This is a guest post by Juliana Payson, a Community web hosting specialist based in Los Angeles.

WordPress and its development community have made great strides in recent years when it comes to syndicating posts to major social networks. The WordPress software itself still ships without such integration, although the software’s developers have created a few of their own after-market solutions for automatic publishing to the world’s most popular social websites.

For website owners, there are a few great plugins that open up the ability to automatically post to both Facebook and Twitter every time a new post is created. These plugins are great for cross-promotion and SEO enhancements, and they should be seriously considered by every website administrator.

NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster

This plugin is probably the most robust and advanced currently featured at the WordPress.org Extend website of available plugins. The NextScripts plugin enables automatic posting to Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+ pages, as soon as a new post is created and published within the WordPress Dashboard.

Upon its installation and activation, the NextScripts Social Networks Auto-Poster creates its own Dashboard control panel page where website administrators can choose which social networks to post to on an automatic basis. They can also enter the page or profile ID where they want the Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ posts to be sent.

The plugin does not just support posting to Facebook profiles, however, It can also post to Facebook business, community, and product pages. Additionally, posts can be sent to any Facebook Group with an updated, Timeline-style page currently in use. These features are all unified on the settings page, with a “Facebook ID” field that can be used to specify any profile, page, or group, without extra instructions.

Twitter Tools

Easily the most popular and fully-featured WordPress plugin for Twitter integration, Twitter Tools contains a number of great ways to bring Twitter to WordPress, and vice versa. While the plugin specializes in placing the administrator’s tweets in the sidebar, and creating micro URLs for easy sharing in tweets, it also enables the creation of a new tweet upon the publishing of every new post in the Dashboard. These tweets can even be customized, unlike those prodded by the NextScripts plugin, and can be made to include the entry’s title, a part of it’s excerpt, and the link to the entry, as the administrator prefers.

Due to the customizability of the tweet itself, and the built-in ability to generate micro URLs, Twitter Tools is a great choice for more advanced users who are willing to forego the all-in-one solution for the three major social networks and instead work on a case-by-case basis.

WPBook

Facebook and WordPress recently teamed up to create an official solution for integration between the two services, but WPBook was doing the job long before that official plugin made its debut. WPBook is also more fully-featured than the official WordPress offering, as it includes the ability for two-way comment synchronization.

Comments posted on WordPress blogs or Facebook will sync with one another, creating the ultimate unified experience. Of course, posts will be automatically published to Facebook pages or profiles at the same time that they’re published within the WordPress Dashboard. Business users, or those who simply want a custom WordPress tab, can use a “canvas” in the plug in’s Dashboard settings area to create a new Facebook page tab without leaving the Dashboard environment.

Because it features the kind of two-way comment sync that WordPress’ own solution leaves out, and it’s one of the few plugins to both post automatically to Facebook and enable the creation of tabs within the Dashboard, WPBook should be considered the frontrunner for a Facebook-only, automatic posting solution.

All-in-One or Not, Some Great WordPress Plugin Developments

Not too long ago, integration between WordPress and social media sites was barebones at best. Tweets were hard to create, Facebook pages were nearly impossible to update, and Google+ wasn’t even on the radar. Thankfully, that has changed, as evidenced by the plugins above. Whether administrators choose an all-in-one solution for all of the major networks, or choose to integrate their site with a unique plugin for each, there are lots of great ways to turn WordPress into a very social platform.