Do you want to add social media share buttons to your WordPress blog? Then, this is the right article for you.
Allowing your visitors to share your content on social media networks is a great way of boosting traffic and pageviews. This helps to build user engagement as well as brings new users to your website. Hence, adding social share buttons is a crucial job for every website.
So, in this guide, we’ll be showing you how easily you can add social media share buttons and display share counts in WordPress.
Let’s get started!
Why Add Social Sharing to Your WordPress Website?
If you run a business but don’t have a strong game on social media, then there’s a high chance that you could lose huge numbers of potential customers.
That’s because a large number of people are online via social media platforms. And, some of them may be people with intent to buy from you.
Adding social media share buttons to your WordPress blog helps you reach those people on social media, create interest in your products, and ultimately turn them into buying customers.
The process is simple! First, the social share buttons encourage your website visitors to share your content on their social media account. Once shared on social media, your content will be seen by more new people on the social platform. Then, they may visit your website using that link or reshare the content via their profiles.
As a result, your site will get more traffic, and also you may gain more social media followers. Hence, adding social sharing in WordPress is a simple yet very useful digital marketing strategy nowadays.
Now having said that, let’s look at how easily you can add social share buttons in WordPress.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using two different social media plugins to demonstrate how to add social media share buttons to WordPress. They are:
- Sassy Social Share
- Shared Counts.
Now let’s check out the process of adding social sharing in WordPress step-by-step.
Sassy Social Share is a lightweight and easy-to-use WordPress social sharing plugin. It allows you to easily add social share buttons in your WordPress blog and display the share counts.
The best part is that it’s free to download and free to use. Hence, it helps share your content on several popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.
Now, let’s go ahead and add social sharing in WordPress using this plugin step-by-step.
Step 1: Install Sassy Social Share Plugin on Your Website
The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Sassy Social Share. For that, you first have to log in to your WordPress dashboard and then go to Plugins > Add New.
After that at the very top, on the right-hand side, you would see the search field. There type in Sassy Social Share and find the plugin.
Once you found your plugin click on the Install Now button. After installing it, click on the Activate button.
That’s it! Now the Sassy Social Share is fully installed on your website.
Step 2: Choose the Styles for Your Sharing Buttons
After you’ve installed the plugin, you need to go to your admin area, and search for Sassy Social Share in the menu and click then click on it. This will take you to the plugin settings page.
Firstly, you need to choose the styles for your sharing icons. Here, you change the shape of the sharing icons into either round, square, or rectangle. Similarly, you can change the size, logo color, background color, and border of the sharing icons.
Once you have finished choosing the design of the buttons, click on the Save Changes to store your settings.
Step 3: Choose the Social Networks That You Want to Add to Your Website
You need to choose the social networks that you want to add to your WordPress website. For that, you need to go to the Standard Interface tab.
From there you’ll be able to choose the number of social sharing services and specify where you want to display your sharing buttons.
On just scrolling down a bit you’ll see a section where you can select different sharing services. At the same time, you can also rearrange the icons in the desired order by dragging them.
Step 4: Choose Where You Want to Display the Buttons
Now once you’ve selected the social networks, you can choose where you want to display your sharing buttons. For that, just scroll down and you’ll see a section called Placement. There you’ll find all the places where you can add your sharing buttons.
Followed by that, you then have to choose the position where you want to display your button. You can either place it on the top or bottom of the content. At last, you can click on the Save Changes button.
Hence, this is how you successfully add your sharing buttons to your WordPress website.
Adding Floating Social Share Buttons in WordPress with Sassy Social Share
We just now looked at how we can add social share buttons above content, below content, or both. The thing about these kinds of share buttons is that it’s static and may not be visible all the time.
Hence, there is also another way of displaying social share buttons on your WordPress blog. You can do so by adding a floating social share interface. With a floating social bar, you’ll be able to see the share buttons the whole time as it sticks on your screen as you scroll down.
The best part is that the plugin Sassy Social Share plugin includes this feature also. Now, let’s go ahead and see how to add floating social share buttons in WordPress using this plugin.
To add this you need to go to the Floating Interface section. And then you just have to click on the checkbox next to the “Enable Floating sharing interface” option.
Just like in Standard Interface, here you can also select social sharing services and specify the location where you want it to be. At last, you can click on the Save Changes button.
Now you can see that you have a floating social sharing button on your website.
Display Social Share Counts in WordPress Using Sassy Social Share
Not only different ways to add social share buttons, but Sassy Social Share also lets you show social share counts. You can show total share in all social networks as well as the share counts for individual social platforms.
Here we’re going to see how you can show the number of shares next to your share button. So, to show the number of shares you’ve to go to the Standard Interface section.
After that, you need to scroll down and you’ll get an option called “Show total shares”. Then, you just have to enable it by clicking the checkbox and click on the Save Changes button.
That’s it! This is how you display the social share counts on your WordPress website.
Next, we’re going to look at the most easy-to-use WordPress plugin – Shared Counts. This plugin allows you to easily add social media share buttons to the WordPress blog.
Likewise, it also allows you to display the share counts. The best thing is that it’s built with site performance in mind, so it doesn’t slow down your website.
Now, let’s go ahead and add social sharing in WordPress using Shared Counts step-by-step.
Step 1: Install Shared Counts Plugin on Your Website
To use this plugin you’ve to install and activate the Shared Counts plugin from WordPress official plugin directory.
Just like Sassy Social Share, find the plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository. And then click on the Install Now button.
Step 2: Choose the Social Networks
Once you have installed the plugin, you need to go to Settings > Shared Counts menu. This will take you to the plugin settings page.
After that scroll down a bit to the Display section.
There, you’ll be able to choose different share buttons that you want to display on your website. It supports social services like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more.
By default, it’ll have already selected three buttons for you (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest). But, if you want to add more then click on the search field and search for the share buttons that you want.
Step 3: Choose the Style for Your Share Buttons
Similarly, you can also style your share button. For that, you need to click on the dropdown menu next to Share Button Style. It’ll then list you eight different beautiful share button styles.
Step 4: Choose the Theme Location to Display the Buttons
After that, just below it, you can select the theme location where you want to display the social share buttons. It provides three options – Before Content, After Content, or Before and After Content.
You can also select which content types you would like to display the share button on. Finally, you can now click on the Save Changes button to save your settings.
That’s it! This is how you easily add social share buttons to your WordPress blog. As you can see, it takes just a few steps!
Display Social Share Counts in WordPress with Shared Counts Plugin
As we said earlier, Shared Counts also allows you to display your social share counts without slowing down your website. For that, you have to go to Settings > Shared Counts menu.
Step 1: Choose the Source of Share Counts
At the top of the settings page, you’ll find the Share Counts section. There in the Count Source, you’ll see the None option selected by default. This means that it’ll not be able to display the share counts on your website.
Therefore, if you want to display the social share counts then you’ll be provided with two options i.e. SharedCount.com or Native.
If you go with ‘SharedCount.com’ then your social share counts will be retrieved from the SharedCount.com API.
Likewise, Native will retrieve the counts from their native service. For example, Facebook API for Facebook counts and Pinterest API for Pin counts.
However, the most recommended one would be to go with SharedCount.com. So, we’ll show you how you can add share counts using SharedCount.com.
Once you select it, more options will be popped up just below the Count Share field. There you’ll find an option for adding a SharedCount API Key.
Therefore, you need to sign up on SharedCount.com for your free API key.
Step 2: Create an Account in SharedCount.com
While signing up it’ll ask you for your email id and password and then click on Create Account.
Step 3: Find Your SharedCount API Key
Once you have created the account, it’ll take you to the Account Settings page and there you’ll find your SharedCount API key.
Step 4: Copy and Paste Your SharedCount API Key
You need to then copy that API key and paste it in the SharedCount API Key field.
Likewise, just below it, you would also get an option whether to enable counts for Twitter and Yummly. If you enable it then it’ll separately pull the counts from their official API.
Step 5: Enable Count Total Only
After that, you can also enable the box next to Count Total Only if you want to show the total count. Besides that, we also recommend you all to enable Hide Empty Counts. Because this allows you to hide empty counts instead of displaying zero (0) counts.
Finally, don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to save your settings.
This is how you add social share buttons with share count in the WordPress blog using the Shared Counts plugin.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you with how to add social media share buttons to a WordPress blog. Using this guide, you can easily add social sharing options above and below content in your WordPress articles. Also, you learnt how to add a floating social bar on your WordPress site.
We also believe that you can now also display share counts to your website without any hassle.
If you’ve any further queries about how to add a social share button to a WordPress blog, then please leave a comment below. We’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
And, if you need help on getting started, then make sure to check our step-by-step guide on how to make a website. Also, take a look at our article on what is digital marketing to promote your business and grow.
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