It’s time to find out how to add share buttons to your website! In this post I will show you how to display those nice social share buttons on your WordPress site for free, and provide helpful tips.
Hi and welcome to this blog, written with you in mind. Since you are here, it means you understand Engagement with the social networks is an important aspect every site on the Internet needs to address, and rightly so, simply because there is no other virtual medium gathering as many people, who are interacting at so many levels, from personal to commercial and everything in between.
Now that you have set up your site and are working to make it the best it can be, you want to find out how to furnish your website with attractive sharing buttons for your visitors to share what you have to offer. If you want to get it done without suffering from mental fog in the process: Great, I can help!
When I was ready to take that step for this blog I knew I needed an effective and easy to use plugin, because I’m definitely not technically savvy, but, there are so many choices out there, selecting the right one is sure to be a daunting process. Moreover, I didn’t want to have to pay for it, and probably neither do you, so here I am passing onto you what I have learned about them and how I resolved this issue, in order to help you get it done quickly, for free.
What is The Best Sharing Plugin?
The truth is there is no one solution perfect for everyone. The performance of any given plugin can be affected by different factors, such as your chosen theme, other plugins, etc. Ultimately, what you desire to accomplish will determine what is best for you. Having said that, with a little help from my friends I found out there are a few favorites for various reasons, and I made my pick based on their feedback for best results. I’ll let you know all about it so you can also take advantage.
Before that, note there are two different types of social media icon buttons: On one hand you have the follow buttons, which are meant to link your site’s visitors to your social network page(s), and on the other hand the buttons your readers would use for sharing your content with their followers on the social networks, so let’s read about these.
How I Made my Choice
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The Wealthy Affiliate community is amazing when it comes to answering questions and providing assistance, so naturally, I turned to my fellow WA members to see what they felt was the best choice of a social plugin, and the one concern that stood out for most was loading speed. You see, generally unoptimized images and heavy plugins, or too many, are the culprits for slow loading sites. Loading speed is important for best user experience (UX) and hence better search engine ranking.
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Many of my WA friends agreed Social Warfare is very light-weight, which makes it unlikely to conflict with other aspects of your site. It has great customization options, which also attracted the interest of others in the discussion who expressed their intention to try it, since changing one plugin of this type to another of its kind should not cause any problems, except losing previous records of shares. In any case, it is always advised to back up your site before making changes; no worries for me here, since all of us WA Premium members are covered with daily back-ups.
What’s more, the icons provided by this plugin are beautiful and are sure to increase shares and drive traffic to our blogs or websites, so I gave it a go.
For a step-by-step set-up tutorial of
the FREE Social Warfare plugin…
Other Popular Choices
Additional social plugins that were favored by my WA buddies include:
• AddToAny
This is a popular and trusted plugin, since it has been around for a while, with good results for its users. It features a few official icons and makes it possible to share with quite a few networks. What would attract me to it most is the inclusion of email sharing and follow buttons.
It appears WA members using this plugin are quite happy with it, which means I would consider it if there is a need for a change on my site. If you would like to try AddToAny or find out more about it,
visit its WordPress page (opens in a new tab).
• Sumo
What folks favoring this one like is the many features designed to enhance your social engagement strategy and increase earning potential, but of course, the more you use, the more you will pay, and the heavier load on your site’s speed; although they offer a basic version for free, as your traffic increases, its cost will be increasingly higher.
One of its most prominent characteristics is the use of pop-ups in order to help encourage your readers to join your email list and present your call-to-action. There are other interesting features as well, so suffice it to say that Sumo is a lot more than just social sharing buttons. If you would like to learn about it or try it out,
visit its WordPress page (opens in a new tab).
• Shareaholic
Here’s another one that goes beyond just sharing buttons; it’s touted to be an all-in-one free content amplification platform. It provides for related content recommendations, social sharing, following, social analytics, adding promoted content, native ads and affiliate links.
Additionally, it features four theme layouts to choose from: Classic, Flat Square, Flat Circle and Sexy. You can also customize its layout, size, colors and headline.
It sounds interesting, but, I would expect it to affect loading speed somewhat. If you would like to try it or find out more about it,
visit its WordPress page (opens in a new tab).
Final Words
Well, now you know how to add share buttons to your website; I sincerely hope you get lots of traffic as a result. As stated before, there are so many plugins available out there it’s easy to go crazy, but, remember they can also slow down your site’s loading speed or create conflict, so be careful.
Thanks for reading, and please let me know in the section below if you have any comments or questions – I am here to help.
If you think your friends might benefit as well, please share this post.
Helping you prosper,
Edwin
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Thanks, Edwin, for your post. Social media sharing buttons are important, and thank goodness there are several choices because it’s kind of a personal decision for each website owner. I use Ultimate Social Media Plus, which you didn’t mention in your post. Do you have a feel for how many buttons to have? I have buttons for google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Hello Grant, and thanks for your comment.
Yes, there are still a number of other options out there; I have only mentioned here the ones I considered before making my choice. As far as how many buttons to display, it is believed that too many options might be confusing or overwhelming, so no more than 6 should be OK.
Best wishes!