How to Display Twitter Followers Count as Text in WordPress

Displaying your X/Twitter followers count as text in WordPress is a great way to boost your site’s credibility. When visitors see how many people follow you on social media, they’re more likely to trust your website.

Luckily, using text to show your follower numbers is easy and convenient.

You can place this information anywhere on your site, including inside your posts and pages, making it easy to integrate with your content.

In this guide, we will show you how to display your Twitter followers count as text in WordPress.

Why Display Twitter Followers Count as Text in WordPress?

You may have noticed that many popular blogs, influencers, and big brand WordPress sites proudly show how many people follow them on social media.

If visitors see lots of people following you on social media, then they are more likely to trust your business and see you as an expert in your blogging niche.

Now, many of the best social media plugins allow you to show the total follower count in embedded feeds, buttons, banners, and more.

However, sometimes, you may want to show the number as plain text. This gives you the freedom to add the follower count to your blog posts, footer, or anywhere else on your WordPress blog or website.

With that in mind, we will show you how to display your Twitter follower count as text in WordPress. Here’s a quick overview of all the steps we will cover:

Ready? Let’s dive right in!

Step 1: Get an X API Key and Secret

To get your follower count, you will need to access the X API by creating an API Key and Secret.

To get this information, head over to the X Developers Portal and then click on ‘Sign up for Free Account.’

You can now type in some information about how you plan to use the X API. It’s a good idea to provide as much detail as possible, as X will review this information and may delete your account if they don’t understand how you are using their API.

After that, read the terms and conditions. If you are happy to continue, go ahead and click on the ‘Submit’ button.

You will now see the Developer Portal. In the left-hand menu, simply click to expand the ‘Projects & Apps’ section.

Then, select ‘Overview.’ You should now be able to see the ready-to-use project app.

Let’s click the key button to access your API Key and Secret, then the ‘Reveal API Key’ button.

X will now show an API key and API Secret. This is the only time you will see this information, so make a note of it somewhere safe.

If you see the ‘Reveal API Key hint’ button instead, you can click the Regenerate button, and X will create a new API Key and Secret for you.

Just remember to store it somewhere safe.

We recommend adding the key and secret to a password manager for extra security.

Step 2: Add Custom Code to Your WordPress Website

The easiest way to add the X follower count to your site is by using PHP code.

For security reasons, WordPress doesn’t allow you to add PHP code directly to your pages and posts, but it does allow shortcodes. This means you can create a custom shortcode and then link it to your PHP code.

The easiest way to add custom shortcodes in WordPress is by using WPCode. This plugin allows you to create as many shortcodes as you want and then link them to different sections of PHP code.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more details, you can see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, let’s head over to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

Here, you’ll see all the ready-made snippets you can add to your website. These include snippets that allow you to completely disable WordPress comments, upload files that WordPress doesn’t support by default, and more.

Since you are creating a new snippet, you’ll want to hover your mouse over ‘Add Your Custom Code.’

Then, just click on ‘Use snippet.’

To start, you can type in a title for the custom code snippet. This can be anything that helps you identify the snippet in the WordPress dashboard.

After that, you’ll need to open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and select ‘PHP Snippet.’

In the code editor, simply paste the following PHP code:

function getTwitterFollowers($screenName = 'wpbeginner')
{
    // some variables
    $consumerKey = 'YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY';
    $consumerSecret = 'YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET';
    $token = get_option('cfTwitterToken');
  
    // get follower count from cache
    $numberOfFollowers = get_transient('cfTwitterFollowers');
  
    // cache version does not exist or expired
    if (false === $numberOfFollowers) {
        // getting new auth bearer only if we don't have one
        if(!$token) {
            // preparing credentials
            $credentials = $consumerKey . ':' . $consumerSecret;
            $toSend = base64_encode($credentials);
  
            // http post arguments
            $args = array(
                'method' => 'POST',
                'httpversion' => '1.1',
                'blocking' => true,
                'headers' => array(
                    'Authorization' => 'Basic ' . $toSend,
                    'Content-Type' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8'
                ),
                'body' => array( 'grant_type' => 'client_credentials' )
            );
  
            add_filter('https_ssl_verify', '__return_false');
            $response = wp_remote_post('https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token', $args);
  
            $keys = json_decode(wp_remote_retrieve_body($response));
  
            if($keys) {
                // saving token to wp_options table
                update_option('cfTwitterToken', $keys->access_token);
                $token = $keys->access_token;
            }
        }
        // we have bearer token wether we obtained it from API or from options
        $args = array(
            'httpversion' => '1.1',
            'blocking' => true,
            'headers' => array(
                'Authorization' => "Bearer $token"
            )
        );
  
        add_filter('https_ssl_verify', '__return_false');
        $api_url = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/show.json?screen_name=$screenName";
        $response = wp_remote_get($api_url, $args);
  
        if (!is_wp_error($response)) {
            $followers = json_decode(wp_remote_retrieve_body($response));
            $numberOfFollowers = $followers->followers_count;
        } else {
            // get old value and break
            $numberOfFollowers = get_option('cfNumberOfFollowers');
            // uncomment below to debug
            //die($response->get_error_message());
        }
  
        // cache for an hour
        set_transient('cfTwitterFollowers', $numberOfFollowers, 1*60*60);
        update_option('cfNumberOfFollowers', $numberOfFollowers);
    }
  
    return $numberOfFollowers;
}

echo getTwitterFollowers(); ?>

In the code above, make sure you replace the following placeholders with your own API key and API secret:

    $consumerKey = 'YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY';
    $consumerSecret = 'YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET';

You will also need to replace wpbeginner with the X account that you want to use. This can be any X account, including accounts that you don’t own:

function getTwitterFollowers($screenName = 'wpbeginner')

To get the X username, simply open the X profile in a new tab.

You will find the username in the URL and in the profile header:

With that done, you can switch back to the WordPress dashboard. Here, simply click on the ‘Inactive’ toggle so that it changes to ‘Active.’

You can then go ahead and click on the ‘Save snippet’ button.

With that done, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ section.

WPCode can automatically add your code to different locations, such as after every post, front end only, or admin only. To get the shortcode, simply click on the ‘Shortcode’ button.

You can now use the shortcode to add social proof to any page or post.

In the block editor, simply click on the ‘+’ button and type in ‘Shortcode.’ When it appears, you can then select the ‘Shortcode’ block to add it to the page or post.

You can now add the shortcode to the block.

Just be aware that the shortcode simply shows the total follower count, so you will typically want to add some text explaining what the number means.

For more information on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

When you are happy with how the page is set up, you can make the follower count live by clicking on either the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button.

Now, if you visit your WordPress website, you will see the follower count live.

Bonus Tip: More X Tricks!

Now that you’ve learned how to display your Twitter (or X) follower count on your WordPress site, it’s a good idea to optimize your X marketing further.

Adding X share and retweet buttons to your WordPress site can really help boost your reach and traffic. With over 217 million users on X every month, it’s a great place to promote your content.

These buttons make it easy for users to share your posts, so you can reach new people beyond your followers. This not only brings more visitors to your blog but also shows others that your content is trusted and liked, which can make your brand look more credible.

To do this, you’ll want to check out our guide on how to add Twitter share and retweet buttons.

Then, you can promote your X page using a popup.

Popups can boost your X profile visibility and increase followers. You can use one for building an email list, offering content upgrades, displaying a contact form, and more. Plus, there’s a way to make your popups less intrusive.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to promote your Twitter page in WordPress with a popup.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to display your Twitter followers count as text in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to run a social media contest to grow your site or our expert picks for the best Twitter plugins for WordPress.

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