Any one’s going to visit your Facebook page just because you made one. Sometimes all you need is a call to action. Other times people are more willing to follow your Pinterest or Instagram if they see that a coupon is attached to the offer.
This is where a powerful social share bar comes into play. Quite a few options are available on the market, from social share bars to overlays and banners to welcome mats.
Keep reading to learn about the best social share bars and overlays for WordPress, as these simple tools significantly improve your chances for large social followings.
1. Get Social
The Get Social plugin is all about adding sleek buttons to your website, whether it’s on your blog posts or on the homepage of your site. It has tools for showing off the number of shares each of your pages or posts has, and the analytics provide insights into which of the social platforms are most effective for your business.
- This plugin offers a welcome bar for the top of your website, alerting people of new promotions or even sending them to a place like Facebook.
- This social media analytics are easy to access and understand. You don’t have to be a genius to break them down and see exactly where the majority of your shares are coming from.
2. Shareaholic
The Shareaholic plugin is an interesting choice because it offers a more diversified collection of tools than the other ones on this list. For example, the main item we’re looking at here is the share button module. We’ll talk about that more below, but you also gain access to related posts for your blog. Finally, the social analytics are great for building tailored content based on what your users are sharing online.
- Fun themes and headlines are given for your social sharing buttons. The headline is a call to action, and you can change that around if you’d like.
- Dozens of sharing platforms are supported.
- Users see share counts.
- You can adjust everything from the share counter to the colors and sizes.
3. Boxzilla
Boxzilla looks almost like something you would find in the the early 2000s. The designs aren’t anything incredible, but the conversion boosting slide-in boxes are often considered less intrusive than regular popups. As you can see in the screenshot, the Boxzilla plugin supports email subscriptions.
- You have the option to add buttons or simple links.
- Blend the slide-in box with your current website. Adjust all color elements, fonts and sizes.
4. HelloBar
This plugin sticks to your website header, with quite a few options for showing off anything from promotions to social media buttons. HelloBar does a wonderful job converting more visitors right from the start, since it’s one of the first modules your users will see upon landing on your site.
- You can insert follow buttons for social media accounts.
- It works similar to a payment gateway, asking folks to follow you before you give them something like an eBook.
- The HelloBar plugin works for more than just WordPress.
5. Popups
This plugin consider swapping this out for your email subscription form at times. For example, you might want to spend a full month building your Facebook or Twitter followers. Since it would be too overwhelming to have both this and an email subscription form, it’s recommended you only use Popups on occasion.
- The Popups plugin is compatible with a wide range of form plugins like Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms.
- Choose from five different popup locations.
- The plugin has an incredible number of filters, only showing the popup to people you want to see it.
- The social media buttons are implemented with shortcodes.
6. Yeloni Exit Popup
Mostly, companies rely on the instant social popup or share bar, not realizing that some users might have become desensitized to this technique. I obviously would suggest that you
A/B test all of your popups and social sharing bars to see which work first, but don’t forget to test out exit-intent popups. The Yeloni Exit Popup plugin is a good place to start since it provides options for social sharing, offers and email popups.
- You can also have Follow buttons dedicated to one or two social sites. For example, one of the exit-intent popups is made just for Pinterest.
- The templates look beautiful, with photos, customizable typography and large buttons.
7. ThriveLeads
Social sharing or building your social following, it’s one of the best email list building platforms on the market. Since email marketing often leads to you sending out automated email campaigns, this is a solid opportunity for you to also sell people on your social platforms. For example, the first email you send might prompt folks to follow you on all of your social sites. Seeing as how ThriveLeads has been shown to boost conversions like crazy, it’s a good start.
- These are some of the most beautiful email optin forms you can find.
- Everything is customized to your liking, meaning you can adjust colors, photos, buttons and more.
8. Social Share bar
You know that it was once one of the sleekest social share bars online. Unfortunately it no longer exists. However, the Social Share bar has mimicked the design and functionality, delivering a beautiful social share bar with share counts and a wide variety of options when it comes to the social networks you go for.
- Some of the sharing buttons include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn and G+.
- I’d argue it’s the easiest share bar to install, customize and implement.
9. Highlight and Share
The Highlight and Share plugin has an interesting take on social sharing. Considering so many people take clips from articles for sharing, it makes sense that they would want to simply highlight that text and reveal a share button from there. The one problem I have is that the
user can’t exactly see that this functionality is provided until they accidentally highlight a bit of text.
- The plugin has settings for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and sharing to email.
- Short links are supported for keeping links smaller when shared on places like Twitter.
- You can choose to show different stylized icons depending on which ones fit in with the design of your own site.
10. Sumo
Sumo generally rises to the top when it comes to any type of discussion or debate. Why? It’s just better than the rest. Not only are the majority of the tools free, but it’s an incredibly simple suite with tools for social sharing analytics, email collections and more.
- It has beautiful smart sharing buttons that prioritize when an article or page is being shared more on one platform.
- The social sharing buttons are optimized for mobile devices and they move as the user scrolls.
- You can download historical share data as a CSV.
- You receive social highlighting and image sharing tools.
- Quite a few other tools are included like heatmaps, welcome mats, a list builder and content analytics.
Final Thought
Now that we’ve had a chance to uncover the best social share bars and overlays for WordPress, feel free to try these out and see which ones work best for your website.
If you like article please share your opinion, What’s you favorite tool? If I missed anything else, please let me know in the comments section below. Thank you 🙂
