Professional Share is a free WordPress plugin that is optimized for the social media buttons that professionals and B2B companies need most. It’s optimized for speed with proper placements for posts and pages.
Social Media Plugin Features
- Core buttons applicable to professionals and B2B – focus is on LinkedIn and Facebook action verb “recommend”. Drive quality traffic to your site while simplifying the user experience.
- Full Google Analytics Social Tracking. Google Analytics reports successful shares only. Tracks shares, recommends, AND unlikes.
- Official button code from LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and Facebook.
- Schema.org and OpenGraph meta tags for more precise sharing.
- Allows Twitter username entry so Tweets can be attributed to you – (the AddThis plugin does not!).
- Plugin buttons can load once in the page speeding up the user experience.
- Buttons have flexible placements – above posts, below posts, above pages, below pages, and custom with shortcodes and the do_action function.
- Widgets for easy placement.
- Works on mobile, respsonsive designs and themes.
- Allows custom Facebook AppID and administrator IDs for deeper Facebook integration.
See it in action below.
Tips for Share Optimization
This plugin can optimize and automate as much as possible for you, but there are some things you need to to to ensure your users see the best snippets when they share. First, write a concise and unique excerpt for your post in the excerpt field. Pages in WordPress don’t have excerpt fields, so make sure the top of your page / post is descriptive and gives the reader an idea about what they can find if they keep reading. Second, add an image to the page. Set an image as the “Featured Image” for the post. This will tell the plugin and social media sites that that image is the one you want to highlight. If you don’t fill out an excerpt field or set a featured image, things may still work out ok. The first few sentences of your post/page will be the description and the first image in the post will be the featured image. If you care about sharing and the best possible experience for your users, I highly recommend writing the excerpt and setting the featured image. The excerpt will also improve your SEO.
Professional Share WordPress Settings Screen
Where Can I See My Social Reports in Google Analytics?
Professional Share enables social media plugin reporting in Google Analytics. Here is where you can find this report: 
I also created an easier Google Analytics report to track social interactions on my Free Google Analytics Custom Reports page. You’ll find some other useful reports there as well.
Download Professional Share
The easiest way to download and install Professional Share is to search for it in the plugins section of your WordPress installation. For more details on the plugin or to download, you can visit the official Professional Share plugin page on WordPress.org. professional-share.zip (latest version)
Also Available as a Drupal Module
You can download the work-in-progress Professional Share Drupal module on Drupal.org. Professional Share is a work in progress and will be updated. Check back soon. Please leave feedback / bugs below.
Installation Instructions
Once activated, click on the Professional Share menu item in the settings section. Type in your Twitter username (without the @ symbol) and your Facebook UserID and AppID if you have them. The plugin works without any setup as well.
Customization
- Use [[professional_share]] shortcode to render buttons anywhere in a post / page.
- Hook to render buttons in themes – do_action(‘professional_share’) – use for Homepage, category pages, etc.
- Use the short code [[professional_share]] to render buttons anywhere in a post or page. Use [[professional_share show=”false”]] to hide the buttons on a per-page/post basis.
FAQs / Known Issues
I upgraded from version 1.0,1.1,1.2 to 1.3+ and cannot see my buttons?
Go to the plugin settings page and check the boxes for button position.
WordPress Plugin Changelog
= 1.5.1 =
* Bug fixes
* Fixed Facebook comment box width for some WordPress themes
* Removed extraneous Tweet word from share descriptions
* Increased priority so CSS and JS are inside html head tag
= 1.5 =
* Added widgets
* Facebook button has absolute URL to comply with July 2013 requirements
= 1.4 =
* Added new shortcode attribute to disable the buttons on a per-page basis – [[professional_share show=”false”]]
* Added featured image support (post thumbnail) for OpenGraph and Schema.org sharing
* Added settings quicklink on main WordPress Plugins page
* Settings page layout improvements
= 1.3 =
* Added ability to adjust position of buttons – options are top of post, bottom of post, top of page, bottom of page
* Added blog language to HTML root for SEO
* Improved CSS layout
= 1.2 =
* Replaced Google+ Share button with Google+1 button that includes share capability
* Added HTML5 compliant Google+1 code
* Improved CSS layout
= 1.1 =
* Replaced Google+1 button with new Google+ Share button
* Added schema.org and open graph meta tags for sharing
* Added short code [[professional_share]] to render buttons anywhere in a post
* Added hook to render buttons in themes – do_action(‘professional_share’)
* Added CSS class for button area(s) – ProfessionalShareBox
= 1.0 =
* First Version
Leave a Reply