Twitter is a powerful social network, and WordPress is one of the most common blogging platforms online. Combining the two is a potent recipe for social exposure and viral traffic, but integration is key. How can you integrate them for maximum value? I’ve put together the most comprehensive Twitter plugin list I can. If you know of a plugin that isn’t on the list, feel free to add it in the comments.
I’ve tried to list some key information about each plugin, but it’s up to you to investigate those that interest you. I’ve also included plugins with questionable reviews, for the sake of comprehensive coverage. Feel free to avoid them; inclusion on this list is by no means an endorsement. Frankly, I haven’t used 95% of these.
Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing buttons will almost always include Twitter primary amongst their buttons. Virtually none of them will offer tweet count, since Twitter removed that API, but it’s still valuable to have a sharing button in place.
Social Warfare – Very expansive social sharing buttons. A one-site license costs $29 per year. Includes tweet and Facebook count, making this our favorite plugin on the list.
Social Media and Share Icons (Ultimate Social Media) – Free, frequently updated, with nearly 3,000 5-star reviews.
Ultimate Social Media Plus – The sister plugin to the above, highly customizable and free to use.
ShareThis: Free Sharing Buttons and Tools – Free, frequently updated, with mixed reviews indicating that it injects ads without permission.
Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons – Free and very simple, but quite limited in scope.
Floating Social– A floating sidebar of social buttons coded to be fast and lightweight. Requires the $50/month WPMU DEV account.
SumoMe Share – Social sharing buttons for sidebars or footers. Requires a paid version for tracking and advanced features.
Monarch Social Buttons – Excellent and stylish buttons with a dozen different positions, including pop-ins. Requires an Elegant Themes account, which costs $69 per year.
Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress – One of the most common social sharing plugins available, but not for free. Costs $19 for a license. Works with Facebook and Twitter.
Simple Share Buttons Adder – Free and frequently updated. Allows custom images for your buttons and has an optional pro version.
Shareaholic – One of the most common plugins, optimized for WooCommerce and includes both promoted content and Google Analytics. Free.
WP Social Sharing – Simple buttons using either CSS or JS, semi-responsive. Free, but updated almost a year ago.
Custom Share Buttons with Floating Sidebar – Custom share buttons with a floating sidebar. Says so right there in the name. Free.
AddToAny – Extremely expansive free sharing buttons plugin with over 100 social networks in the list.
Social Buzz – A plugin that includes the Mashable Velocity Graph for social activity. Costs $20 for a license.
Ultimate Social Deux by WPSmarter – Includes over 25 buttons with 8 skins and 20 display locations. Costs $15 for a license.
MashShare – A free version of Social Buzz, designed to look like Mashable, though it lacks the velocity graph aspect.
Social Media Feather – The biggest social media buttons plugin you haven’t heard of. High quality and frequently updated, available for free.
Social Media Widget – An extremely varied social buttons plugin with custom graphics options and the ability to create custom buttons for your own purposes. Free from the WordPress directory.
GetSocial Social Share Buttons and Analytics – An extremely easy to use free plugin with high rankings and detailed analytics included for button usage and visitor actions.
Flying Social Media Icons – Free plugin that includes over 20 icon themes and variable configurations, as well as a floating social button bar.
Social Counter for WordPress – Social sharing buttons that include sharing counts. Uses a workaround to bring Twitter and Facebook data to the buttons, but may have issues with Instagram. Available for free.
Easy Social Icons by CyberNetikz – A custom solution for social sharing buttons that allows you to upload your own icon and choose the specific URL you want it to use. May require some code experience to set properly.
Follow Us Badges by 99 Robots – An exceedingly simple free widget that simply adds official sharing buttons for social networks to your WordPress blog.
Social Contact Display – A free, simple and modular contact button display for social network profiles. Last updated two years ago.
Social Icons Widget – An excessively simple free plugin that includes some of the stranger social networks, including Kickstarter, Technorati, 500px, and Tumblr.
Super Socializer – A free social button suite available in a variety of languages, with a couple dozen extra features for customizing buttons. High ratings and frequent updates.
Social Feed Embeds
These plugins are made to embed social feeds and posts rather than just sharing buttons. I have not included the default Twitter feed embed widget, under the assumption that you want a more customizable or alternative solution.
TwineSocial – Free and with positive reviews, though not many. Excellent custom graphics.
FeederNinja – An RSS and social media post embed plugin integrated with Wix but available stand-alone. Simple and free, but requires a FeederNinja account.
Juicer – Similar to FeederNinja, requires a Juicer.io account. High reviews, completely free, and covers numerous networks.
Social Streams – A feed embed widget for Twitter and Instagram. Free and fully responsive.
RebelMouse – A simple free widget for a variety of social feed embeds. Hasn’t been updated in 2 years, so may not work with modern WordPress.
WordPress Social Stream – A broad stream embed widget covering Twitter and 14 other networks. Costs $19 for a license.
WordPress Social Timeline – A site template made to make a core timeline aggregating numerous social networks in one place. Costs $14 for a license.
Powr Social Feed – Feed aggregator like Social Timeline above, but free, though with fewer social options. Requires a Powr account.
Flow-Flow Social Stream – Free social stream aggregator like the above, allows up to 5 Twitter feeds. Offers a paid upgrade option.
Feed Them Social – Free widget to embed custom content streams, including specific image galleries from social networks.
SoGrid Lite – Free grid-based social display aggregator using shortcodes. Minimally used and updated over a year ago.
AccessPress Twitter Feed – Free and frequently updated, embeds Twitter posts in real time in a slider or a feed.
Easy Twitter Feed Widget – Free adaptation of the official Twitter widget, works without constant API calls. Updated almost a year ago.
Askupa Twitter Feed – A skinned version of the Twitter API using caching and shortcodes. Free from the WordPress directory.
Kebo Twitter Feed – Another basic, simple Twitter feed. Free and lightweight, designed just for Twitter and no other social networks.
TweetScroll Widget – Free. Adds a scroll of recent tweets that animates in various styles. Hasn’t updated in a year.
Recent Tweets Widget – Free and simple. Adds a tweet feed with basic customization and caching.
Click to Tweet Plugins
These plugins allow you to create specific tweets and set them to ride in your blog post. They aren’t actual tweets, but rather buttons a user can click to make the tweet you configured, generally with a compelling headline, link, and hashtag you want to share your content with. Also included in this section are plugins that allow a user to highlight content and tweet it with a single click.
Click to Tweet by TodayMade – A plugin with a checkered history. Made by TodayMade, which is now MABU, but the devs kept the assets and rebranded it as made by CoSchedule. Does what it says on the tin, for free, though it hasn’t been updated in two years.
Better Click to Tweet – A better free version of Click to Tweet, with options for boxes or highlighted text, and open development via Github.
ClickToTweet.com – Another basic click to tweet plugin, freely available, though with relatively little adoption. Nothing makes it stand out from other similar plugins.
Image Sharing Plugins
These plugins are designed to add an overlay to the images on your site. When a user hovers over the image with their cursor, sharing buttons will appear. When the user clicks, they share the image – with link to the associated post – to their social feed of choice. Think the Pinterest “pin this” button, except for other social networks. Most of these include Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and other networks as well.
SumoMe Image Sharer – Very similar to the general SumoMe sharer above. Free, but with a pro option that removes Sumo’s branding and adds additional features.
WWM Social Share on Image Hover – Free, does what it says on the tin. Able to put your social buttons on whichever of the four corners of your image you prefer. Supports up to six social buttons.
WordPress Image Hover Lite – Like the above, but supports 8 buttons and has “center” as a position. Free, with responsive design.
Share This Image – A premium option that costs $19 for a license. Works with 11 social networks and includes auto-scroll to send visitors to the specific image rather than just the post.
Automation Plugins
These plugins are designed to work in the other way; rather than getting blog readers to share your posts on Twitter, they’re getting Twitter followers to find your blog posts. Essentially, they automate posting to Twitter when a new post on your WordPress site goes live. They come with a wide variety of configuration options, so check them out before you dive in to one solution or another.
WP to Twitter – Free and simply named. Also includes an embedded feed option and custom URL shorteners. A pro version is available with advanced features.
Jetpack Publicize – One of the most commonly used auto-publication and scheduling tools. Frankly, it should come standard with WordPress, it’s so useful.
NextScripts Social Networks Auto Poster – An automatic poster that works with a couple dozen social networks with complete message customization. Extremely popular and free.
CoSchedule – An all in one editorial calendar that is only included on this list because it adds automatic social network post scheduling via drag and drop functions, for free.
Social Auto Poster – A relatively simple premium version of the above, with a steep price of $29 for arguably less features than Jetpack or SNAP.
HypeSocial Buffer – A free social network scheduler that operates using Buffer as a middleman. Posts go from WordPress to Buffer, and from there to your social networks of choice. Offers a premium version with more automation.
Social Locker Plugins
These plugins are designed to hide away your content until a user “pays” for it with a simple share on one of your supported social networks. I don’t generally recommend using these – they hide content from Google as well – but I’m listing them here for the sake of completion.
WPMU DEV’s Pay With A Like – One of the more variable social lockers, allowing sub-sections to be locked and requiring a social share to unlock. Only available with a WPMU DEV account at $50 per month, but comes with other plugins of theirs.
WPLike2Get – A free social locker that works with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, and monitors usage with Google Analytics. Free, but hasn’t been updated in a year.
OnePress Social Locker – One of the more common social lockers with decent reviews. Covers Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for free, but offers other networks in a premium version.
Easy Social Locker – Another basic social locker, following in typical CodeCanyon dev style, offering nothing special for a premium price. $20 for a license.
Share Locker – Another CodeCanyon offering, with a $19 license to lock content requiring Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ engagement to unlock. Also includes VK, if you’re into that.
Social Content Locker by TylerQuinn – Yet another CodeCanyon offering, with a $20 license and nothing really special compared to the other social lockers.
Viral Lock – A $19 license from CodeCanyon for this WordPress content locker, usable with shortcodes from within the WordPress post editor.
At this point, I have covered pretty much every Twitter-inclusive WordPress plugin I can think of. If you have one I haven’t listed, let me know. Also let me know if I added a duplicate; there are a lot of plugins here and a lot of them have very similar names. So much for unique branding, eh guys?
