I am very excited and happy to announce the launch of Social Pug version 2.2, one of the biggest updates to date (I seem to be saying this phrase a lot for the latest releases, but it is kind of true)!
This version comes to solidify your existing social sharing tools and also to bring new awesome features that have been requested by you guys.
I hope you are all like… Please tell me more…
So, here it goes… grab your coffee, take a sip and let’s dive into 4 of the new important changes.
Social Share Counts Recovery System
The importance of social proof for a website is undeniable. From product reviews, to comments, to social share counts, it all signals to a reader that the website is a flourishing community rather than an abandoned town of the wild west.
But what if…
You have a website that is a booming community and all of a sudden, with just a flip of a switch, it gets deserted?!
What if, in just a finger snap all your websites social shares are gone?!
I know, gives you the chills!
Yet, this happened to a few of our clients, which secured their websites by upgrading from HTTP to HTTPS. All social shares gone from their website. Every single one of them.
The reason?
Social media platforms see http://www.devpups.com/ and https://www.devpups.com as two different links. They count shares for each one of these links individually, even though both of them lead to the same place.
The social share counts recovery system comes to fix this by retrieving the shares for both the HTTP and HTTPS versions of your post links and displaying their sum.
Social Share Options Meta-Box Redesign
As you may know, Social Pug gives you the ability to customize the social sharing experience for your users by setting custom sharable content for each of your posts.
This is done through a meta-box. To be honest, I never really liked the way the Share Options meta-box looked. It was functional, worked like a charm, but looked like… . It wasn’t really inviting you to write custom content for your posts, rather it would whisper “hit Publish without me”.
The new version though… My, oh my, just look at it.
The form fields are now grouped closer together to save space, space that was wasted and made everything look untidy.
Each field has an explanation tooltip, with additional helpful information and also, text fields that have a character length limitation now have a counter, so you know exactly how many characters you have remaining.
Shorten Your Post Links with Branch
If there’s a company that handles links really really well, it’s Branch.io. What they are doing is close to magic! In short, they have specialized in deep linking, by bridging the gap between web browsers and mobile apps, to offer the end user the best mobile browsing experience with comprehensive analytics.
You might be scratching your head a bit right now, wondering what I mean by all of this. Luckily, the guys at Branch explain the functionality and its benefits really well:
And now that Social Pug integrates with Branch to shorten post links, every link that gets shortened has all the power of Branch behind it (better browsing experiences, more analytics).
Also, if your company is already using Branch in other marketing channels like emails, you’ll now have more consistent branding on social media through the same link domain (yourcompany.app.link).
Save to Flipboard, Share through Telegram
Rejoice! Flipboard and Telegram make their way to Social Pug. These two buttons have been by far the most requested sharing options in the last couple of months and it made sense to make them available alongside the other platforms that the plugin supports.
Love to Hear Your Thoughts!
I am very excited about this new update and I hope you are too. Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter what you like about it and what is still missing from Social Pug that you would love to have.
If you like it please share the big news on Facebook or Twitter. Cheers!
