How-to

– 8 min read –

September 3, 2019

How to add social share buttons to the website

Likes and shares allow you to advertise yourself on social networks with the help of users and employees of the company who share your content on personal pages. We will understand how to add convenient buttons to the website and increase your presence in social networks.

Why are likes and share on the website

In the era of social networks, there is a need to create a website's interaction with social networks in order to reach its audience to the maximum. For a number of topics, especially news, the "Share on social networks" buttons are a must-have. If you add the share buttons, users will advertise your website in one click or will express their loyalty to the content with like, their friends will also see it, for example, on Facebook.

Thanks to the counters, visitors can see that your audience is loyal and the platform is popular. This will affect on behavioral factors. And the behavioral factors will improve the positions in the SERP. Technically, when you click "Share", the title, picture, part of the content and the link to the article are copied. A publishing is automatically created in the visitor's personal account, and all subscribers will see it.

Buttons of social networks in the article

Like buttons at the bottom of the article

Buttons allow you to post a link on your website in social network, which greatly dilutes the link popularity. The presence of these buttons improves the usability of the website, helping the user to make a quick exchange of information.

Imagine the situation that the visitor was interested in the event, which is described on your poster-website. And if you do not set the button to share the event, the user has to save the link to the page, go to the social network or messenger, insert the link and send it. As a rule, he will not want to spend time on it and leaves the page.

Let's go to the installation.

Installing the Like and Share buttons on your website

You can install buttons for your website in several ways. One of them is to manually generate a code that is embedded on a web resource. The second - the automatic method - involves the installation of special plugins.

Forming code for buttons

Let's consider the generation of buttons code for example of Facebook. Follow the link to the button configurator. The configurator allows you to customize the appearance of the buttons, the size and enable the share option.

Select the button type for the website in "Composition". In the bottom field, the picture will change according to the type of you choose. Look at several options and determine the appropriate to the overall style of your web resource.

Set the "Action Type" - like or repost. If you want to add only one button to the website, select it in this field. If you want both, select the like button, as share (recommend) will join later:

the type of action buttons to Facebook site

Select the size of the buttons. Start from how harmoniously the buttons look on the website. There are examples in the bottom field:

To add a share button to the like button, put a tick under the settings box:

The final step - click "Get Code". The code element should be transferred to the main code of the page where the buttons should appear. If these are articles, the buttons are usually placed after the text.

Example of code which adds likes and shares to the website:

Automatic button placement

If you are not ready to edit the website code and understand its nuances by yourself, configure the buttons automatically via plugins. Ready solutions designed for almost all CMS and it is easy to find in the platform stores. To add a plugin for WordPress, go to the admin panel in the "Plugins" section and click the "Add New" button. In the search field, enter the request shares likes.

Let's consider a few plugins for example.

Easy Social Share Buttons

Easy Social Share Buttons is a paid plugin which supports more than 40 social networks. Its advantage is in functionality. It allows you to place a button bar anywhere, use a subscriber counter, track performance metrics, and more. The plugin offers more than 25 different templates for its icons.

Activation of the plugin costs $ 12. After it, you can go to the settings of the buttons.

Choose the first "Social Networks" configurator, to mark the required social networks:

In the settings menu "Templates & Style" define the appearance of the icons, that is, the template that will look best on your website:

Using the "Share Counters" section, set a counter that will record the number of users who made a repost, if you need it:

In the "Analytics" menu, if necessary, you can set tracking of the likes and shares. Adjust the position of the icons on the website in the section "Where to Display":

Like and Share Counter Position for WordPress

Proven Strategies To Automate Your Ecommerce Growth or SUMO is a free plugin that contains a floating or static bar with social networking buttons.

After installation, register to activate the plugin. Enter e-mail and password:

After registering, log in and go to the personal account of the plugin. Customize the buttons in the menu "Smart Bar".

The plugin allows you to show the buttons in five ways. Look through the template options, select the appropriate configurations and save the settings.

social media buttons for WordPress website

AddToAny Share Buttons

AddToAny Share Buttons has similar functionality as previous plugins. The difference is that it supports more than 90 social networks, communities and services. Install the plugin according to the standard scheme. Go to settings:

setting AddToAny Share plug-in for WordPress

Customize the size of the icons, their location on the website, style. Save the changes.

Setting up likes in AddToAny Share plugin

Conclusion

The likes and shares buttons allow users to share links to your content with friends in social networks. When a website visitor clicks on the share button, the link to the page, part of the content and image are copied. The publication is created automatically in network on the personal account page. The like button allows you to mark your favorite materials outside the social network feed.

Mentions in a social network is a way to your target audience in an indirect way. Links in social networks suggest to search engine that the publication of the website "X" is marked by users, which means the content is useful.

The buttons are set:

manually, by embedding a code snippet into the pages;
automatically, by using plugins.

To create a code snippet for a social network, such as Facebook, go to its configurator. Set the parameters: the appearance of the icons, dimensions, and click on the "Get code" button. Transfer the code to the website page.

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