Getting new readers through social sharing

- One of the most effective ways of driving new readers to your content is through social media sharing. More and more, people are relying on social media networks like LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest, etc. to find content to read. And many content curation services, like Flipboard, use social media shares as a barometer for what's hot, and what should be shared with the masses. To drive new readers to your site and keep old readers coming back, it's important to make it as easy as possible for them to share your content on social media.

This can be done by adding simple sharing buttons to each of your posts through a plugin. Here's the thing though. Because social media sharing is so important, and there are so many networks available, there is no one size fits all solution for how to add social media sharing buttons to your site. If you go to the wordpress.org plugin directory, you'll find thousands of social sharing plugins, and we even have a course outlining some of them here in the library called WordPress Plugins: Social Media Buttons.

Just like with your theme and your other plugins, what plugin will work best for social sharing will depend on your particular use. In some cases, an ultra simplistic plugin, like Webshare by Sami Keijonen will do the trick. That's the plugin I'm using in this demo site. In other cases, the sharing extension in Jetpack will be a better option. And in yet other cases, you may want to use a bigger offsite solution like AddThis, which is what I often use on client sites.

When picking a social sharing solution for your site, think about your target audience. While some types of sites attract people from Twitter, others attract people from Pinterest. Those two scenarios are different, and require different solutions. There are plugins out there to fit pretty much every need, and through experimentation, you'll be able to find the ones that fit your site the best.