries for multi-image post and many more options.

Get the Flow Flow Social Streams plugin for your blog. 
Other social media plugin options for social streams

Feed Them Social (free & premium from $75/year)
Create Social Feeds of any or all your photos and videos from Facebook Pages, Groups, Album Photos, Album Covers or Event from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Pinterest, etc. Add as many social feeds as you need, implement with shortcodes. The premium version provides customizing options for how many posts, pictures, tweets, or videos for each individual social feed!.
TwineSocial  (free & premium from $19/month)
Allows you to display your latest social content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Tumblr, Flickr, and LinkedIn on your site. It provides a customizable, stylish presentation for your photos, videos, and text. You can organize your feed by accounts, hashtags, multimedia, or you can include or exclude another variable you prefer. It also supports short links, permalinks, a responsive grid, infinite scroll, video player, custom CSS, multi-language support, analytics, and more. Its free for 3 data feeds, the premium versions offer more options for data volume and customization.
Feeder Ninja (free)
Create embedded feeds out of RSS feeds and your social media content from Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest. It's free, but you need to sign up before you can embed it into your WordPress website.
Juicer (free & premium from $19/month)
Adds social media feeds to your WordPress site from all the popular social sites including Google+, Yelp, and DeviantArt. Social media contents will appear in an embedded shortcode. Select content by social media account names or hashtags. This plugin is customizable and also adds permalinks to your social posts. It provides a responsive layout, custom CSS, infinite scroll, auto-approval, SEO optimization, and analytics. Integrate 1 feed from 2 social media sources or hashtags for free and get premium for more accounts, sources and advanced customizing options.
Social Network Tabs (CodeCanyon premium plugin at $15)
Combines all of your favorite social networks profiles & feeds into a slide out or static tabs. Includes 16 social networks with 69 feed options. The tabs are loaded via AJAX with minimal impact on page loading time. Flexible positioning, customizing and styling of your feeds. Posts include Twitter, Facebook, Google + & Linkedin share links as well as retweet, reply & favorite links for Twitter posts. Enable/disable content easily or rotate content for each network.
Instagram Feed (free)
If you are opting for Instagram only, Instagram Feed allows you to beautifully display your recent Instagram photos on your WordPress blog. You will need to generate an Instagram access token. You can then use the available shortcodes to display the feed anywhere on your site including posts, pages, or sidebar widgets, as well as create multiple feeds for multiple Instagram accounts by customizing shortcode parameters.
Facebook Social Stream (free)
If you are opting for your Facebook Stream only, this plugin could be your choice. The Facebook Social Stream plugin generates a responsive, SEO optimized and cached Facebook feed for your website. Just configure the Facebook page name and add the shortcode  to your page. Display YouTube videos as video-box. Promote your Facebook events on your website. Choose from different themes to change the style of your Facebook stream.
Twitter Feed (free)
Allows you to easily display tweets from Twitter in a wide range of ways, using shortcodes and widgets, fully responsive tweet skins, a caching engine,  to improve performance and decreasing load time by storing tweets locally, Usage Tracker tool to track your usage status and see if it is in accordance with Twitter’s rate limits.

7. Best Social Media Plugins for Social Comments
Social media plugins for social comments allow your visitors to log in with their social media credentials in order to comment on your posts. The comments appear both on your site and on social media streams. This can help to expand the reach of your site and improve overall engagement.
My Plugin TIP: WP Discuz (free)


wpDiscuz

The wpDiscusZ plugin is a fully customizable real-time comment system, with a lot of great features.The plugin uses the WordPress comment system with all managing functions and features, secure and anti-spam features. Fast loading and responsive system based on AJAX. Allows lazy load on scrolling or AJAX “Load more” buttons.

The plugin provides forms and fields for native WordPress comments that will be kept in your database. Adds interactive comment box on posts and other content types.

Commenting can be allowed/disallowed on posts and other content types. Comment lists can be sorted by newest, oldest and most voted comments.

The plugin fully integrates with social network login plugins (I recommend WordPress Social Login) to log in to their Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or WP credentials.

The plugin allows admins and users to create a new discussion thread and reply to existing comments and to edit comments. It provides multi-level (nested) comment threads, with many setting options and custom comment forms with custom fields.

Allows shortcode for rating and voting posts via comment custom field with a lot of attributes.

Get the WP Discuz social comment plugin for your site.
Other social media plugin options for social comments

Jetpack Comments (free)
If you are using Jetpack you can replace the default WordPress comments with the Jetpack Comments module, that has an integrated social login ability. It’s easy to use for your visitors.
Super Socializer (free & premium)
The social sharing buttons plugin also includes a module to enable users to comment on your website using their Social Media credentials, such as Facebook, Google or Disqus accounts. The comment shows up on your blog as well as on in their news feed. Users profile data and email address are saved in your database for easier communication.
Disqus (free)
A plugin provided by the most popular commenting platform. The plugin replaces the default WordPress comment system and imports your existing comments so you don’t lose any. It syncs your WordPress comments to social accounts. All comments are SEO-friendly, include threaded replies, notifications, subscribe by RSS, social mention aggregation, and more.
Livefyre (free)
Livefyre Comments 3 is another commenting platform that allows your visitors to engage in real-time conversations on your website by collecting social mentions and displaying them on your site. Comments can be filtered by networks or user and can also be easily moderated.
Facebook comments WordPress (free)
If you are opting just for Facebook integration, the Facebook comments WordPress plugin is great. Visitors can log in with their Facebook accounts to leave comments. You can also import the Facebook Comments box to your website and customize designs to your liking.

Wrap-up
We hope you enjoyed our list of essential social media plugins.

Social media follow buttons will help you to turn your website visitors into social media followers. Social media share buttons and tweetable quotes and social comments will make it easier for your fans to share and engage with your content as well as your images. Social streams on your website can be additional triggers for your visitors to engage with your social channels. However, to drive more traffic from social media to your blog or website, you will need to share your content yourself. Social media automation for sharing and scheduling your content will make this task much easier and more effective. With the help of smart social media automation, you will ensure a regular stream of fresh and refreshed content on your social media channels. Explore smart social media plugins that allow you to unleash the power of social media for your blog.

Over to you: Did you miss anything on this list? Do you have a favorite social media plugin you would like to share? Don't forget to leave a comment.

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