Gaining blog readers is hard and no blog is complete without traffic. WordPress makes it much easier and when you add the right plugins to your blog you can get more traffic. Most of these WordPress plugins make it easy for your readers to share your website with people they know. Here are 18 WordPress plugins to help you garner some of that attention, and then retain readers once they visit and to get more out of social networks, attracting more traffic and followers.

Feed RSS Tools

Feed

Download | Official Website | Requires Version: 1.5 or higher

Adds copyright info to your feed and puts a digital fingerprint on it so you can search the web for content theft. The Plugin adds content to a feed. It is possible to configure the copyright message. You can use html. You can add the IP of a feed reader and digital fingerprint for an explicit key. There can also be a domain name for a whitelist and this domains became not the message. The plugin search for this key at content theft. It is furthermore possible to add comments and related posts to the feed. For the related post feature it uses a database-search for the content. You can use the plugin “Simple Tagging” for related posts in a feed. The copyright notice can be added even when using entry excerpts.

Add to Any Subscribe Button

Download | Subscribe Button | Requires Version: 2.2 or higher

Allows your readers to subscribe via just about any reader out there. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history.

Subscribe-Remind

Download | Requires Version: 1.5 or higher

Adds a little reminder to the end of each post reminding readers to subscribe to your feed, some text will automatically be placed at the end of each of your posts inviting your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. It’s an unobtrusive and effective way to turn visitors into subscribers.

AddThis Sidebar Widget

Download | Requires Version: 2.0 or higher

This widget adds the feed subscription and/or social bookmarking buttons from AddThis to your sidebar. This is a convenient way for visitors to subscribe to your feed or bookmark your pages without cluttering the sidebar with a gazillion buttons for all the different feed readers and social bookmark sites.

Social Bookmarking

Mingle

Download | Requires Version: 2.8 or higher

The simplest way to turn your WordPress website into a Social Network comparable to Facebook or LinkedIn. Mingle makes it easy to create a social network for your family, church, business or even a premium membership site! Mingle uses your standard WordPress website and standard WordPress theme to create your Social Network instantly.

SexyBookmarks

Download | Requires Version: 2.7 or higher
You have probably seen this popular plugin on various blogs. At the bottom of the posts you will see “sharing is sexy.” Though the name may be a little “edgy” for some, SexyBookmarks has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.

Gigya

Download | Requires Version: 2.6 or higher

You can Gigya Toolbar to increase traffic and revenues. You connect to one or more social networks, you can choose 80 different social destinations. Offer a subscribe to feed button. Get return traffic when users share and tweet with the toolbar.

Sociable

Download | Requires Version: 2.6 or higher

Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! WordPress 2.6 or above is required, if you use an older version, please download this version, please keep in mind that version is not maintained.

Simple Facebook Connect

Download | Requires Version: 2.9.1 or higher

Simple Facebook Connect is a series of plugins that let you add any sort of Facebook Connect functionality you like to a WordPress blog. This lets you have an integrated site without a lot of coding, and still letting you customize it exactly the way you’d like.

Simple Twitter Connect

Download | Requires Version: 2.9 or higher

Written by the same author of Simple Facebook Connect, this WordPress plugin allows you to add Twitter functionality to your WordPress blog. Your readers can log-in using Twitter. Users can auto-tweet their comments. Simple Twitter Connect is a series of plugins that let you add any sort of Twitter functionality you like to a WordPress blog.

WP-Google Buzz

Download | Requires Version: 2.7 or higher

If you enjoy Google Buzz with this, you can insert a button on your posts. With Google Buzz you can share great information with your Gmail friends, and this lets your readers share your posts and pages. Choose from 14 different Google Buzz Buttons.

Light Social

Download | Requires Version: 2.9 or higher

Similar to Sociable or SexyBookmarks, this is a lightweight version. You do not have options to configure, you do get the popular social sites. You can insert this bar to each of your posts. With this plugin you have simple options to configure. Simply enable or disable to show or not the bookmark social links.

TweetMeme Button

Download | Requires Version: 2.7.2 or higher

The TweetMeme Retweet button is the defacto standard in retweeting – used by some of the biggest websites in the world including Techcrunch.com, PerezHilton.com, Break.com, CNET.com, Wired, Time Magazine and hundreds of other massive brands, in total it is installed on over 100,000 websites around the globe.

RO Social Bookmarks

Download | Requires Version: 2.0.2 or higher

RO Social Bookmarks plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them on social bookmarking / network sites. Furthermore, the plugin adds a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it.

sharethis

Download Button
ShareThis makes it easy to add most of the share and bookmarking sites in one butting. This is not really a plugin but since over 125,000 sites to increase traffic and engagement and it is simple to add to your blog I thought it should be in the list.

Crossposting

LiveJournal Crossposter

Download | Requires Version: 2.5.1 or higher

Automatically posts your latest entries to your LiveJournal account, or any other LJ software based site.The Livejournal Crossposter (LJXP for short) is a WordPress 2.x plugin, Editing and deleting crossposted entries causes the same changes to be made on the Livejournal.

DJ-Email-Publish

Download | Requires Version: 2.7

Once you publish on your WordPress blog, this sends the post as an email to your other blogs such as MSN Spaces.

Xanga Crosspost

Download | Requires Version: 2.1

Allows you to have your posts appear on your Xanga account also. Keep your Xanga friends in the loop with this WordPress crossposting plugin.