If you have ever visited any part of Mashable.com you have seen the amazing social media widget at the top of their sidebar.  In my opinion it is as close to perfect as any social widget I have seen or used.  It is compact, attractive to look at and has every single social sharing tool you can think of. 

When I first ran across this widget I figured that Mashable had paid someone big bucks to create this widget just for them. My coding skills are pretty good but re-creating a widget like this one is way out of my pay grade.  Then I had a client ask me if I could put a widget like this on their site.  If you know anything about me you know I HATE to tell a customer I can’t do or create whatever it is they want.  Now I was looking for a way to create this plugin in earnest.

Turns out the amazing coders over at Freakify.com had it covered.  That have created a WordPress plugin that looks and works just like the one on Mashable.  I loved it so much I immediately added it to the OSP blog (take a look at the top of the sidebar). 

Pretty cool, right? The WP MashSocial Widget plugin allows you to place this same widget on your blog that will display your social and subscription options all in one place. It’s like crack for social media addicts.

I haven’t had it on here long enough to confirm this myself but many others who use it have reported that their social media audience (likes, follows, etc)  have actually increased since adding this nifty widget to their sites. 

The guys over at Freakify are constantly updating and adding new features to it too.  As you can see on my site there is a Pinterest button (OMG have you ever seen such an addictive site!) and Google+ button.  You can add more social links but I only added the ones I am active on.

Just look at all the ways your visitors can connect with you….

• Subscribe to your RSS feed
• “Like” you on Facebook
• Follow you on Twitter
• Pin you on Pinterest
• Reccomend you on Google+
• And more

You  may have noticed that I strictly use this widget on just my blog pages.  I decided to do that because many of the things in this widget (like the RSS feed) are designed to connect your visitors with your new content and my blog is where most of that happens. 

In case you were wondering, I do this via another nifty widget called Display Widgets which allows me to hide or show any widget wherever I want.  Another thing I use Display Widgets for is to hide my opt-in on the thank you page since it is unnecessary and redundant to show them the opt-in that they just filled out AGAIN.

I am curious.  What is your dream widget or thing you would LOVE to be able to have your site do?  You have heard me say this before… “You never know until you ask… the impossible may not be as hard to achieve as you think.”