Most WordPress website owners are familiar with the importance of interacting with social media websites. Indeed, since the release of Google Penguin and Google Panda, such interactions between a website and these social networks are important when achieving a high ranking at the search engine. One of the best ways to achieve such a high ranking is to automatically post new content both Facebook and Twitter, preferably automatically, form the WordPress Dashboard. This functionality is not supported natively, but there are some great plugins that enable it for both services.
Facebook Tab Manager
This plugin is one of the original plugins for integration with WordPress and Facebook. In addition to allowing the automatic posting of new entries to the Facebook profile, page, or group of choice, Facebook Tab Manager permits the creation of new Facebook page tabs from the Dashboard. That’s because Facebook Tab Manager comes with its own custom administration panel that can be used to identify the page where content should be submitted, as well as to design new tabs and deploy them immediately. Tabs can be further managed after publication, making this a great all-in-one solution for Facebook integration.
Twitter Tools
While WordPress is just beginning to support some Twitter functionality with its Jetpack plugin for self-hosted installations, the Twitter Tools plugin has been hard at work integrating Twitter functionality into the Dashboard for the past several years. Among the features added to WordPress upon activation are the creation of tiny URLs for publication in tweets, and the automatic generation of tweets every time a new post is published within the WordPress Dashboard. Administrators can even customize the format of these tweets, depending on how they’d like the excerpt, title, and link, to appear when the public views them. Posting is integrated, automatic, and highly adaptable, just as most power users prefer.
fbPressPage
By far the highest-end Facebook plugin currently on the market, the fbPressPage plugin is a full page management solution for WordPress. The plugin allows the drag-and-drop creation of new Facebook page tabs, and permits the automatic posting of content to Facebook every time a new post is written within the WordPress Dashboard. The plugin is built on the Genesis Framework, making it compatible with the large series of custom control panel pages that are enabled by Genesis-based themes. Overall, it’s easily the most advanced and extensible Facebook integration plugin for WordPress installations.
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
Those WordPress administrators looking for an all-in-one solution that includes support for Google+ need look no further than the Social Networks Auto-Poster plugin by NextScripts. The plugin does not support the management of Facebook tabs, but administrators will likely outsource that to a separate plugin, anyway. What the plugin does support is simultaneous and automatic posting to Facebook pages or profiles, Twitter accounts, and Google+ profiles and product pages. That makes it one of the most broad social networking auto-post plugins currently available, and it will especially appeal to users who prefer an integrated solution for all of their automatic posting needs with WordPress.
WPBook
The WPBook plugin was one of the original Facebook integration offerings, available to users long before the Automattic development team worked with the Facebook people to create an official plugin that integrated the two entities. WPBook, unlike the official plugin, does support the creation, customization, and management of Facebook page tabs, and it permits auto-posting of new entries to the popular social network if the administrator enables that functionality. It features a number of integrated Open Graph elements, too, making it both more advanced and more extensible than the official WordPress-Facebook offering.
Lots of Great Ways to Engage with Social Networks
WordPress is easily one of the most customizable content management platforms on the market, and its series of social networking plugins for automatic posting are evidence of this. With these plugins, it’s possible to create, customize, and maintain a social profile on all three of the biggest social networks. That’s valuable to any website’s stature and SEO, and it’s a highly recommended move for socially-minded WordPress administrators.
Juliana – WordPress Hosting Specialist
Juliana is a Content Writer and Researcher based in Los Angeles for InMotion Web Hosting. She develops content based on Web 2.0 design and ‘Socialization’ of websites. You can follow her on Twitter @JulianaPayson and Google Plus