Feel like you’re playing Where’s Waldo while searching for a good WordPress social media plugin? We did too.
Go search wordpress.org for a WordPress social media plugin. We dare you. It really is like picking Waldo out of a massive crowd. 133 pages. That’s a lot of plugins. Somewhere close to 2,000 of them.
That presents a number of problems for many of us- where to begin? What features are there? Which one has the features I need? Which one has the features I need in a format that’s at least halfway user friendly?
No doubt you’ve been through a few if you’ve been through any. We certainly moved through our share. Many had the features we wanted, but were way too confusing to use. Some had a fantastic UI, but you needed two or more of those to get the features you needed. Even more simply weren’t being supported anymore, or it was like pulling teeth trying to get support.
A couple years ago we found our answer, and we’d like to share them with you.
Social Warfare: The Ultimate WordPress Social Media Plugin
“We started with a need that was echoed by many of our fellow creators– a need to have a beautiful, functional way of allowing people to share our content without it slowing down our site performance.”
Social Warfare has a functionally simplistic yet beautiful and powerful UI that puts you in control of every major social sharing avenue. Click to tweet, sharing buttons, platform customization that lets you control the presentation of your message; it’s all there. Best of all, it’s easy to use and doesn’t impact site performance despite the wealth of features.
Premium features without a premium price tag… or no price tag at all
Social Warfare is so feature rich that you might expect to pay in spades for it. With many other social sharing plugins that come close to offering what they do, you will. Social Warfare stands out for their affordability despite the incredibly diverse feature it puts at your disposal. They have two packages:
- Social Warfare (free on wordpress.org)
- Social Warfare Pro ($29/yr)
The base Social Warfare plugin is free and available in the WordPress.org repository. The Pro version of the plugin is an incredibly reasonable $29/yr and is available via the link above on warfareplugins.com. The free version is in no way watered down or shy on features- the Pro version just puts pretty much everything you could ever ask for on the table.
Features
Pro version features are marked as such, everything else you get for free! Note that this is not a complete feature list- there’s even more to discover by installing the plugin or visiting Warfare Plugins. These are just the feature we use and love on a daily basis 🙂
Masterfully developed…
- Performant. Even with a host of active features employed, your site will perform as if the plugin wasn’t even there.
- Massively Customizable. Easily match the styling of all front end Social Warfare elements to your own branding. Shape size, color, hover- you name it, you can customize it.
- 100% Responsive. Beautiful on mobile, tablet, desktop… wherever whenever.
Incredible social sharing options…
- Scope. A smorgasbord of different social sites are included to expand the reach of your WordPress social media efforts. From Facebook to reddit, it’s here… but only when you want it to be. Activate or deactivate sites at will.
- Core (free) version includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon
- Pro version adds Reddit, Tumblr, Yummly, WhatsApp, Pocket, Buffr, Hacker News, Flipboard, and Email
- Sharing Customization. (Pro) Effortlessly set the image, title, and text that appears on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest when your content is shared.
- Placeable Buttons. Sharing buttons can be placed above and/or below content, or moved manually around a page via shortcode.
- Custom Tweets. Pre-populate the text of Twitter tweets for readers while still letting them have their own say if they want. Built-in Bit.ly link shortening.
- Click-to-Tweets. Elegant click-to-tweet boxes can be placed anywhere on a page. Just check out ours in this article!
- Social Proof. Add that extra boost of psychological encouragement to share your content with easy to display and control social proof options. Pro version adds the ability to set minimums for these proofs to display, and they won’t display below that min.
Loaded with extras…
- Content Protection. Effectively prevent content skimmers from framing your content with the free Frame Buster extension!
- Shortcodes. Fine grain control of share button placement via shortcode.
- Automatic Analytics. Engrained UTM tracking in every shared link allows you to clearly measure social media ROI.
- Developer Friendly. Build on and extend Social Warfare as needed.
Social Warfare is by far one of the best social plugins available, period
It’s hard to point at such a diverse cohort of plugins and say “this one WordPress social media plugin is clearly the best of the bunch”. There are many excellent social plugins that deliver what WordPress users need day in and day out.
For us, the best fit is Social Warfare by a long shot. You get a ton of features without impacting your site’s performance, customization options are top notch, and their UI is painless and friendly. Maybe they will be your perfect solution as well… check them out asap!
