Every website owner is always looking to get more site visitors.
Most site owners publish content regularly and think that it will automatically attract a new audience. They hope that an industry influencer will discover and mention the content they publish. They pray that the Goddess of Search Engines will reward their sites with a high ranking and many visitors.
The issue with this passive approach is that it doesn’t work in today’s fiercely competitive content ecosystem anymore — unless a few blog posts go viral, the chances of attracting new eyeballs are slim to none.
Growing readership is not as simple as building a website. You may be gaining huge traffic, but your WordPress site may be receiving visitors who simply read your content and leave. Therefore, you need your visitors to share your content because that’s the fastest way to grow your readership.
So how do you get visitors to spread the word about your content?
Fortunately, with the right WordPress plugins, you can easily grow your readership by motivating visitors to take action. Without further ado, here are the top 5 WordPress plugins that will quickly help you attract new readers and get more love from existing ones.
Millions of individuals use social networks every day, so it’s important to give site visitors the opportunity to share content on social media channels. One of the best ways to do this is by displaying social sharing buttons on your WordPress site — the revamped ShareThis Share Buttons for WordPress make it a breeze to do so.
The plugin enables users to easily set the style and features for their buttons. ShareThis’ inline and sticky buttons take only a few minutes to configure and offer multiple options for customization, including types of social channels, labels, shape, size, as well as alignment, and order.
Even non-technical WordPress users can easily create beautiful share buttons using these configuration features on either of the button styles.
According to research by Chartbeat, if you can get visitors to quickly find content that is relevant and engaging, they’re much more likely to come back to your website instead of moving onto other websites. Contextly Recommends inspires readers to explore more of your articles by serving “related content” in sidebars and at the end of your posts. If one of your blog posts strikes a chord with the reader, he/she is more likely to share the content.
The plugin also helps you boost on-page SEO by making it easy to add internal links to previous posts in the body of your blog posts. Additionally, it can also recommend products and videos to site visitors.
There are quite a few options for integrating comment features into your WordPress site, but the majority of them lack simplicity. Social Comments by Bainternet stands out because it allows you to add Facebook comments to your site. Visitors who have already logged into their Facebook accounts just have to type the comment and press Enter. No email address needed.
By using Facebook comments, you also give readers the opportunity to tag other people in their networks. This can open doors to a sea of new readers, as people who have been tagged by their peers in comments are more likely to visit your website. Therefore, this feature can turn your comments section into an active community (and referral source).
Social Comments plugin also provides users with an option to set the color scheme and language for Facebook comments.
Notification bars are awesome. They allow you to display a targeted message without obstructing other elements on your website. Among the options of notification widgets, Hello Bar is the cream of the crop. It allows you to add a call-to-action button that connects to a landing page. You also get a detailed analytics report of visitors who have engaged with the widget.
Using this plugin, you can emphasize your call-to-action to readers, such as: subscribe to your newsletter, read more of your popular blog posts, or like your Facebook page. By encouraging people to share your posts on social media through the Hello Bar message, you can boost your site’s readership.
Hello Bar comes with a nice dashboard that’s easy to navigate. And to ensure that you only display the best converting messages, the plugin also offers A/B testing services.
Gathering feedback from your visitors is crucial for maintaining a good rapport with them and determining if there’s something you could change to make your content more shareable. As an easy-to-configure feedback widget, Feedback by Social Intents allows you to gather new ideas and quickly learn about issues by providing instant, unbiased, and private visitor feedback.
Instead of a sidebar or a separate web page, Feedback attracts attention by displaying an in-page feedback widget. Users can also add to the CSS, customize targeting rules, and display their logo. The best part? It doesn’t slow down your website.
Feedback can also be combined with other plugins from Social Intent. For instance, you can use Feedback and Slack Chat together to address visitors’ concerns in real-time.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, five essential WordPress plugins to grow your site’s readership. Of course, there’s a lot more in the WordPress repository that can help you reach your goal. However, if you’re looking for a quick solution that inspires your visitors to take action, this list should help you get started.
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