Every blog author dreams of their blog in lights - the front page of Yahoo.com, number one in the search results on Google and featured on the leading sites for the article topic/industry. But getting to the top is not easy. The world of social media, also known as Web 2.0, has developed a number of ways in which your visitors can help you climb the ladder of success.

In the world of Web 2.0 you want people tweeting about your blog, digging your blog, posting it on the Facebook page, stumbling upon and using any other new social media tools to help you publicize your site. As the blog author you think you have great content and you want to make it easy for your readers to publicize your site. Fortunately, there are a host of WordPress plugins that can make this process easy - both for you and the reader/visitor.

Sociable
Sociable allows your readers to quickly link your blog posts to their favorite social network with one click. Sociable is compatible with 99 different social networks, including all the major sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Google, LinkedIn, Digg, Technorati, Twitter and del.icio.us to name just a few. What is nice about Sociable is that while it has the long list of 99 social network sites, you get to select which networks you want and you have flexibility via a nice administration module to identify where you want the links to appear on your blog. Sociable is a great plugin because it supports so many sites and is really easy to use. It is highly recommended if you just have one site and/or are new to blogging.

Addthis
AddThis claims to be the number one bookmarking and sharing service with over 20 billion impressions per month. AddThis is a full service social networking tool. AddThis stands above the pack because it supports multiple platforms and has great analytics.
You can use the AddThis code on WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, MySpace and indeed on any web page. If you have multiple websites or blogs on different platforms, I highly recommend AddThis because you will be able to use one tool across all your sites. You will need to register to use Addthis - but it is a free service.
Another feature in AddThis is that you get access to analytics data that describes how many visitors are using AddThis to promote your site, which pages are being shared, which services such as Facebook or MySpace are most popular, and where this usage is taking place. AddThis collects and shares with you a large amount of information to help you understand how your button menu is doing, and we’re adding features frequently, so check back for the latest tools. With this data you can determine how your blog is benefiting from social media and if people are actively promoting your site.

ShareThis
ShareThis is similar in many ways to AddThis in that it supports multiple platforms beyond WordPress and it provides the publishers with analytics. ShareThis also supports all the major social networking sites (although Sociable certainly takes the prize on quantity with 99 supported sites).

What makes ShareThis stand out is the ability to customize the display. Instead of a “one size fits all” display you can customize display features such as: headers; standard or rotating icons, the text on the buttons, the ability to embed the plugin and even to display it as a pop-up. These features will be most useful for folks with multiple sites and a little bit more of an interest in software configuration. If you always use the settings or configurations option in software - then you should consider ShareThis.

Regardless of which tool you use, also consider how you use these social media links. Is every blog on your site worthy of being shared via social networking? Should you put social media requests on each blog or do they belong on a selection of your best articles? I recommend an approach where you don’t use this links more than once on the home page - probably for your newest or best post. When the visitor goes to specific posts -then they see the links at the bottom.

This is where the analytics can really come in handy. Do the analytics show that these social media links are being used? If you have tons of social media links on a ton of posts and the analytics say nobody is promoting your blogs then you need to consider the value they bring to your site. Likewise - if you are being tweeted and dug right and left than you might even add more links - or drop links to social media sites that are not being used.

Once you have the plugin active, your followers are one click away from sharing your words of wisdom with their entire social network - one more value from the universe of WordPress plugins and themes.

Related posts:

1. Top WordPress Plugins to Encourage Comments
2. Communication Power - Twitter and WordPress
3. Is it safe to use WordPress Plugins?