How to add social media share buttons to your WordPress site

August 6. 2019

When was the last time you met someone who didn’t have a social media account? Be it Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, we live in the age where every person you know is only a few clicks away. As a business and website owner, you would be foolish not to use the advantages that are right at your fingertips. If you add social media share buttons to your WordPress site, you are directly getting a chance to boost traffic and page views. After all, what a better place for lots of people to view your post than social media – any social media? And if you don’t know how to add the social media share option, worry not. That’s why you have our experienced WP Full Care team for!

The three plugins that allow you to add social media share buttons easily

What would WordPress be without the famous plugins? They allow all sorts of cool features to be added to your WordPress website, letting you focus at different aspects at the same time. Want to create a multilingual website? Turn to plugins. In need of an additional button for social media sharing? Once again, designated plugins are the answer. While there are many plugins that will be able to do this job, we’ll focus on the three we think will deliver the best results and are the easiest to use:

• Jetpack
• Orbit Fox Companion
• Social Pug

Jetpack

As a plugin designed for WordPress websites, Jetpack offers a whole spectrum of cool features. From security to performance and site management tools, you name it, Jetpack has it! That’s why it’s not surprising that it’s also one of the three best plugins for adding social media share buttons. For this purpose, it’s the Sharing module you are interested in. This module allows you to add social media share buttons to your site, as well as your posts, making it rather easy for social media users to share your content on their channels. With Jetpack supporting a wide array of different networks, you’ll never have to worry about your posts being unnoticed.

Once you install Jetpack, it’s time you activated these buttons. Head over to Jetpack – Settings – Sharing and add the Add sharing to your posts button. That was the first step. The second one is going back to the menu and repeating the Settings – Sharing process. Under Sharing Buttons, you will see an Enabled Services option. Drag all of the services into the Enabled Services box. If you are in the mood to personalize your social media share buttons, you can alter the button style, change its position, and even alter the labeling. Once you are satisfied with how everything looks, go to Live Preview and see how well the design you made fits in with your website. If you think you did a perfect job, go to Save Changes and voila – you’ve successfully added social media share buttons to your WordPress website!

Orbit Fox Companion

The second plugin on our list is Orbit Fox Companion – a plugin designed to improve your site’s functionality. It’s true that for a site to be functional, it doesn’t necessarily have to have social media share buttons. But it certainly helps a lot. Orbit Fox Companion as a plugin has over 20 different social media buttons you can choose from. But that’s not all! You can also customize those buttons and even turn on or off share buttons depending on a user’s device. If you went the extra mile to ensure you have a mobile-friendly website, we are sure you’ll do everything to add these buttons for mobile users, as well.

How do you activate social media share buttons with Orbit Fox Companion? Once the plugin is installed, the course of action you should follow is Tools – Orbit Fox Companion – Available Modules – Social Sharing Module. Activate the social sharing module and start configuring it according to your preferences. Once again, you can decide on the position of your button, which devices you want it displayed on, and whether to show each network’s name when users hover over an icon. Once you are done customizing, click save, and relax – you did your job!

Social Pug

Social Pug is another great plugin people have been opting for lately. It’s completely free, so that’s certainly an alluring fact. We have to be honest and admit that the Social Pug plugin does have a major con – it only supports the five main networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest). However, it also offers something other plugins don’t, and that’s a share count for each network.

How does one activate social media share buttons once they opt for Social Pug? Once you install and activate the plugin, go to Social Pug – Toolkit from your site’s menu. Then, you’ll have to make an important decision – whether you want your buttons to show as Inline Content or as a Floating Sidebar. Choose wisely and when you make your choice, go to Settings. Once again, you get to the point where you get to personalize the buttons. We won’t dwell on this part for too long, as you’ll have to see it to understand it. But it’s very easy – we promise. Once you create the final look of your social media share buttons, click Save.

Congratulations on adding social media share buttons!

With a bit of effort, you’ve managed to add social media share buttons to your WordPress site. Now everyone will be able to share your content. Finally, your high-impact landing pages will become just that – highly impactful! By reaching a wider audience, you’ll be able to achieve all sorts of goals. And you’ll soon wonder why you didn’t activate social media share buttons a long time ago! But don’t feel any regrets – better late than never, right?