How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress (4 Easy Methods)

Social media is the main way people discover new content today.

That’s why at WPBeginner, we add social share buttons at the top of every post to make it easy for our visitors to share our content on their social media feeds. We have found that this effectively increases our reach, drives new traffic, and improves user engagement.

Beyond just sharing, we have seen how displaying social share counts can boost user trust and encourage clicks. When you highlight the popularity of your content, it shows proof that others value your website or products.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add social share buttons and display share counts on your WordPress website.

Why Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress?

Social networking is one of the most popular online activities today. That’s why social media marketing is now a crucial part of every small business’s growth strategy.

If you want to reach more potential customers, then social media platforms are highly effective channels to communicate with new people.

The problem is that when you share your content on your social media profiles, it only reaches a limited number of your pre-existing followers.

However, by adding social share buttons directly to your site, you can encourage visitors to share your content in their social feeds. This allows your content to be seen by their friends and followers, who can then like, comment, and re-share it.

In this way, social share buttons can help drive more traffic to your site, improve your social credibility, generate more leads, and boost engagement.

Having said that, let’s see how to easily add social share buttons in WordPress. You can use the quick links below to jump to different parts of our tutorial:

Method 1: Using Novashare to Add Social Share Buttons (Recommended)

Novashare is one of the best social media plugins for WordPress, offering an easy way to add social share buttons to your posts. You can add buttons for popular platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn to improve your content’s reach across various social platforms.

You can display the share count for each post and choose a button style that looks best on your site. The plugin is also optimized for WordPress speed and performance, so you won’t have to worry about it slowing down your site.

Plus, Novashare lets you create Click to Tweet boxes so your visitors can quickly share quotes from your articles. It also offers a Follow block that you can use to promote your social profiles.

To get started, visit the Novashare website and choose a plan. After that, you need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll need to navigate to the Settings » Novashare page in your WordPress dashboard to activate your license.

Make sure you are on the ‘License’ tab, and then paste in the license key you were given when you purchased the plugin. Next, make sure you click the ‘Save License’ button.

Enabling Social Share Inline Buttons

After activating your license, go ahead and click the ‘Inline Content’ tab to enable inline content. This will allow you to add social share buttons to your posts and pages. Alternatively, you can add the social buttons to a floating bar, which we cover in the next section.

Simply toggle the ‘Enable Inline Content’ button to the ‘On’ position, and then select the buttons you want to add.

Novashare comes with a library of 26 buttons, including popular networks like X (Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. It also offers action buttons for Email, Print, and Copy.

Next, you can configure where the buttons will appear on your posts and pages.

Just scroll down a little to the ‘Display’ section. Here, you can click checkboxes to have social buttons appear on your posts, pages, and media attachment pages. If you have an online store, then you will also have a checkbox for products.

You can also choose the button placement from the ‘Button Position’ dropdown. There are options to display the social share buttons above your content, below your content, or both. You can also choose to place the buttons on each page manually using this shortcode:

[novashare_inline_content]

The mobile breakpoint allows the social buttons to be displayed on smaller mobile devices by splitting the buttons into two or more rows after they reach a certain width. The default is 1200 pixels, but for better compatibility with smaller devices, you may want to reduce it to 768 pixels.

In the next section, you can design the appearance of your buttons. Novashare lets you choose from dozens of style and shape combinations, like these:

When you scroll down to the design section, you will find drop-down menus for your button attributes, such as style, layout, alignment, size, and shape.

Simply choose the different attributes that best suit your website.

Next, you will find options for changing the color of your buttons. Simply leave these buttons blank to display them in the default colors you saw when choosing your buttons.

Any color changes you make in this section will affect all buttons. There are options for the button color, hover color, the color of the icon at the right of the button, and more.

When you click on any of these options, a color picker will appear where you can select the color you would like to use.

The ‘Show Labels’ option at the bottom of this section allows you to choose whether or not the name of each social network is displayed next to the platform’s icon.

Besides providing social share buttons, it is also a good idea to display how many times the current post has been shared across all social channels.

Displaying share counts on blog posts enhances credibility by showcasing the popularity of your content, which can encourage more users to engage and share. It provides social proof that demonstrates that your content is valued by others, boosting trust with your users.

This setting is enabled by default. You can choose to display the share count for the current post either before or after the social share buttons and also customize the color.

Here is an example of shared counts with a white background being displayed after the social share buttons.

If you like, you can also add a call to action to the button bar, such as ‘Share with your friends!’ This may encourage more visitors to share your content.

While we don’t do this on our own website, you can add a call to action by simply typing your message in the ‘Text’ field. You can also customize the font size and color.

Once you have finished customizing your social share buttons, click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the page, and they will be added to your site.

This is how it looks on our demo site:

Enabling Social Share Floating Bar

Instead of adding social share buttons to your posts and pages, you can add them to a bar that floats at one of the edges of your website or sticks to the bottom of the screen on mobile.

By default, this will appear on the left-hand side of the screen or at the bottom on narrow screens. It won’t move even when you scroll through your content.

To enable a floating bar on your website, you need to navigate to Settings » Novashare and click on the ‘Floating Bar’ tab on the left.

You can then enable the floating bar option and choose the social share buttons you want to add.

After that, you can customize the placement of the bar.

Like the Inline Content option, you can click checkboxes to display the social share buttons on posts, pages, media archives, and also products if you have an online store.

You will also need to enable the ‘Show on Posts Page’ option to display the buttons on your posts. If you want, you can also turn on the ‘Show on Archives’ setting to display the floating bar on your blog post archive page.

Now you can use the ‘Button Alignment’ drop-down to choose whether to show the bar along the right or left side of your page on wide screens. On narrow screens, it will be shown at the bottom.

You can control how far the floating bar appears from the edges of the screen using the ‘Top Offset’ and ‘Edge Offset’ options.

The ‘Show on scroll’ option lets you hide your social icons until the user has scrolled a set distance down the page.

For this tutorial, we will use the default settings, which work well for most websites.

The Design and Share Counts sections work the same way as they do for the Inline Content settings above. However, there is an extra section on this page for mobile devices.

The default settings in the ‘Mobile’ section will work for most websites. The bar will be fixed to the bottom of the screen but hidden on screens less than 800 pixels wide.

However, you can easily change that maximum width, as well as the background color and padding of the buttons. There are also actions to make the bar fill the available screen space and to save space by hiding the total share count.

When you have finished setting up your social share buttons, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the ‘Save Changes’ button to display the floating bar on your website.

This is how it looks on our demo site:

Configuring the Share Button

One way you can save space on your button bar is by using the Share button. This lets you add major social networks as individual buttons, and users can share to additional platforms by clicking the Share button.

First, make sure you add the ‘Share’ button to either your ‘Inline Content’ or ‘Floating Bar.’

Next, you can configure the settings for the Share button by navigating to Settings » Novashare and then clicking on the ‘Share Button’ tab.

This will let you select any additional social networks you want to display when a user clicks the Share button. You can also add a call to action and choose a design for those additional buttons.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to store your settings.

This is how it looks on our demo website after clicking the ‘Share’ button.

Adding a Pinterest Button to Images

Novashare can also add a Pinterest ‘Pin’ button to every image on your website. By default, this button will be displayed when you hover your mouse over an image. However, you can configure the plugin to display the buttons at all times.

First, navigate to Settings » Novashare and then click on the ‘Pinterest’ tab. Once there, you can toggle the ‘Enable Image Pins’ to the on position and select the ‘Post Types’ where you want to display the button.

You can also customize the button position, shape, and color, though the default settings will work well for most websites (see the screenshot below).

If you want the Pinterest button to be displayed even when you are not hovering over an image, make sure you toggle the ‘Always Show’ option on.

Finally, if there are some images that you don’t want to share, simply type the file names in the ‘Excluded Images’ field and a Pinterest button won’t be displayed for those images.

Once you click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings and start displaying the Pin button on images.

This is what it looks like on our demo website when hovering the mouse over an image.

Method 2: Using Social Snap to Add Social Share Buttons (Free)

If you’re looking for a free way to add social share buttons to your site, then the Social Snap plugin is a good alternative to a premium tool.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Social Snap plugin. For detailed instructions, you can see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the Social Snap » Settings page from the WordPress admin sidebar. Then, expand the ‘Social Sharing’ tab in the left column.

This will open new settings in the sidebar, where you’ll need to select the ‘Manage Networks’ tab.

Next, click the ‘+ Add Networks’ button to add a social media network of your choice from the prompt. You can add platforms like Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and email.

You can also configure the button visibility for different devices by hovering your mouse over the eye icon and toggling the mobile switch to ‘On.’ Doing this will show the social share buttons to users who are visiting your site on mobile devices.

After that, exit the ‘Manage Networks’ tab.

This will take you to the general settings page, where you can select if you want to add a floating bar or inline buttons for social share icons.

Adding Social Share Inline Buttons

Social share inline buttons are displayed at the top or bottom of your posts and pages.

To add them to your site, just click on the ‘Inline Buttons’ tab to expand it.

This will open new settings in the left column with a preview for the social share buttons on the right side of the screen.

From here, you can configure the buttons’ position. You can choose the ‘Below Content’ option to display buttons at the bottom of the content and the ‘Above Content’ option to showcase buttons at the top of the page.

You can also customize your button’s alignment and the share label, shape, and size from here.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Button Labels’ section, where you can decide if you want to display the social media platform’s name, share counts, or both.

After that, scroll down to the ‘Display On’ section. Here, you can check the ‘Posts’ box if you only want to display the social share buttons on your posts. You can also check the ‘Pages’ button to show social share buttons on your About Us, Contact Us, or Archives pages.

Additionally, you can check the ‘Home’ option if you only want to display the social share buttons on your home page.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom to store your settings.

You can now visit your WordPress website to view the social share buttons in action.

Adding Social Share Floating Bar

If you decide to add a floating bar, then your social share buttons will be displayed on the side of your WordPress posts or pages.

To do this, simply open the ‘Floating Sidebar’ tab.

This will open some new settings in the left column, from where you can configure the position, size, and shape of your floating bar icons.

Once you do that, scroll down to the ‘Display On’ section and select the pages where you want to display the social share buttons.

For example, if you want to display the social share floating bar only on your blog posts, then you can select the ‘Post’ option.

Similarly, if you want to display the floating bar on your website’s home page as well, then you can choose the ‘Home’ option.

Finally, click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your WordPress blog to view the social share floating bar in action.

Adding Social Share Buttons to Images

If you have a photography website, then you can even add social share buttons to your images with the help of the Social Snap plugin.

This will allow users to share your images on their social feeds and help bring more traffic to your site.

First, you will have to visit the Social Snap » Settings page from the WordPress dashboard and click on the ‘On Media’ tab to open it.

Once you are there, choose your button type. You can add all your social share buttons at the top of the images or add a Pinterest button.

After that, you can also select the button’s size, shape, visibility, and position.

Then, you can add the minimum height and width for an image. This means that the share buttons will not be displayed in an image on your website that is under the minimum height and width limit.

Next, you must scroll down to the ‘Display On’ section and check the options for the pages or posts where you want to display social share buttons on your images.

You can then also toggle the ‘Hide on Mobile’ switch to ‘On’ if you don’t want to display share buttons for images on mobile devices.

Finally, click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Now, simply visit your WordPress site to view the social share buttons in images.

Displaying Social Share Counts

If you also want to display the share counts next to the social share buttons, then visit the Social Snap » Settings page and expand the ‘Manage Networks’ tab from the left column.

After that, scroll down to the ‘Facebook Share Count Provider’ section, where you can select any of the two sources.

However, we recommend selecting the ‘SharedCount.com’ option. Then, the counts will be retrieved from the SharedCount service API. It allows the plugin to fetch all counts with only 2 API calls, which is best for WordPress performance.

If you choose the ‘Facebook Graph API’ option, then share counts are retrieved from the Facebook API, which can slow down your site.

You can easily get the SharedCount API by signing up for a free account on the SharedCount.com website.

To do this, you will have to provide an email address and password and then click the ‘Create Account’ button.

The website will now send a confirmation link to your email address.

Go ahead and click on the link to verify your account.

Now, you must log in to your SharedCount account again and visit the ‘Settings’ page from the dropdown menu in the top right corner of the screen.

This will take you to a new page where you will see your SharedCount API key.

You need to copy this key and go back to your plugin’s settings page on your WordPress site.

Now, go ahead and paste the API key in the ‘SharedCount API Key’ field.

After that, click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

You can then enter this API key again for your X (Twitter) share count. After that, click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see the social share buttons with the share count for each blog post.

Method 3: Using SeedProd to Add Social Share Buttons on Custom Landing Pages

If you want to build custom landing pages for your website with social share buttons, then you can easily do that using SeedProd.

In our opinion, it is the best WordPress page builder on the market. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder, 300+ premade templates, and advanced blocks to create amazing landing pages with social share buttons.

First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For detailed instructions, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the SeedProd » Landing Pages section from the WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.

This will take you to the ‘Choose a New Page Template’ screen, where you will see numerous premade templates to choose from.

Once you make your choice, you will be asked to enter a name for the landing page that you are about to create.

Upon entering this information, just click the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch SeedProd’s drag-and-drop builder, where you will see a list of blocks in the left column with a page preview on the right.

You can now drag and drop different blocks to build your page. For more details, see our tutorial on how to create a landing page in WordPress.

After that, simply find and add the ‘Social Sharing’ block from the left column to your preferred place on the page.

Next, you need to click on the block again to open its settings in the sidebar. From here, you can choose the social media platform with the button you want to add from the dropdown menu.

You can also add a new social share button by clicking the ‘+ Add New Share’ button in the column.

After that, you can also configure the button’s size and alignment.

You can even switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab at the top to change the spacing, pick the device visibility, add custom CSS, and use animation effects.

Once you are done, simply click the ‘Save’ and then ‘Publish’ buttons at the top to store your settings.

Now, just visit the custom landing page to see the social share buttons in action.

This is what the page looked like on our demo website.

Method 4: Using Sassy Social Share to Add a WhatsApp Share Button (Bonus)

Apart from social media platforms, you can also add a WhatsApp share button on your WordPress site. WhatsApp is an instant messaging app that allows people all over the world to contact each other.

By adding a WhatsApp share button, you will enable users to share your site content with their contacts, including friends, family, and colleagues. This can boost user engagement, enhance content visibility, and help you expand your brand reach.

You can easily add a WhatsApp share button in WordPress with the Sassy Social Share plugin.

For more information, just see our tutorial on how to add a WhatsApp chatbox and share buttons in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add social share buttons in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to add social media icons to WordPress menus and check out our top picks for the best WordPress social media plugins to grow your following.

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