In this post I have put together the most useful (and free!) social media resources for your wordpress blog.

Sharing your Content

Adding social links to your posts allows your visitors to easily share and bookmark your content across multiple social networking platforms. Here are a few different ways you can do this…

Create “Sharing” Links

If you want more control over where your sharing links will go and what they will look like, the easiest way to do it is just add them yourself. Here is a list of sharing links for many popular social networking sites for use in WordPress.

Share on Digg

<a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=
<?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" 
title="Digg This" target="_blank">Digg This</a>

Share on Stumble Upon

<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=
<?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" 
title="Stumble This" target="_blank">Stumble This</a>

Share on Twitter

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading 
<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Click to Tweet This!" 
target="_blank">Tweet This</a>

Share on Facebook

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=
<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" title="Share on Facebook" 
target="_blank">Share on Facebook</a>

Share on Friendfeed

<a href="http://friendfeed.com/?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=
<?php the_title(); ?>" target="_blank" 
title="Share on Friendfeed">Share on Friendfeed</a>

Bookmark on Delicious

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php echo get_permalink() ?>
&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" title="Bookmark on Delicious" 
target="_blank">Bookmark on Delicious</a>

Bookmark on Reddit

<a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>
&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" target="_blank" 
title="Bookmark on Reddit!">Bookmark on Reddit!</a>

Share this on Design Float

<a href="http://designfloat.com/submit.php?url=
<?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" 
title="Float This!" target="_blank">Float This</a>

Share this on Design Bump

<a href="http://designbump.com/node/add/drigg?url=
<?php echo get_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" 
title="Bump This!" target="_blank">Bump This</a>

Share this on Vot.eti.me

<a href="http://vot.eti.me/login.php?return=/submit.php?url=
<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>" target="_blank" 
title="Share on Vot.eti.me">Share on Vot.eti.me</a>

Here are a few links for your visitors to contact you through popular instant messenger services. Be sure and change the appropriate areas to your own username/email.

Contact me on AIM

<a href="aim:goim?screenname=yourscreenname" 
target="_blank">Contact me on AIM</a>

Contact me on Yahoo IM

<a href="ymsgr:sendIM?yahoousername" 
target="_blank">Contact me on Yahoo IM</a>

Contact me on gtalk

<a href="gtalk:chatjid=email@gmail.com" 
target="_blank">Contact me on gtalk</a>

Just Add a Button

These are a few different widgets/buttons that you can place anywhere in your post to allow sharing across most social networks with one simple button.

• Add to Any – Help your visitors share, save and subscribe to your content with Add to Any widgets. Features include customization, Google Analytics integration, keyboard navigation and more.
• ShareThis – Customize the look and choose what sites you want to target.
• AddThis – Create your own social button for sharing content or feeds.
• Social Bookmark Link Creator – Simply select your buttons, create, and put the code on your blog or website.

Use “Sharing” Plugins

Using a plugin is yet another way to add social sharing links. Here is a list of a few different plugins that will add sharing links to your blog posts.

Multi-Site Sharing Plugins

• ShareThis – Customize the look and choose what sites you want to target with this popular plugin… and unlike most sharing tools this one provides analytics.
• ShareThis 2.0 – A popular WordPress Plugin used to share pages via email, is now available in version two. This version allows for sharing via IM and texting.
• AddThis – This Plugin will automatically insert the AddThis widget below each post in your blog.
• Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed and you can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites!
• PingPressFM – Allows you to spread your blog to 30+ social networks via ping.fm.
• Digg Digg – This plugin is used to add Digg, Reddit, Dzone, and Yahoo Buzz buttons into your posts.
• iBegin Share – iBegin Share is the 100% open source solution that makes sharing and spreading your content easier than ever, all while giving you complete control. Includes the ability to save the page as a PDF or Word doc and print them as well.
• Social Bookmarks – Adds a list of graphic links to the end of your posts that will allow your visitors to easily submit it to a number of different social bookmarking sites.
• HB Social Bookmarks – Add social bookmarking to the sidebar of your blog with this plugin.
• Antisocial – Different version of Sociable that adds nofollow tags to the social media links.
• I Love Social Bookmarking – Simple plugin that allows your visitors to submit your content to social media services via a clutter-free drop-down list of attractive icons.
• Add Me Dichev – Renders social bookmark buttons with icons for more than 60 social sites at the end of your posts.
• SocioFluid – A WordPress plugin that displays small social networking icons which grow when moused over similar to the mac effect.
• Bookmark Me – A simple and light plugin to add social bookmarks buttons to post and pages.
• Social Bookmarking Reloaded – Simple plugin for social bookmarking in WordPress.
• Social Dropdown – This plugin displays several social bookmarking options in a dropdown. Unlike other social bookmarking displays, this does not cause clutter and takes up little screen space.
• WP Punch Card – Puts 40 social bookmarking sites into a compact area to conserve space in your posts. Supports the usual major sites and others such as Yahoo My Web, Squidoo and more.
• obsocialbookmarker – A social bookmarking plugin which adds user-submission links at the bottom of each post for various social bookmarking sites which allows your visitors to easily submit them in a number of social bookmarking sites.
• Bookmarkify – The Social Media Marketing Plugin that lets you put social bookmarking links in your posts and other pages.

Single-Site Sharing Plugins

• WP Digg This – A plugin that adds a Digg button, but with a twist. Instead of adding a Digg button to all your posts, WP Digg This plugin selectively adds the button only to posts you want.
• Digg This – a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story. When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the site’s admin.
• Facebook Connect WP Plugin – WordPress plugin that allows direct integration of WordPress blogs with Facebook using Facebook Connect.
• Google Friend Connect Integration – Using the Google Friend Connect integration plugin for WordPress you can add more social interaction to your blog. Currently you can add a member, login, review, comment and playlist gadget as well as a social bar right away.
• Reddit This – A WordPress plugin that detects incoming links from Reddit.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the reddit post, for people to vote and comment on your story.
• Twit This – Creates a Twit This button on all of your blog posts that allows readers to share your content with Twitter. Includes a link shortener.
• StumbleUpon It! – This plugin allows your visitors to submit your blog posts to StumbleUpon.com’s bookmarking service.

Connecting with your Readers

Providing links to the social networking sites you are active on helps your visitors to be able to connect with you beyond your blog. Here are a few plugins that add your current social links and networking activity to your blog.

List your Social Sites

• Social Media Page – Adds a list of links to your social media profiles on a page or post of your choice through the use of a simple tag. A widget is also added so that you can display this list of links in the side menu of the site.
• Social Profilr – This plugin is a sidebar widget which will display icons for your social network sites that linkback to your social networking profiles with options for different sized icons.
• Follow Me – This plugin allows you to display links to all your social media profiles in one, easy-to-access button or window.
• Social Homes – A WordPress plug-in which adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons.

Display your Social Activity

• Profilactic – Publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parsing your aggregated activity mashup from Profilactic.com.
• Twitter Widget Pro – A WordPress plugin that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and link parsing, feeds that include friends or just one user, and can even display profile images for the users. It’s set up like the RSS widgets, so you can have as many of as you want on your sidebars.
• Twitter Tools – A WordPress plugin that creates a complete integration between your blog and your Twitter account.
• Twitter Updater – This plugin automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.
• Delicious Cached – This plugin uses the built-in MagpieRSS engine functions to create a list of the latest bookmarks from your del.icio.us account.
• Smart Youtube – A WordPress Youtube plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed.
• FriendFeed Activity – A simple WordPress widget plugin that pulls your FriendFeed stream, pretties it up a bit and shares it with visitors to your blog.
• Digg Widget – Displays your past 10 dugg stories in a sidebar widget.
• Stumble Reviews – This is a wordpress plugin which shows your post reviews by stumble users.
• WP Lifestream – Displays your social feeds and photos.
• ComplexLife – This plugin shows your activity for any service that gives a date sorted rss/atom activity feed. The plugin then displays all that activity in any place you want it sorted by time, as a personal lifestream.
• SocialBoaster – Here’s a fun little script that will aggregate your Digg, Twitter and Del.icio.us activity and post it to your WordPress blog.
• Lifestream.fm – Provides a sidebar widget for your Lifestream.fm lifestream.

Other Social Networking Plugins

This is a random selection of social media WordPress plugins that do all sorts of “social” things

• Socialize Me – With the Socialize Me! Plugin for WordPress you can connect with people on services like: StumbleUpon, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Pownce, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace and many, many more. When visitors arrive from these social networking sites they will be greeted with a simple message when they arrive “Hi, thanks for the visit! Wayne’s on StumbleUpon, too!” with a link to your profile.
• WP Digsby – With WordPress Digsby you can place a widget on your WordPress site so you can chat with visitors right from Digsby.
• Wordbook – This plugin allows you to cross-post to your Facebook account directly from your WordPress blog.
• Fotobook – a WordPress plugin that will link to your Facebook account and import all of your photo albums into a page on your WordPress installation.
• Friendfeed Comments – 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.
• Meet Your Commenters – When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network.
• Social Profiles WordPress Plugin – The Social Profiles WordPress Plugin was created in an effort to help get the members of your community more involved by giving them increased exposure by showcasing their profiles on selected social networks in addition to the standard website link on their comments.

More Resources

• Related Ways to Take Action – “Related Ways to Take Action” connects your readers to actions based on the stuff you’re already writing about – so you don’t have to do anything else! You’ll also be surprised by the local and global campaigns, petitions, and fundable projects recommended for your posts!
• Add Social Networking Icons to your WordPress Blog – Tutorial explaining how to add your own links and icons to your WordPress blog.
• SezWho – SezWho is a universal profile service for the social web that improves community engagement and enables content discovery to be added to blogs, forums, message boards and other social sites.
• Retaggr – A central location for your personal info, and a gateway to all your online profiles and networks.
• List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites – Continually updated categorized list of social networks.

Put your pictures here!

If you want to put your own pictures or banners on your profile there are several ways to do it. Here are a few of them:

• Photobucket – This is where I host my pictures for Myspace! You get a gig of free space to store pictures, videos, avatars, & icons. Photobucket provides you the ability to edit your images, create slideshows, design avatars, or start a scrapbook with your pictures and videos!
• Slide.com – No limit image hosting! At slide.com you can create slideshows and guest books, personalize your images with stickers and graffiti, skin your youtube videos with cool designs like sparkling bling plasma screens, and Superpoke your friends!

Create cool text!

Add a little creativity to your profile with these flashy text generators:

• Glitter – Create all types of glitter text with this cool tool from Glitterfly
• Upside Down – Flip your text upside down at this site
• Rainbow – Need some color? Create rainbow text with this generator

Design your Profile!

A few of my favorite sites to get a pre-made profile layouts, design your own profile layout, get codes to hide areas of your profile such as your comments or friends, find character codes and more:

• Freecodesource.com – Here at Freecodesource.com, we help guide you through the steps of customizing your Myspace Profile. We provide easy to use Myspace Generators, and take you step by step in our Myspace Tutorials. You can add myspace cursors, myspace graphics, myspace games, myspace clocks, myspace layouts and tons more with our premade Myspace ready Copy and Paste Codes. *My favorite site for Myspace stuff!
• Glitterfly – Custom glitter graphics for myspace. Find all sorts of glitter graphics or glitter your own photos!
• Pyzam – Myspace Layouts from pYzam come in tons of great categories. Our Myspace layouts are always free and easy to use! Try our Hott Myspace Layouts, Cute Myspace Layouts, Basketball Myspace Layouts, or anything from our massive layout collection! You can even request a Myspace layout to be made by pYzam.
• LoveMyFlash – Tons of Flash layouts designed by professionals for Myspace profiles
• Freemyspacelist.com – Fine all kinds of layouts including div layouts.

Add the cool stuff!

Here are the sites to find all of the cool widgets and toys for Myspace:

• POQbum.com – TONS of flash toys & generators including mp3 players, lava lamps, countdown generators and more!
• Bulletin Comment Box – create a bulletin comment box for your profile. Perfect to use if you hid the comments on your profile but and still want to receive your comments.
• Poodwaddle.com – Get all sorts of cool flash programs and games including the earth clock.
• Blogthings.com – Here are all of those quizzes you see on everyone’s profiles
• Freemyspacelist.com – Find pretty much everything for Myspace at this site including layouts, div layouts, graphics, generators, codes, icons, and more!

After you have created your new Myspace profile, friend me on myspace!

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Myspace is a great place to stay connected with friends or to meet new ones however it is also a great place to get phished or scammed as well. Here are a few ways in which you can protect yourself on Myspace.

• Back up your profile – You back up everything else why not your Myspace profile? The best way to do this is the open a blank notepad document (notepad not Word or Wordpad) and copy each section of your Myspace profile into the notepad document and save it to your harddrive. Do this everytime you add to or change your profile and that way if anything ever happens you can get your profile back up in no time.
• Pay Attention – Just because you are on your friend’s profile page does not mean that you can’t get phished! If you click on a link or picture and it takes you to the Myspace login page, be careful! Make sure and type Myspace.com into your address bar to make sure you are truly at the Myspace home page. Also, if you click a link in Myspace make sure the address you are intending to go to is actually the address you are at! Always check your address bar. Another simple way to make sure the link is the same is to enable the status bar at the bottom of your browser window (top of your browser click view then click status bar, that should enable it at the bottom of your browser) and mouse over the link. The actual address will appear in the status bar. Make sure it is the same address you are clicking on! Don’t ever click on anything you feel might be suspicious in anyway. Web sites are capable of stealing information from you whether you actually click on anything or not.
• Don’t fall for it – Though I am certain there are legitimate needs being posted on Myspace unless you can verify the organization or source of the request don’t fall for it. There are plenty of scams on Myspace and chances are the person/persons/animals are not dying, starving, or saving a life but merely trying to get your credit card or bank information to steal from you later. NEVER give out your financial information unless you are at a secure, reputable site such as Paypal, Ebay, etc. and even then you should be careful. You can verify that you are on a secure site by checking your browser for the lock icon or by looking at the web address, making sure it begins with a https rather than http. (Mozilla Firefox is the most secure browser you can use. Download it here.)
• Change your password – Change your password OFTEN! And if you ever feel as though you might have been led to a phishing page or accidentally put your login information into a page you believe might be bogus… CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD! (Just be sure and remember your new one!) When you change your password get creative… Don’t just use all letters, mix it up! Use all the allowed characters possible and if it is case sensitive, take advantage of it by using both capital and lowercase letters.

Here are a few more articles on the subject:

• Myspace Scams
• How to Protect Your Personal Information, Privacy on Your MySpace Profile | Associated Content
• Myspace Safety & Security Tips for Parents | Symantec

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