Do you want to incorporate social sharing buttons into your WordPress site? People spend a lot of time on the internet on social media websites.
You can use social media to increase user engagement and attract new visitors to your site. Adding social sharing buttons to WordPress posts and pages is the simplest way to accomplish this.
We’ll show you how to easily add social share buttons and display share counts in WordPress in this article. We will go over some few approaches, like adding social buttons above and below post content or creating a floating share bar.
Why Should You Use WordPress’s Social Share Buttons?
Today’s most popular online activity is social networking. Around 2.77 billion people will be using social media by the end of 2019. (Source)
As a result, social media marketing has become an essential component of any company’s growth strategy. If you want to communicate with a larger number of potential customers, social media platforms are a great place to start.
The issue is that when you share your content on your own social media profiles, it only reaches a small number of people.
Adding social sharing buttons to your WordPress site is the best way to reach out to people who don’t follow your company on social media.
Your website visitors can share your content on their social media timelines by using social share buttons. This allows their friends and followers to see your content, which they can then like, comment on, and re-share.
Including social sharing buttons on your website can assist you in achieving the following goals:
- Increase your website’s traffic.
- Gain more followers on social media.
- Increase the number of sales and leads you generate.
- Increase brand awareness and social proof.
After that, let’s look at how to add social share buttons to your WordPress site.
Using WordPress to Add Social Share Buttons
We’ll be using the Shared Counts plugin in this tutorial. It is the most effective WordPress social media plugin on the market.
You can easily add social share buttons to your WordPress posts and display the share counts with this plugin. The best part is that it is performance-optimized and will not slow down your website.
Unlike other social sharing plugins, Shared Counts employs a unique caching technique that has a minimal impact on the speed and performance of your website.
The first step is to install and activate the Shared Counts plugin on your WordPress site. See our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more information.
After installing the plugin, go to the Settings » SharedCounts menu to configure the plugin’s settings.
Then, scroll down to the ‘Display’ section and select the share buttons you want to show. Three buttons are selected by default (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest).
You can add additional share buttons by clicking on the white area in the field.
After that, select a share button style from the “Share Button Style” dropdown menu. The Shared Counts plugin includes eight different button styles.
After that, you must choose the theme location where you want the social share buttons to appear. There are three options available: before content, after content, and both before and after content.
Finally, you must select the post types that are supported. It is set to ‘post’ by default.
Check the box next to the page option if you do want the share buttons to show up on your pages as well as other post types.
Remember to click the Save Changes button to save your changes.
After that, you can also see the social sharing buttons in action on almost any post on your website. On the default Twenty Nineteen theme, this is how our demo website looks with the ‘Classic’ button style.
How do I show the number of social shares in WordPress?
The Shared Counts plugin, as the name implies, can display your social share counts without slowing down your website.
You’ll need to go to the Shared Counts settings and set up the share count source to enable social share counts.
The ‘Share Counts’ settings are located at the top of the Shared Counts settings window.
The None option for ‘Count Source’ is selected by default, which means that share counts are not retrieved and displayed.
You have two options for displaying social share counts.
The plugin’s most recommended option is SharedCount.com. The counts are retrieved from the SharedCount service API if you select this option. It allows you to get all counts with only two API calls, which is the most efficient method.
When you select ‘Native,’ share numbers are acquired from the relevant social service, such as Facebook API for Facebook counts and Pinterest API for Pin counts. Because this method necessitates several API calls, it may cause your site to lag down.
As a count source, we propose using SharedCount.com. After that, there will be a field for the SharedCount API key.
Sign up for a free account on SharedCount.com to obtain access to the SharedCount API.
Fill in your email address as well as a password. Then select Create Account from the drop-down menu.
Your email address will now receive a confirmation link from the website. To verify, you must click the link.
You must log into your SharedCount account and navigate to your account at the upper right side of the screen once your email has been authenticated. Your email address will be displayed with a dropdown icon next to it.
Following that, pick ‘Settings’ from the drop-down menu. Your SharedCount API key can be found here.
You must copy the API key and return to your WordPress site’s plugin settings page. Now copy the API key and put it into the ‘SharedCount API Key’ field.
You’ll find some extra settings connected to social sharing numbers below that. You can go through them and make changes if you like.
Check the box next to the ‘Count Total Only’ option if you only want to see total counts.
Checking the box to hide empty counts instead of displaying a zero is also a good idea (0).
In the Display section, you’ll notice a new field called “Total Counts.” This enables you to display the total number of shares alongside your share buttons.
Remember to select the ‘Save changes’ button to save your changes.
You can now go to your website and view the social sharing icons for each blog article, along with the number of shares.
On Selected Pages, Adding Social Share Buttons
Social share buttons aren’t typically added to WordPress pages, but you might want to enable them on some special pages.
If that’s the case, you can utilize the [shared counts] shortcode.
To display the share buttons, place this shortcode anywhere on your website.
In the WordPress block editor, there is a shortcode block that may be used to add shortcodes.
Simply put the Shared Counts shortcode after adding the block to your content area.
You may place social share buttons almost anywhere on your site by using the shortcode.
Using WordPress to Add a Floating Social Share Bar
You can use the Shared Counts plugin to add social share buttons above, below, or both above and below content. These sharing buttons aren’t always visible because they’re static.
A floating social sharing bar is another popular approach to display social sharing buttons. It’s a social sharing menu that appears when people scroll down their displays.
The floating social share bar, unlike the usual sharing buttons, will be visible the entire time a user reads your content. Making them more visible as well as assisting you in increasing social sharing.
Some user experience experts claim that because it fills in the empty space on your website, it makes it look ugly. If you maintain it clean, however, it can be pretty beneficial.
You’ll need to install and activate the Sassy Social Share plugin to get the floating social share buttons.
When you activate the plugin, it will add a new menu item to your WordPress admin sidebar called ‘Sassy Social Share.’ It will send you to the plugin’s settings page if you click on it.
You must first select an icon style. There are square, rounded, and rectangle buttons included with the plugin. Both the floating social share bar and the conventional share bar have different styles.
After that, navigate to the ‘Standard Interface’ tab. The basic static social sharing buttons can be enabled or disabled from here.
Floating or static social buttons are both recommended. Using both of them would be excessive and could result in a poor user experience.
Then, on the ‘Floating Interface’ page, check the box next to the ‘Enable Floating sharing interface’ option.
Then you must decide which social networking websites you want to display. You may drag and drop buttons to add or delete them and reorganize them.
To save your settings, click the ‘Save Changes’ button after you’re ready.
You can now view floating social share icons in action on your website. This is how it appeared on our test website.
We hope that this post has shown you how to add social share buttons to your WordPress site.
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