Another selection of useful WordPress plugins that build your brand while helping your readers.
Official description: “a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.”
Jetpack comes from Automattic, the creators of WordPress, so you know it’s high quality.
Although technically one plugin, Jetpack’s combination of features makes it seem more like a package of plugins. Some of the most compelling features for personal brand builders are:
- Subscriptions – “Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments to receive a notification via email.” Helps keep the conversation flowing.
- Sharing – “The most super duper sharing tool on the interwebs. Share content with Facebook, Twitter, and many more.” Actually, I prefer a different sharing plugin, mentioned below.
- Gravatar Hovercards – “Show a pop-up business card of your users’ Gravatar profiles in comments.” You are using Gravatars in your comments, right?
- Enhanced Distribution – “Share your public posts and comments to search engines and other services in real-time.” Promotes your content passively, quickly.
Official description: “Sharebar adds a dynamic and fully customizable vertical box to the left of a blog post that contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites.”
THIS is my favorite sharing plugin and the one I’ve been happily using on JobMob since 2010.
Sharebar’s vertical slider means that share buttons are always visible as readers scroll down each post, and I like how the buttons are shifted horizontally if the plugin detects that the browser window is too small to display the vertical bar without overlapping the content.
It’s also easy to customize with new sharing buttons.
Best practice: don’t overwhelm your readers with options. Choose 4-5 share buttons and that’s it. However, watch to see if they’re getting used over the next month. If not, remove the least popular and try another for a month, and so on.
Alternative option: digg digg
3. WP MashSocial Wigdet
Official description: “A beautiful widget inspired by Mashable to be used in sidebar, it allows you to add your Pinterest, G+ , Twitter , Facebook and Feeds Subscription in it.”
Poor spelling aside, this is actual a very handy plugin, giving you a sidebar widget containing all the subscription and following options your readers will want, with the same look and feel as Mashable’s well-designed Subscription Options box.
Best practice: like with Sharebar, don’t go overboard. Include a button for your blog’s RSS feed, an email subscription option, Facebook Like with avatar icons, and links to follow you on Twitter, Google+ and/or Pinterest, if you have profiles on all these networks.
Official description: “This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url.”
Another favorite plugin of mine, it has one purpose and does it well: recognize where your reader is coming from and welcome them appropriately.
Best practice: if you have a system in place like Chartbeat‘s alerts to warn you of traffic spikes, quickly create a welcome message addressing those new visitors and then remove it once the spike is over.
Official description: “... allows you to brand and customize the WordPress administration area for clients or for personal use. You can display custom images and styles for the login screen, admin header and footer.”
Simply put, it allows you to customize the WordPress login panel with your personal logo, avatar or other images.
Best practice: you’ll definitely want to use this if your blog regularly pushes readers to login, such as to leave comments, since they will see your customizations often.
READ NOW: our first collection of 5 WordPress Plugins for the Personal Brand-Building Blogger.
Alright WordPress bloggers, now it’s your turn. What are you favorite personal brand-building plugins? Tell us in the comments below.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
