Smash Balloon

Let me ask you something: do you regularly share videos, status updates, images and other content across social media?

If you’ve got a thriving community on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, that’s awesome! But here’s the thing: some of your audience might miss out on all that great content. They might not be following you on every single platform.

That’s where embedding your social media feeds directly on your WordPress website comes in. You can showcase your latest tweets, YouTube videos, and more, right there on your pages and posts. It’s a fantastic way to boost engagement and make your website more dynamic and interesting. (It’s why we embed YouTube videos in so many of our WPBeginner tutorials!)

But let’s be honest, manually adding and updating all that social media content can be a real pain. That’s why smart website owners use a social media feed plugin instead.

With that said, in this Smash Balloon review we’re taking a closer look at a popular social plugin. We’ll look at its features, support, and pricing, to help you decide if it’s the right tool to bring your social media content to your WordPress website. Let’s dive in!

Smash Balloon Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Let’s talk about social media. You know it’s a powerful tool to connect with your audience, and it’s a no-brainer to embed those feeds directly in you WordPress website.

But who has the time to constantly update those embedded feeds?

That’s where Smash Balloon comes in. It’s a popular social media feed plugin for WordPress, and it’s trusted by over 1.75 million users.

With Smash Balloon, you don’t have to spend time dealing with jQuery code, APIs, or trying to arrange your social posts in a nice layout. It just works!

In this Smash Balloon review, we’ll see that it has separate plugins for all the major social platforms:

1. Facebook Feed Pro
2. Instagram Feed Pro
3. Twitter Feed Pro
4. YouTube Feed Pro
5. Reviews Feed Pro
6. TikTok Feed Pro

And if you want the ultimate social media mashup, their Social Wall plugin lets you combine posts from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube into a single feed!

No matter what plugin you choose, you’ll get access to a user-friendly editor where you can fine-tune every part of the feed. Control exactly which posts show up on your site and how they look.

When you’re happy with how the feed is set up, you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using either a shortcode, block, or widget. And the best part? The feed updates automatically with your latest social media content. Set it and forget it!

Smash Balloon Review: Is it Really the Best Social Feed Plugin?

Now, you could embed individual social media posts manually on your WordPress website. But let’s be honest, who has time for that? Successful website owners work smarter, not harder, and that means using a plugin.

In this Smash Balloon review, I’m going to dive deep and explore why this plugin is so popular among people looking to bring their social media feeds into WordPress. Stick around, to see whether Smash Balloon might just be the perfect fit for you, too.

1. Create Facebook Social Media Feeds

Alright, let’s add some Facebook magic to your WordPress website. You can embed a custom Facebook feed in your WordPress blog or website using the Facebook Feed Pro plugin.

Now, if you’re just looking to display a basic feed, Smash Balloon offers a free Social Post Feed plugin that does the trick. But if you want to take it up a notch and display Facebook albums, photos, videos, or events, you’ll want to unlock the power of the premium Facebook Feed Pro.

Facebook Feed Pro also comes with additional layouts, and allows people to open the embedded photos and videos in a popup lightbox directly on your site.

You can also show likes, share, and comments next to each embedded post. This can act as a powerful form of social proof that builds trust and credibility with your audience.

No matter what kind of Facebook feed you create, you can fine-tune how that feed looks and acts with the user-friendly Smash Balloon editor.

Here, you can change the feed’s color scheme to perfectly match your WordPress theme, design a custom header, add ‘like’ and ‘load more’ buttons… all that good stuff!

If you want a step-by-step walkthrough, then we’ve got a handy guide on how to create a custom Facebook feed in WordPress.

2. Create Instagram Photo Feeds

Now, let’s look at Instagram.

You could add images in WordPress manually, but that’s a time-consuming hassle. Plus, there’s no easy way for your visitors to interact with those images, which means you could be missing out on valuable engagement.

Thankfully, Smash Balloon Instagram Feed Pro makes it easy to embed a beautiful and professionally-designed Instagram feed on your site.

Think about the possibilities! You could show other people’s photos by creating a hashtag feed or displaying posts you’ve been tagged in. In this way, you can use a custom Instagram feed to build customer trust and make more money online.

If you run a restaurant website then you might create a feed of all the photos that customers have tagged you in, including photos of your food and venue.

Run an online store? Then you can add Instagram shoppable images in WordPress using Smash Balloon.

Imagine an eye-catching feed that automatically updates with your latest products – no manual effort needed!

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then there’s a free Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed plugin. This handy tool helps you fix the Instagram oEmbed issue in WordPress and create a basic photo feed.

However, if you want to create tagged, hashtag, or shoppable feeds, then you’ll need to upgrade to the premium plugin. Instagram Feed Pro can also embed Instagram stories and show additional content such as likes, comments, and captions.

3. Embed a Twitter Feed in WordPress

Now, let’s bring those tweets to life on your WordPress site. Sure, you can manually embed tweets in blog posts using the built-in Twitter block, but that only gets you so far.

If you want a dynamic, automatically-updating Twitter feed, then Smash Balloon Twitter Feed Pro is your answer. Embed your own tweets, create hashtag feeds, or even showcase tweets from other accounts – all in a beautifully designed feed that keeps your website fresh and engaging.

Now, for those on a budget, Smash Balloon offers a free Custom Twitter Feeds plugin. This lets you display your recent tweets without any fuss – no coding or complicated setup required.

But if you want to take your Twitter game to the next level, you can upgrade to Twitter Feed Pro.

With this premium plugin, you can embed your own tweets, or create a hashtag feed. This is useful for adding context and third-party content to your blog posts. For example, if you are starting a fashion blog, then you might create feeds for popular fashion-related hashtags such as #lookbook or #OOTD.

This gives you incredible flexibility to curate and display Twitter content that resonates with your audience.

You can even use Smash Balloon to show the Twitter feed from a third-party account. This is perfect if you have a relationship with an influencer or affiliate marketer and want to show their content on your website.

For a detailed walkthrough on adding Twitter feeds to your WordPress site, check out our guide on how to embed tweets in WordPress.

4. Embed YouTube Videos Without Affecting Site Speed

Now, let’s talk about the power of video. According to our blogging statistics research, blog posts with videos get 83% more traffic than those without videos. That’s huge!

If you run an online store using a plugin like WooCommerce, then videos can even boost your sales. In fact, 88% of people have bought a product or service after watching a video.

So, how do you harness the power of video on your WordPress site? Feeds for YouTube by Smash Balloon makes it super easy to embed all the latest videos from your YouTube channel.

You can also embed videos from a YouTube playlist, show your latest livestreams, and more.

And once you’ve connected WordPress to your YouTube channel, you can customize how the videos look with Smash Balloon’s user-friendly editor. In this way, YouTube Feed Pro also acts as an advanced YouTube video gallery plugin for WordPress.

And here’s the best part: when a visitor clicks on a video, it’ll start playing right there on your site in an embedded video player.

You can change how the player acts and looks using the ‘Video Player Experience’ settings.

Here, you can change the player’s aspect ratio, and choose whether the video should start playing automatically, or wait until the visitor clicks the play button.

When you’re happy with how the feed looks, you can easily add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode.

In addition to playing the video, visitors can check out all the YouTube comments directly on your WordPress website. Imagine your visitors scrolling through comments while the video plays – talk about engagement.

These comments act as powerful social proof, while also encouraging visitors to join the discussion and start commenting on your YouTube channel. Of course, if you prefer a more streamlined approach, you can always disable the comments feature in the Smash Balloon editor.

Here, you can also change how many comments Smash Balloon displays on your WordPress blog or website.

And for those on a budget, Smash Balloon offers a free Feeds For YouTube plugin. This gives you essential features to create a mobile-responsive YouTube video feed. It also has multiple layouts that are completely customizable, so you can create a YouTube feed that looks great, no matter what your budget. It’s pretty much a must-have plugin if you have a YouTube channel.

5. Show Reviews From Google, Facebook, Yelp, and More

Now, let’s talk about the power of social proof – specifically customer reviews.

Positive reviews build trust and credibility, encouraging visitors to see your business as reliable and worth their time (and money!) So, why not showcase those glowing testimonials right on your WordPress website?

This is where Reviews Feed Pro comes in. This popular plugin can embed reviews from Yelp, Google, Trustpilot, WordPress.org, TripAdvisor and Facebook.

No matter what platform you use, Smash Balloon walks you through the process of connecting it to your WordPress site.

And here’s a cool feature: for platforms like Yelp and WordPress.org, you can even display reviews from profiles you don’t own. Imagine the possibilities!

If you run a business listing blog or membership site, then you might embed Yelp reviews for different local businesses.

If you blog about must-have WordPress plugins, then you might decide to show the plugin’s WordPress.org reviews on your website.

In this way, you can add value for your readers and improve the visitor experience.

Reviews Feed Pro comes with pre-designed templates, so you can show the content in different layouts, including showcases, responsive sliders, and grids.

The Reviews Feed plugin also copies your website’s design so the reviews look like a natural part of your website rather than some clunky add-on.

If you’re looking for a free option, then Smash Balloon offers a Reviews Feed plugin. This lets you embed Yelp and Google Business reviews on your website.

However, it doesn’t support any additional review sites such as TripAdvisor, or show images, videos, or your average star rating. For the full review experience, I highly recommend investing in Reviews Feed Pro.

So, whether you want to display glowing testimonials from your customers or curate valuable reviews from other sources, Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro makes it easy. It’s all about leveraging social proof to enhance your website and boost your business.

For a detailed guide on embedding reviews, check out our tutorial on how to show Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews in WordPress.

6. Embed TikTok Videos in WordPress

Alright, let’s talk TikTok! It’s one of the fastest-growing social media platforms with over 1 billion monthly active users. If you’re creating content on TikTok, why not bring that engagement to your WordPress site?

While WordPress does have a built-in TikTok block, it’s pretty basic and can only display a single video at a time. You’ll also need to update this block manually, in order to show your latest TikToks. Not very efficient, right?

With that said, you may want to use Smash Balloon TikTok Feed instead.

This plugin lets you connect your WordPress site to your TikTok account and create a dynamic feed that showcases all your latest videos. It even automatically fetches new TikToks as you post them – talk about effortless!

Even better, it has an inline TikTok player, so visitors can watch videos directly on your WordPress website.

As a bonus, this player won’t show the TikTok logo and colors when playing your videos, unlike some other TikTok plugins. This helps you maintain a consistent brand experience on your site.

Even better, there are pre-made templates so you can embed TikTok videos in WordPress with just a few clicks.

Just be aware that Smash Balloon can only display TikToks from your own account.

After choosing a layout, you can customize every part of your feed in Smash Balloon’s user-friendly editor. By default, Smash Balloon shows the most recent 10 TikToks posted to your account. However, you can change this to any number you want.

You can also filter videos based on whether they contain certain words, change the order your videos appear in, or even randomize those videos so the feed looks different every time.

Smash Balloon can also display your total TikTok followers and likes above the feed.

That said, this popular TikTok plugin can encourage more people to engage with your content.

Smash Balloon can also display an optional ‘Follow’ button to help grow your TikTok audience.

And once you’re happy with how your feed looks, you can easily add it to any page, post, or widget area using a simple shortcode.

Looking for a free alternative? Then you can download Feeds for TikTok from WordPress.org. This lets you connect your site to a single TikTok account and customize it with some basic settings.

7. Display Posts from Multiple Platforms

Many successful business websites and bloggers have a presence across multiple platforms. It’s awesome to have a presence across the social media landscape, but let’s be honest, displaying a separate feed for each platform can clutter your website and overwhelm your visitors.

That’s where Smash Balloon’s Social Wall comes in to save the day. This powerful tool lets you combine content from all your favorite platforms – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube – into a single, unified feed.

Imagine a single stream of engaging content, showcasing your latest photos, videos, status updates, and even products, all in one place. It’s a fantastic way to promote your social media presence without overwhelming your visitors.

This not only saves space but also creates a dynamic, multimedia experience for your audience. They can explore a diverse range of content, all while staying on your website. It’s like creating a social media hub that keeps them engaged and encourages them to follow you across different platforms.

8. Professionally-Designed Feed Templates

Now, let’s talk about making those social media feeds look amazing on your website. Smash Balloon plugins come with a bunch of ready-made templates to help you display your social posts in a stylish and engaging way.

Depending on the Smash Balloon plugin you’re using, you may see different templates.

For example, with Instagram Feed Pro, you’ll find templates for showcasing public hashtags and tagged posts, giving you tons of flexibility to curate the perfect feed for your website.

In this way, you can create a professionally-designed feed that shows exactly the content you want, without having to hire a WordPress developer or designer.

Smash Balloon’s templates do the heavy lifting for you, and they’re all fully customizable, so you can tweak them to perfectly fit your online store or website.

9. A User-Friendly Editor

Smash Balloon is designed to blend seamlessly with your WordPress theme, so your feeds automatically match your website’s style. But if you want to take customization to the next level, their user-friendly editor gives you all the control you need, without having to touch any code.

The Smash Balloon editor shows a live preview of your feed to the right. On the left are different settings that change how the feed looks and acts.

As you make changes, the live preview will update automatically, so you can try lots of different settings to see what looks the best.

You may see different options depending on the plugin you’re using, but you can typically play around with layouts (like grid, masonry, or carousel).

You can also customize how the individual social posts look inside the feed.

For example, in the following image, we’ve changed the color and size of the review content, known as the ‘Review Paragraph.’

You can even show or remove individual elements inside each post.

For example, you may want to remove the review text and show only the image, rating, and author image.

You can also add a ‘load more’ button, replace the default header with your own messaging, enable a fancy lightbox popup, and more. Just explore the settings and tweak them until your feed looks exactly the way you want.

10. Filters and Moderation Tools

While Smash Balloon is great at automatically fetching your latest social media posts, you might not want to display every single post on your online marketplace or website.

That’s where Smash Balloon’s filtering and moderation tools come in handy. They give you the power to curate your social feeds and make sure you’re only showcasing the content that truly aligns with your brand and goals. For example, you might only show reviews that have a minimum star rating.

You can also filter reviews based on their content. For example, you might hide all tagged Instagram posts that include the name of your biggest competitor.

You can even get super specific and only show reviews that include a particular word or phrase, like the name of a specific product you’re promoting on that landing page.

And if you want ultimate control, Smash Balloon’s moderation tools let you hand-pick the posts that appear in your feed.

It’s as simple as checking a box to show or hide individual posts.

This gives you the final say in what your audience sees, ensuring your social feeds always reflect the best of your brand.

11. Add Feeds to any Page, Post, or Widget-Ready Area

No Smash Balloon review would be complete without covering how easy they make it to actually display your social media feeds. With Smash Balloon, you can use a block, widget, or shortcode to show the feed on any page, post, or widget-ready area. This gives you the flexibility to add feeds anywhere you want.

The simplest way is to use the Smash Balloon block.

If you’re using a block-enabled theme, then this block works with the full-site editor.

In this way, you can add a social feed to areas of your site that you can’t change using the standard WordPress content editor, such as your site’s 404 page template.

12. Feed Analytics

Now, Smash Balloon doesn’t just stop at making your social feeds look pretty. It actually helps you understand how those feeds are performing on your website.

The built-in Feed Analytics dashboard provides a clear and easy-to-understand overview of how your audience is interacting with your social content. You can see key metrics like how many clicks your posts are getting, how many times they’re being viewed, and even how many people are visiting your social media profiles from your website.

This helps you identify your most popular content and understand what’s driving traffic to your social channels.

And if you want to dig deeper, you can use the filtering options to analyze data by specific date ranges, platforms, or even individual feeds. This granular level of detail allows you to really understand what’s resonating with your audience and make data-driven decisions to optimize your social media strategy.

13. Downtime Prevention

Now, let’s talk about keeping those social feeds running smoothly, even when things go wrong. Smash Balloon has a clever backup caching system that ensures your embedded content stays visible on your website, even if the social media platform itself is having a meltdown.

Smash Balloon will also store images locally, so they’re always available and load quickly. So, if Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform experiences downtime, your feeds will still be there, keeping your website looking good and your visitors engaged.

In fact, the first time a new post appears in your feed, Smash Balloon uses an AJAX call to resize and optimize all its images. This allows you to show beautiful photos in a custom Instagram feed, Facebook feed, and more, without affecting your site speed.

But that’s not all. Smash Balloon also has an intelligent error reporting system, so if any problems pop up, you’ll get alerts and notifications right in your WordPress dashboard. This allow you to spot problems as soon as they happen, and fix them quickly.

14. Optimized For Speed

We all know that speed is important, right? If your site is slow to load, then search engines such as Google may show your content lower in the search results. By boosting your WordPress speed and performance, you can often improve your search engine rankings and the visitor experience.

Our web design industry statistics show just how crucial speed is: pages that load in 2 seconds have a bounce rate of just 9%. But if your page takes 6 seconds, that bounce rate skyrockets to 46%. Yikes!

Unfortunately, many social media plugins make lots of external requests, which can slow down your website. But Smash Balloon is different. Its built with performance in mind, in that it intelligently caches different parts of your feed and only loads additional data later when needed. This means your pages load faster initially, and those pesky external requests are kept to a minimum.

Another problem is that social media plugins often only provide limited image sizes. Typically, these are too large to display properly on your WordPress website, bogging things down without adding any real value.

As already mentioned, Smash Balloon automatically resizes and optimizes images before showing them in your feed. Plus, it stores them locally, so they load lightning-fast without needing to fetch them from the social media platform every time.

And here’s the real kicker: Smash Balloon requests all new content in the background based on a schedule. This means the latest posts are already cached and ready to go before your page even loads, giving your visitors a smooth, seamless experience.

15. Improve Your WordPress SEO

This is a big one! What about SEO?

Many third-party platforms provide iFrame code that you can just paste into your site to embed content. For example, you can add YouTube videos to your site using iFrame code.

But here’s the catch: iFrames prevent search engines from crawling the embedded content.

Smash Balloon takes a different approach. It embeds social media content directly into your web page so search engines can read it. This means those juicy keywords from your social media posts and reviews become part of your WordPress SEO, giving you a boost in the rankings.

But it gets even better. Smash Balloon automatically fetches new social posts and reviews, keeping your content fresh and dynamic. And guess what? Search engines love fresh content! In this way, Smash Balloon can help you avoid content decay while also boosting your WordPress SEO.

If you want to learn more about creating a content strategy that keeps your website fresh and search engine-friendly, check out our guide on creating an effective content plan in WordPress.

And because Smash Balloon is built for speed, you can embed all sorts of multimedia content without worrying about slowing down your site or hurting your Google PageSpeed score.

If you’re curious how your website’s speed measures up, see our guide on how to properly run a website speed test.

16. GDPR Compliance

Now, let’s talk about keeping your website on the right side of the law. In 2018, the European Union (EU) introduced a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law that affects many websites and online businesses.

Basically, GDPR says you need to get clear permission before you collect or use any personal data from people in the EU. This means visitors must give you permission to collect their data.

Smash Balloon is designed to help you stay GDPR-compliant. If you’ve installed one of the popular GDPR consent plugins such as Cookiebot or Complianz, then Smash Balloon will automatically show a GDPR-compliant version of your feed until the visitors gives you permission to use cookies.

This might mean hiding certain things like photos or videos initially.

But as soon as the visitor gives their consent, Smash Balloon will reveal all that extra content automatically.

Even if you’re not using a compliance plugin, you can enable Smash Balloon’s GDPR mode.

This blocks any third-party requests and only displays content that’s stored locally on your website, ensuring you’re not collecting any personal data without permission.

17. Professional and Community Support

As we saw in this Smash Balloon review, this plugin suite makes it super easy to bring all kinds of social media feeds to your WordPress website. However, sometimes we all need a bit of extra help!

If you like to figure things out on your own, then Smash Balloon has detailed online documentation. This was my go-to resource while writing this Smash Balloon review.

It also has a blog where you’ll find step-by-step guides covering everything from how to use specific Smash Balloon features, right through to general advice such as how to get more social media followers and engagement. It’s like having a Smash Balloon expert in your corner.

The best part? All these resources are available to everyone, no matter whether you’re using the free Smash Balloon plugins or a premium version.

If you do invest in a Smash Ballon license, then you’ll get access to professional support.

Simply raise a support request in your account, and a member of the Smash Balloon team will respond as soon as possible. They’re dedicated to making sure you have a smooth and successful experience with Smash Balloon.

Smash Balloon Review: Pricing and Plans

If you want to try before you buy, then Smash Balloon has released plugins for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube over at the official WordPress.org repository. There’s also a free Reviews Feed plugin that can embed Google and Yelp reviews on your WordPress website.

But if you want to unlock the full power of Smash Balloon (things like extra feed types, fancy layouts, moderation features, and more) you’ll want to grab a premium license.

Smash Balloon has a premium plugin for each platform, plus a fantastic value bundle that gives you access to everything:

• Facebook Feed Pro. With prices starting at $49 per year, this plugin lets you embed a Facebook event calendar plus albums, photos, videos, and more. You can even display likes, shares, comments, and reactions to boost social proof.
• Instagram Feed Pro. With plans ranging from $49-149, you can create feeds using hashtags, tagged posts, and Instagram stories. If you run an online store, then you can also create shoppable Instagram feeds.
• Twitter Feed Pro. Staring at $49, this plugin can embed full size photos and videos in a customizable Twitter feed. It also unlocks carousel and slideshow layouts, plus powerful moderation tools to curate your content.
• YouTube Feed Pro. With prices ranging from $49-$149 per year, this advanced plugin can embed YouTube livestreams in WordPress, along with playlists and favorites. It also uses smart video player loading and caching so you can display tons of videos without slowing down your site.
• Reviews Feed Pro. Starting at $49, you can embed reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook, Trustpilot, WordPress.org and TripAdvisor. It also has advanced moderation and filtering settings, so you can control exactly what content appears on your WordPress site.
• TikTok Feeds Pro. With prices ranging from $49-$149 per year, this plugin can display all your latest TikToks in WordPress. In this way, you can highlight your newest videos, get more engagement, and drive more people to your TikTok profile.
• All Access Bundle. For $299, this bundle includes all the plugins I mentioned above, plus Social Wall. This bundle is a steal if you’re active on multiple platforms and want to maximize your social media impact on your website.

So, whether you need a single plugin to showcase your Instagram feed or the whole suite to create a social media powerhouse on your website, Smash Balloon has a solution to fit your needs and budget.

Smash Balloon Review – Is it Worth It?

Let’s wrap up this Smash Balloon review. After putting this plugin suite to the test, I’m confident in saying it’s the best way to bring your social media presence to life on your WordPress website.

If you’re looking for a free social feed plugin, then Smash Balloon has released lite plugins for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. There’s also a free Reviews Feed plugin that can embed Yelp and Google Business on your website.

These free plugins give you a taste of what Smash Balloon can do, with a user-friendly editor and some basic layouts and templates. But if you really want to create eye-catching social feeds with advanced features like lightbox popups, more customization options, and extra feed types, you’ll want to unlock the power of the premium versions.

While any of the individual premium plugins are a great investment, my top recommendation is the All-Access Bundle. For $299, you get all the premium Smash Balloon plugins, plus the Social Wall plugin, which lets you combine posts from different platforms into a single, dynamic feed.

I hope this Smash Balloon review helped you decide whether it is the best social feed plugin for WordPress. Next, you may want to check out our guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress, or see our expert pick of the best giveaway and contest plugins.

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