What are social share buttons? Why should you have them? You’ll learn all of that, plus how to add social share buttons in WordPress.
What Are Social Share Buttons?
Social share buttons are functional design elements that you can use on your website to share articles to different social media networks, or even email. They are a way to allow your guests to easily share what you’ve published with their audience. You can even use your own social share buttons to share your own content! Neat, right?
Why Are Social Share Buttons Important?
Having social share buttons is super important for your website. In fact, it should be one of the top things you do before launching your WordPress website. The reason for this is:
Social share buttons streamline the sharing experience.
Great for SEO.
Social share buttons can add value to your site design.
Brand exposure.
Social share buttons streamline the sharing experience
WIth social share buttons in WordPress, your visitors can quickly share your content. It literally takes a few seconds to click on the button, and then share to any social network website.
In the past, social share buttons used to get a bad wrap for loading slow, but technology when it comes to JavaScript and PHP has advanced enough that most plugins dedicated to social sharing load quite quickly.
Great for SEO
Most social networks either have their own internal search engine, or can be searchable on Google. Your social search for your website and overall brand is super important because you can reach a bigger audience, and even use the social network as a means to help plan your marketing and content campaigns.
Social share buttons can add value to your site design
Social share buttons aren’t all that ugly. In fact, a lot of social share button plugins in WordPress allow you to customize the size, shape, and color of your buttons. You can get your social share buttons to fit with your brand.
Brand exposure
Just having social share buttons on your website gives you the chance of having your brand exposed to a larger audience online. In fact, when people click and share your content, it helps fulfill the old saying that it takes about an average of 7 times for a person to see something and finally act on it, also known as the Marketing Rule of 7.
6 Tips for choosing the right social share button plugins in WordPress
Choose one that is secure, and well supported by the developer
Choose one that loads fast
Choose one that offers different social share display options
Choose one that offers button customization
Choose one that can be placed on any post, page, or custom post type
Choose one that offers social sharing on your preferred social networks
1. Choose one that is secure, well-rated, and well supported by the developer
Each plugin on WordPress.org will show you how many people have it actively installed on their website, as well as ratings, and when the last time the developer made an update. An up-to-date social share plugin means that it will be secure, and compatible with most other plugins, themes, and even your WordPress core installation.
2. Choose one that loads fast
Choose a social share plugin in WordPress that loads fast. You don’t want your social share buttons to be the reason why your website is slow.
3. Choose one that offers different social share display options
Social share plugins that offer multiple choices for how to display them, can help you if you’re concerned about website conversion. A note - website conversion is the rate of how well you get your visitors to do some type of action, whether buy, fill out a form, comment, or share your content.
Some display options include bottom or top of content buttons, and even social share buttons that float on the screen as you scroll the page.
4. Choose one that offers button customization
If you can customize the color, size, and shape of your social share buttons, you have one heck of a flexible plugin. This will allow you to design your buttons to either match your brand, or be the right size to attract your visitors into using them.
5. Choose one that can be placed on any post, page, or custom post type
Make sure your social share plugin allows you to place your social share buttons on any type of post type. This will allow you countless possibilities of what your visitors can share.
6. Choose one that offers social sharing on your preferred social networks
Some social share plugins in WordPress only offer a few options, but make sure you choose one that offers quite a few social network options. For example, if you use Reddit a lot, and your audience does too, you can choose a plugin that includes that platform, so they can share your posts there.
