Nowadays, everything is influenced by social media. Blogging is no exception. By sharing the right content with the right audience, you can garner much exposure immediately.
Moreover, it represents the most effective way for new bloggers to gain traffic while competing with big websites.
At this point, there is very little chance that you will write something so compelling that readers will copy the link from their web browser. But, readers will likely share it immediately on social networking sites.
As another option, you can get a theme with social media sharing options, but this may result in your website being slower on the Google speed matrix.
Therefore, I recommend choosing a lighter, more specific theme or plugin. One of our favorite tools is the Novashare WordPress Plugin.
What is Novashare?
It is a premium social sharing plugin for WordPress websites. This plugin is extremely lightweight and adds only a tiny amount of extra space to your website. It comes with over 120KB, yet it adds only 5KB to your page and post.
Novashare’s inline SVG icons require only two additional CSS and JS requests to your host to display the social icons on the post or page. It is a fantastic plugin to work appropriately. Whereas a similar plugin would require a minimum of 50 KB of space and four HTTP requests.
Installing the plugin
Novashare does not offer a free version; thus, you must buy the plugin from their website. First, buy it with the popular payment method PayPal, then download the zip file and upload it to your plugin panel.
Novashare will provide you with a license when you become a premium User. You need it to activate your plugin on your site.
Easy UI
The Novashare UI will undoubtedly appeal to WordPress enthusiasts. It is straightforward to use. It will not appear that you are using another plugin. In addition, its functions & features are familiar to WordPress users.
The navigation menu consists of three tabs, each with its own tools. In my opinion, it will take you no more than five minutes to understand what and how you should use it.
Additionally, when you browse through your post as a user, you will not find the plugin getting in your way. It just blends in so well that it does not feel like a separate tool.
Novashare Backend Dashboard
In the top right corner of the Naveshare dashboard, you can find support and documentation for the plugin. You can also find all the tools you need in the navigation menu with three tabs.
First, let’s take a look at the license.
Novashare License Activation
Here you will be able to enter the license key that you received from Novashare. Log into your Novashare premium account, copy the license key, paste it into the blank box, then save.
Novashare Options
On the Options tab, you will find five additional options. Let’s take a closer look at each one in turn.
Inline Content:
Here you will find 23 icons and options for sharing your content. Enable Inline Content to display your selected social media icons on your content.
Which social media networks are included in this tool?
The majority of popular social media platforms are available here—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, VK, Reddit, etc. You may add that content to wherever you think most of your users will want to share it.
Display
Multiple functions are available here. Firstly, it allows you to choose the location of the social network icons. You can choose post, page, media, or all of them. I recommend selecting “Post” since it will not appear amateurish.
Additionally, you can select where you want your Inline Contents to appear. You have two options here: top of the content or bottom of it.
As this tool enables mobile users to share quickly, you can set a breakpoint for mobile devices. If you do not understand a breakpoint, then do not worry.
Let me explain in brief.
This is the maximum number of pixels where you can tell the plugin to display or hide an icon. For example, if you select “Hide Below the Breakpoint,” it will not display “Inline Contents” on devices with a smaller screen height than the input.
Similarly, “Hide Above the Breakpoint” will hide contents for devices with a larger screen than the input of the pixel by the user.
Design
You can select the design you wish to apply to your buttons in this section. In addition, you have the option to customize the button size, shape, alignment, and color.
There are six styles, three sizes, and three shapes to choose from. Using simple mathematics, that is 6x3x3 = 54 different combinations of designs. Isn’t that amazing?
You can choose whether the share counter appears before or after the icons in the share count feature and what colors you would like.
Also, an interesting feature is the ability to add a call-to-action text to encourage users to share the content.
Floating Bar
You have almost the same options as inline Contents with the floating bar. In addition, all 23 social network icons are available as SVGs. Do not forget to turn on the “Enable Floating Bar.”
Display
You can choose whether to display the floating bar on specific posts, pages, or media, or you can select all. Depending on your preferences, you may allow it on Archive or Home pages, but it is not recommended. From here, you can set the floating bar to appear on the right or left side of your site.
You may choose to use or avoid the “Show on Scroll” feature. It allows the user to specify the minimum number of pixels scrolled to see the floating bar.
Design
With all the button sizes, shapes, and styles combined, you can get a 2x3x3 total of 18 different designs.
Mobile
You can specify a maximum pixel size for how much space your floating bar should occupy when viewed on a mobile device in the Mobile settings. Additionally, you can customize the color of the background.
Share Counts
Ultimately the same as the Inline Content feature.
Click to Tweet
This feature is handy on the backend of your website. When editing your post, you have the option to add a quote with a link to share directly on Twitter. The user’s mention can include your username and website URL, or you may choose not to display them.
Novashare Pinterest Feaure
Bloggers cannot ignore the importance of Pinterest. Pinterest is the primary source of traffic for many websites. You can take advantage of that. With this feature, you can add a Pinterest pin button over every still image you share on your website.
So the more pins an image receives, the higher it will rank on the image search engine, resulting in more significant traffic.
Pinterest Configuration
You can set multiple integrations to get the most out of this tool. At first, you will see a minimum share count, which will be displayed once you reach your desired threshold.
After that, you can configure this plugin differently to enable the Twitter share counter. Of course, this will trigger another call to the plugin API, but you should allow it if you really need it.
Facebook Configuration
To count Facebook shares, you can create an app at developers.facebook.com/apps/. On the Novashare website, you can find a comprehensive guide on creating an app using Facebook Developer Links. Therefore, I will not go into details here.
You can also enable Open Graph from this page. You may not be familiar with that script; however, for your information, Facebook, LinkedIn, and some other social networks use this script to determine how to show your posts when shared.
However, it is possible to manually edit each post image and description from the Post Panel of the WordPress dashboard.
You can prioritize your refresh count as low, medium, or high. Alternatively, you can purge all shares, which will remove all share counts and history.
You can also add custom CSS from the configuration tab; however, this should not be your primary CSS source. Try it if your theme does not have any other CSS sheet.
Novashare Google Analytics
Your goal is to gain traffic by sharing your content on social networks. If you do not realize how much traffic you are receiving from social media, you may feel hesitant to share new content.
With this plugin, you can access your traffic stream from Google Analytics. Also, the plugin provides more features.
Activate the UTM Tracking and leave everything as it is, and you will receive statistics on which social network is bringing you the most traffic. This will allow you to adjust your strategies accordingly.
Novashare Link Shortner
If your post link is very long, it may appear strange at times. However, you can use link shortening services to make your links more unique.
This can be done only with Bitly. Create a free account and use the Generic Access Token associated with that account.
Novashare Share Count and Recovery
All previous data will be lost when you rebrand your website with a new domain. With Novashare, you can transfer all the share counters from your older domain to the new domain.
So I think this is an amazing feature, that you will not find in any other plugins.
Configuration Tools
This tab contains four actions. You can uninstall the Novashare plugin entirely by removing all of its data. I enjoy this as sometimes when debugging a website.
You can select or deselect Accessibility Mode, which will show text under each feature showing the purpose of that feature. You can also use the import/export tools to share your favorite configurations of these tools among all of your websites.
Novashare Pricing
Novashare offers three different plans.
One site with all maintenance and updates for $24.95/year. If you want to try this plugin before adding it to the list of your favorite plugins, we recommend this offer.
You can also purchase three site licenses for 54.95$ per year.
In addition, if you would like to purchase an unlimited license with multiple site support, you will need to pay $124.95/year. Each plan includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Novashare Review: Final Verdict
If you are serious about blogging, you will know how important it is for your content to be shared on social networking sites. However, if you spend much time doing outreach, you may have to sacrifice your actual blog postings.
So, to simplify things and save time, you should use social sharing plugins. You should also ensure that your readers are inspired to share your valuable content on their timelines.
Therefore, adding tools such as Novashare makes it easier for visitors to use your site. I believe that the tool is well worth the investment.
