From time to time, I’m going to be writing about WordPress plugins that I recommend. These plugins are, in my opinion, essential to running a good blog. Here’s the first plugin that I recommend: Sociable.

Usually, I will write a little about why you should use the plugin, and a lot about how to use the plugin. This plugin isn’t very hard to use, so it will be about half ‘why’ and half ‘how’.

Why use Sociable

Sociable is a WordPress plugin that allows readers to submit your content to their favorite social bookmarking websites. Usually, social bookmarking is a solid way to get traffic to your blog. Therefore, it’s pretty important that you allow users to bookmark your website.

People are much more likely to bookmark your website if there is an icon to do so right on the page. There is a certain type of reader that will go out of their way to post something to Digg or Reddit, but not all users will do this.

You can see Sociable in action at the bottom of this post. It provides a clean interface for users to select a bookmarking website. I prefer it over alternatives, such as ShareThis. In my opinion, ShareThis is bulky and not as easy to use (for users) as Sociable.

How to use Sociable

Sociable is a pretty simple plugin to use. You can download the plugin here. There’s also a short usage manual on that page, so feel free to check it out.

Once you install Sociable, you are good to go. You can do a few things to customize it, though.

Change social bookmarking sites

The first thing that you can do is change the social bookmarking sites that appear after every post. Sociable supports around 100 social bookmarking websites, so chances are you will be able to find the one that you want.

You can view my selected social bookmarking websites at end of this post. Alternatively, here’s a list:

1. Digg
2. Sphinn
3. del.icio.us
4. Facebook
5. Mixx
6. StumbleUpon
7. Google
8. Furl
9. MisterWong
10. Print
11. Spurl
12. TwitThis
13. Yahoo! Buzz
14. Reddit

Try to make sure that you cover all of the social bookmarking sites where:

1. Your content is being submitted by others naturally
2. You are submitting your content and seeing good results

The whole purpose of Sociable is so that others can submit your content easily, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use it to submit your own content every now and then.

Other configuration options

If you are looking to add different social bookmarking websites to Sociable or if you are looking to move your Sociable links around, you can get instructions for both here. I can’t explain things better than the plugin author himself.

In conclusion

I chose to recommend Sociable because social media is so important on the web now-a-days. Many users across the web use social bookmarking websites to discover new things. Sociable makes it easier for those users to discover your website.

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Are you using Sociable? Did you decide to use Sociable after reading this post? Please leave your thoughts in form of a comment.

Tags: Sociable, Social Bookmarking, WordPress