Smart Sharing Plugin for WordPress

Hey Fellow WordPress user,

I am Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner. You are probably asking yourself why should you signup to our email newsletter to get a so called "Smart Sharing WordPress plugin". If the video above did not convince you, then this short passage surely would. Social Media is the single factor to the success of my WPBeginner project. Almost all top brands are now utilizing social media networks to get more traffic, leads, and conversions. I have been using WordPress since 2006. One of the problems I noticed with most blogs was the placement of their sharing button. Some would place the button at the very bottom, while others would keep the button at the top. They are both good placement spots that provide good results, but they do not maximize the benefits.

If you have social media buttons placed at the top of your blog posts, and your user reads the entire article, then they will have to scroll all the way to the top to share the article on various social media networks. In a way by placing the social media buttons at the top, you are discouraging your loyal users from sharing this article. Similarly, if you have social media buttons placed at the bottom of your blog posts, then you are expecting every user to read the entire post. What if this user simply skims rather than reading the entire post. They will never get to the very bottom, thus you lost a valuable vote from a user who actually visited your post. Both of these solutions are good solutions, but they are not great well-rounded solutions.

Smart Sharing plugin lets you maximize the power of your current readership to get you more votes in social media. This plugin adds a scrolling box with social media icons on single post pages, so as your reader scrolls down the page, they will continuously see the share button. We are applying B.F Skinner's Positive Reinforcement theory to marketing. Your user will feel obligated to share the post which in return will help you get more traffic, leads, and conversions through the use of social media. Your quality content will get the exposure that it deserves, and it will also create a healthy community for your brand in social media networks.

After adding this simple sharing mechanism to WPBeginner, our social media votes count trippled. Stories that would normally get 300 retweets was now getting 1000+ retweets. Stories that would normally get 70 retweets was now getting 300+ retweets. This small psychology experiment worked excellent for WPBeginner. I personally will use this technique on all of my future projects. WPBeginner's social media following increased significantly. Our client ratio increased, and our community is getting bigger every day. All we had to do was provide quality content, and make things easier for our users.

I think that your users really want to share the content, but they are lazy to find the share button. If you make it easy for them to find the button, then they will certainly share your content. Word of Mouth advertising is the best advertising you can get and that is what social media has to offer. I will keep my pitch short because I am not trying to sell you guys anything. This is a free product, and it is for the good of blogging. If you are still not convinced, then all I can say is: "You are missing out".

We were getting tons of emails asking for this plugin, so we created it. Most top marketers including myself knows the value of this plugin, so this will be available for a LIMITED time only. I do not want to make it a public download because you have to keep gems like this for an exclusive audience. To get this plugin, simply subscribe to WPBeginner's Newsletter, and you will get a free copy to use on your site. I know the value of premier customer service and customer relations, so I will never ever sell or share your email address with anyone. You will get periodic updates via our Email Newsletter with exclusive tips, tools (like this one), and other resources that I only share with a limited group of users. It will not be SPAM because I hate SPAM just as much as everyone else, and I have no interest in spamming others. If you are smart, then you will get this plugin right now before the time runs out.

Warm Regards,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner.com

Configuration

Configuring this plugin is very easy, but we want to make sure that everyone understands how to use this plugin. Therefore this configuration page will be very detailed. First of all, you would need to install this plugin. If you do not know how to install this plugin, then follow our step by step guide to install a WordPress plugin for Beginners. Once you have installed and activated this plugin, then you are ready for this configuration guide.

Smart Sharing Options Panel

Icons alignment

Icons alignment has two options: left and right. You can choose whether you want the sharing box to float on the left side of the screen or the right side of the screen. By default it will be on the left side, but you have the option to choose. On WPBeginner we are using the floating box on the left side of the screen.

Icons Distance from the Edge

You can set a value of how many pixels do you want the space to be between the edge of the browser and your plugin box. By default the value is 20px, but you can set it to 0 for styling purposes.

Icons distance from the top

This will be the distance from the top of your browser window to the top of your box. By default we have set this distance to be 100px, but you can change the value to fit your design.

Retweet Button

We are utilizing tweetmeme's retweet buttons in this plugin. If you have plans on enabling this plugin, you must fill out your twitter username in the field below.

Digg/Facebook/Stumbleupon

Simply check the boxes if you want to enable these widgets.

Global Settings vs. Individual Settings

Once you activate the plugin, you will see a new box in your post write panel. This box will allow you to have custom settings on a specific post. Buttons like digg are not meant to be on every post. So we recommend that you only enable digg on the posts that you think are digg worthy. You must select override global settings in order for the options to work.

Customizations

For Styling and others please see our customizations box.

Customization

We understand that you might want to customize this plugin for your site. We didn't overload this plugin with bunch of social media network icons because majority of the users only use the top networks. But we knew that some users would want to have the custom button options, so we have a place for custom codes. We also have the option for changing colors of the box and other styling to fit your needs.

Smart Sharing Options Panel

Custom Codes

In both single posts pages and general options panel, you will see a text area field named Custom codes. That is where you can include custom codes, icons, text or anything else that you like. You can use the css class "sharer" as a separator. Example of an entry would look like:

<div class="sharer"> Global </div>

You can use your custom css if you so desire if you do not like our way. If you want to add more social media networks and you do not know how then feel free to use our Social Media Cheat Sheet for WordPress Beginners.

Box Background Color

There is an option for box background color in the main options panel. By default the box is white (hex value #ffffff). You can change the colors by simply entering a different hex value. Remember to enter in this format: FFFFFF. WRONG WAY TO DO IT: #ffffff. Do not include the pound sign.

Box width

Box width is crucial. You need to make sure that it stays small. By default it is 60px, but you can make it smaller. We advise you to leave it at 60px maximum, and if you want to make it smaller, it is even better. Simply enter the numerical value of the width.

Box Border Color

By default we have a 1px solid border around the box which has the hex value of e8e8e8. You can change the color by entering your own hex value.

Box Border Width/Thickness

By default the width of the border is 1px. You can increase the width if you so desire.

If you have any further customization questions regarding this plugin then feel free to contact us.

Support us

This plugin was never intended to be made public. But due to high volume of requests, we decided that it was much more efficient to make it public rather than reply to every email telling users that this was a custom function. This is a free plugin, and we are not getting anything out of it. We could have easily charged for this plugin, but decided against it. If you are using it on your site(s), then please consider making a kind donation to support our efforts. Your donations will encourage us to add more features to this plugin and release other cool plugins in the future.