Top 10 Week | WordPress Plugins for Social Media Users [List]

The WordPress blogging platform is really a breath of fresh air, especially if you transferred over from the Blogger/Blogspot platform. No offense to Blogger but they just can’t compete with WordPress.

It’s really hard to come up with a list of just 10 WordPress plugins that are social media related; there’s so many available now. I’m sure that you have your own preference, as do most bloggers. Feel free to share them in a comment here, I’d love to hear what plugins you prefer.

1. Enhanced Sociable is a plugin that adds social media buttons to your posts easily & beautifully in a compact manner. AntiSocial is a hacked version of Sociable that includes “nofollow” on all links. I use Sociable on this blog as you can see at the bottom of each post. Sociable supports 61 social media sites. You can choose which sites & as many as you want to show on your blog. For those who prefer to show icons instead of a drop down menu, Sociable (or AntiSocial if you prefer) is the way to go.

2. SezWho is a content rating and reputation system for social media sites like blogs, discussion boards and anywhere else where people collaborate on the web. SezWho allows your readers to rate your blog posts, as well as the comments left on your blog posts. Recently, SezWho has partnered with Entrecard allowing you a totally new way to earn Entrecard credits. If you haven’t heard of the partnership, you can check it out here. If you don’t know what Entrecard is, you can learn all about it here. Basically, Entrecard is a great way to advertise your blog as well as an even greater way to gain blog traffic; I will be elaborating more on it in the near future!

3. Photo Dropper is a WordPress plugin that lets you add Flickr photos to your posts. Recently I’ve heard that using Flickr photos is great for SEO (don’t ask me how) so, it would greatly benefit you to take advantage of that. Whenever you want to use a Flickr photo in your post, just click and place the cursor where you would like the photo to appear. In the “Photo Dropper Browse Photos” panel, you must type in a keyword for the type of photo you’re looking for & search. The plugin will return photos matching your search. You can view screenshots of exactly what Photo Doppler does here.

4. I Love Social Bookmarking is a simple WordPress plugin that allows your readers to submit your content to social media services using a drop down list. “ILSB aims to keep things as simple as possible for both you and your readers, to run with minimal system resources, and to look good whilst she’s at it.” You can’t ask for anything better than that! The only downside is that ILSB only supports Blinklist, Blogmarks, Digg, del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia, NewsVine, Reddit, StumbleUpon & Technorati.

5. FriendFeed Comments is a plugin that has become very popular lately. “This plugin will take the comments & ‘likes’ on your posts from FriendFeed and place them on the post that they’re related to. The comments come with the person’s name, a link to their FriendFeed profile & their FriendFeed image. Your blog’s readers can also comment on & like your posts directly from a form displayed under the FriendFeed comments.” If you’re a FriendFeed addict, this is definitely a must.

6. Profilactic can either publish your lifestream or inform your readers of where to find you online. All of this info is taken from your Profilactic.com account & you can place the info anywhere you want it to show by editing your template. Alternately, you can just use the widget that comes along with the plugin, if you want to show your info in the sidebar.

7. Del.icio.us Cached “uses the built-in MagpieRSS engine functions to create a list of the latest bookmarks on a del.icio.us account, from its RSS feed, keeping the feed cached in the database.” More importantly, “this plugin respects del.icio.us’ ToS and will not to overload the feed with subsequent requests, since the default cache refresh period is 60 minutes.”

8. Meet Your Commenters is one of my favorite plugins because it’s enables me to connect with my commenters. Did you know that when someone comments on your blog they are leaving more information than you think? This plugin displays the web pages and profiles of your blog commenters right in the dashboard. This is great because you can then add them as friends if you are in the same social networka. What a great way to keep the communication lines going & connect even more.

9. Scoutle is a fairly new form of social networking referred to as Automated Social Networking & is a very clever way to promote your blog without having to do any work. “You do not have to do anything, nor do you have to know each other and there is no need for communication in order to connect. Automated Social Networking is all about networking without all that.” I did a review on Scoutle which can be found here. This plugin is one way to install your Scoutle Stage on your blog. Please note, in order to use this plugin & view the plugin page, you will need a Scoutle account.

10. WP Digsby lets you place a widget on your blog so you can chat with your visitors right from Digsby. So basically, it’s a chat box that’s connected with the Digsby IM client. I also did a review on Digsby which can be found here. Digsby is a great Instant Messaging client which I fell in love with at first use. To put it best, “Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. Digsby also includes options to check email and stay in touch with your favorite social networks like Myspace and Facebook.”

[tags]wordpress, wordpress plugins, sociable, sezwho, entrecard, flickr, social bookmarking, friendfeed, profilactic, del.icio.us, scoutle, digsby, plugins[/tags]

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, digsby, flickr, friendfeed, plugins, profilactic, scoutle, sezwho, sociable, social bookmarking, wordpress, wordpress plugins