Are you looking for the easiest way to add social share buttons in WordPress? Luckily, you have come to the right place. This article shares with you some useful methods by using free plugins to handle this issue effectively.
Why should you add social share buttons in WordPress?
Nowadays, social media platforms are growing more and more. They are perfect places where you grow your business and reach a large number of new online customers. And in order to fully take advantage of these platforms, you need to give your audience a simple way to share your valuable content to their favorite social platforms. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is by adding social share buttons on your WordPress site. Your readers will share your posts if they find them useful.
Adding social media share buttons will potentially boost your site’s traffic as well as increase backlinks to your website. As a result, you will have more opportunities to reach new customers.
How to add social share buttons in WordPress?
Method 1: Using Sassy Social Share plugin
Sassy Social Share is one of the best WordPress Social Share Plugins on the market. It is a lightweight and easy-to-use tool that allows you to easily add social share buttons in your WordPress blog and display the share counts as well. To use this tool, you can follow the steps below.
Step 1: Install the plugin
Initially, you need to install this plugin. Just go to Plugins > Add New and type the plugin’s name in the search bar to find the plugin. Then, quickly click on the Install Now button and Activate it.
Step 2: Choose the styles for your sharing buttons
Once you have installed the plugin, go to the Sassy Social Share > Sassy Social Share page from your dashboard menu. This will take you to the plugin’s Settings page.
From here, you can choose the styles for your sharing icons by changing the shape of the sharing icons into either round, square, or rectangle. In addition, you can change the size, logo color, background color, and border of the sharing icons.
If you are pleased with the appearance of your sharing icons, click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to save your selection.
Step 3: Choose the Social Networks That You Want to Add to Your Website
Now, you need to switch to the Standard Interface tab to choose the social media platforms that you want to add to your WordPress site.
Scroll down the screen and you will see a gallery of social sharing services, you can choose the number of social sharing services and specify where you want to showcase your sharing buttons. Moreover, you can rearrange the icons in the desired order by dragging them.
Step 4: Choose where to display the buttons
After you have chosen the social networks, now you can choose the place where you would like to showcase your sharing buttons.
Keep scrolling down the screen and you will see a section called Placement. Then you can check the boxes next to the places where you want to add your sharing buttons.
Moreover, you have to choose the position where you want to display your sharing buttons. You can place them at the top or bottom of your content.
Finally, don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to save your selection.
Now, you can visit your site in the front end to see the result.
Method 2: Using AddToAny Share Buttons plugin
AddToAny Share Buttons plugin is another useful and easy-to-use WordPress Social Share Plugin that helps you increase traffic and engagement by encouraging people to share your posts and pages on any service. In order to use this tool, you can follow the steps below.
Step 1: Install the plugin
The process of installing the AddToAny Share Buttons Plugin is similar to that of other plugins; you can read our guide to the Sassy Social Share plugin above.
Step 2: Configure the plugin’s settings
Once the plugin has been installed, navigate to Settings > AddToAny to open the plugin’s Settings page.
On the settings page, you can customize your sharing buttons for your WordPress site.
- Standard share button settings
Firstly, on the “Standard tab”, you can set the styles for your sharing icons by changing the icon size and background of the social media icons.
In the Share Buttons section, you will see three default icons including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You can add or remove an icon from your site by clicking on Add/Remove Services.
This will open a list of over 100 services supported by the plugin. You are free to add as many as you want.
In addition, if you scroll down the screen, you will see the Universal Button option that is used to display a popup containing other social media platforms not included in the services menu above.
You are able to tick the “Show count” box to present share counts for each page.
Have a look at the “Placement” section. There are a lot of places where you can display the share buttons. You can choose whether to display the share button at the bottom or top of your post by clicking on the Arrow symbol.
Below that, you can choose the pages that you would like to showcase the buttons on.
Next, this plugin also offers a lot of additional options for WordPress. There are Additional JavaScript to further improve the behavior of the buttons, or Additional CSS to add styling such as custom colors.
Under the Advanced options, you are able to specify a custom URL where your share icons are located. This option will replace the default share buttons on the AddToAny module.
You should note that the custom URL will be a link to a folder containing all the image share buttons. The naming convention should be like this “nameofsocial.png”. For example, the share icon for Twitter will be twitter.png.
Once you are done, let’s click on the Save Changes button.
- Floating share button settings
In addition to the standard share button, AddToAny also offers you the floating share button. This feature allows you to add a floating share button to your WordPress website.
If you prefer floating icons to standard icons, you can click on the Floating tab on the plugin’s settings page.
From here, you can choose the placement of the Vertical buttons. This is mostly for large screen devices. On most websites, it is often docked on the left side of the page. However, you can choose any place you prefer.
Under Responsiveness, you can choose the breakpoint at which the floating share button will appear. The default option is set to large screens (980 pixels).
Keep scrolling down the page and you will see the ” Horizontal Buttons” section for smartphones and small screen devices. Similarly, you can increase the icon size, adjust the position and choose to hide it on large screens.
If you are happy with your selection, click on the “Save Changes” button to finish.
Now, you can go to any post on your website to see how your share buttons appear on an individual post.
The bottom line
To sum up, adding social share buttons on your website is really necessary. It not only boosts your website traffic but also improves your website ranking on search engines. Hopefully, this guide helped you learn how to easily add social share buttons in WordPress. If you have any questions or queries, don’t be afraid to leave a comment below.
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