Today I will post about plugins which will help your blog spread via social networking/bookmarking services. I personally think socializing aspect is more important than direct SEO, which I will discuss in tomorrows post.

Social plugins allow your blog visitor to spread a word about your blog posts. As this is what they say mouth-to-mouth publicity, its impact will be greater. Also links spreads naturally ranks good compared to evil SEO tactics.

So here is list of social plugins…

1. Sociable Plugin

This plugin automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Facebook, etc. You can choose any number of social sites from almost 100 networking sites.

You can also choose on which types of pages social sites icons to be shown. I selected full-posts & static pages. There is an option to put this buttons in RSS feed too. There are few advance options like “open in new window”.

You can see live example of this plugin on this blogs’ posts. There is a “share and enjoy” section after post content which is courtesy this plugin.

Link: Sociable by Joost de Valk

2. ShareThis Plugin

This plugin provides a simple way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.

It can be good alternative for above plugin with added option to track sharing stats.

I really have no good reason for not using this plugin. So check both and use one which you like more.

Link: ShareThis Plugin by Alex King & ShareThis

3. WP Conditional Digg This Badge plugin

There are many Digg plugins thanks to popularity of Digg. But one I like is WP Conditional Digg This Badge plugin. This plugin check if a post have enough Digg (default 10 Diggs) before showing Digg This button. I think this approach is nice as your is most likely to Digg a post with higher Diggs beforehand. Also this avoid showing Digg This button on each post which some visitors find annoying.

If you do not want to clutter your post pages at all then stick to one of above two plugins. They both support sharing via Digg.

Link:WP Conditional Digg This Badge by Brian Rock

4. Twitter Tools

This plugin allows you to automatically post a tweet to your twitter account whenever a new post is published. if you like twitter then you can use other options like sidebar widget included in plugin to show recent twitter updates in sidebar.

If you just want to use auto tweets for new post part, better use twitterfeed service.

Many top bloggers use dedicated twitter accounts for their blog posts. Even I will soon start this for Devils Workshop, as suggested by Rajat Arora

Link: Twitter Tools by Alex King

5. WP_LinkTools

You can use this plugin to add your newly published post to del.icio.us automatically. There are few more options which I really don’t find useful. I use tweetmarks service to achieve similar goals.

But using this plugin have one advantage. You can use post categories, tags, title as tags for del.icio.us links.

Link: WP_LinkTools by DCoda Ltd

If you use a really good plugin which you think must be included in this list, please let us know via comments.

Thanks. I will post more about SEO plugins tomorrow…

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