Are you looking to add social media icons in your WordPress sidebar?
Displaying social media icons on your website helps you increase your social media followers because it encourages your visitors to follow you on different social media networks.
In this article, we’ll show you how to add social media icons in your WordPress sidebar.
Why Add Social Media Icons in Your WordPress Sidebar?
Displaying social media icons will give your visitors an opportunity to follow you on various social channels, and is a simple and effective way to grow your social media following.
Many popular WordPress blogs and websites display social media icons in their sidebar, header, or footer area.
Here you can see social media icons displayed in the sidebar of the WPBeginner website.
It’s important to remember that social media follow icons are different than adding social share buttons to your WordPress posts. If you’re looking to add share buttons, then see our beginner’s guide on how to add social share buttons in WordPress.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to add social media follow icons in your WordPress sidebar.
How to Add Social Media Icons in Your WordPress Sidebar
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Simple Social Icons plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
The Simple Social Icons plugin is developed by StudioPress, the creator of the Genesis theme framework, and it is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. This plugin’s underlying code is used in some of their best selling themes.
After activating the plugin, you need to navigate to Appearance » Widgets. Next, click the blue ‘+ Toggle block inserter’ button and scroll down to the ‘Simple Social Icons’ widget and drag it onto your sidebar.
Now you can start to configure how your social media icons will look. You should start by adding a title for the widget. After that, we recommend that you check the box to open links in a new tab or window. This will keep your visitors on your website.
We suggest that you play with the colors to try different backgrounds and hover combinations to match your website’s color scheme. You can also make the icons flat by setting the border radius to 0 and increasing the icon size.
Now you can enter URLs for your social media profiles. The plugin supports Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and some other popular social media websites. You can also add icons for your RSS feed and email newsletter.
The only downside to this plugin is that it does not allow you to rearrange the order of the icons.
Once you’re finished, make sure you click the ‘Update’ button at the top of the page.
Now you can visit your website to view your social icons.
We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to add social media icons in your WordPress sidebar. You may also want to learn how to create a contact form in WordPress, or check out our list of the best Facebook plugins to grow your blog.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
koor united says
this was very helpfull
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our article was helpful
Admin
The Venetian Box says
I ABSOLTELY love your videos, I am learning SO much and it´s SO straight forward! Thank you!
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you, glad you like our videos
Admin
PAMELA says
coding is one of my weakness and this is a great plugin for me
Thank you
WPBeginner Support says
Glad we could let you know about the plugin
Admin
Karen Footloose says
This worked like a charm. Until–don’t laugh–I realized I had beautiful FOLLOW buttons while I was looking for SHARING buttons. How do I get those just as simple and customizable to go in a widget in the sidebar. I’ve looked, but haven’t found simple ones.
Mathukutty P.V. says
What is difference between jetpack social media icon and wp social media profile? jetpack have youtube provision wherea wp social media profile do not have youtube.
Kunj Bihari says
Nice post thank you for sharing this article
Patrick Tuthill says
Added a few social widgets to my current theme and it’s both do not render correctly? I am using the theme “Nisarg” which is a basic free blog theme, adn I have heard these plugins adapt differently to various themes. It’s frustrating when these widgets are for ease of use but they haven’t saved me any time. Any feedback from anyone would help. I do plan to upgrade to Genesis framework, not sure if that matters.
tess says
thank you this was very helpful. keep up the good work
sneakers3205 says
Great and easy instructions. Thank you.
Ru says
perfect. just what i needed. thanks.
Lora says
The icons are not appearing in the boxes when I installed this plugin. I just see tiny letters and numbers inside the squares. Help?
WPBeginner Support says
This seems like a theme related issue, sorry we can’t help you much in this regard.
Admin
Amol Ghuge says
This is great. Love to have the these options in one place. Very helpful!
Maggie says
Thank you for the article.
I am a new blogger and I have been using your website since the beginning.
I have to admit, if there’s any problem I come across or I need some help, I could find the answer here.
Good job!
Editorial Staff says
Thanks for the kind words Maggie. Glad we are able to help
Admin
Lindsay says
Thank you for this advice, but how do you get it to show the Facebook, LInkedIn, Twitter icons??? All I have is grey…….
Thank you!!
Ahmed says
You are Awsome dude….
Helpful Article… thanks
Andre Costa says
Beautiful! Thank you.
jerralyn says
Nice post, thank you for sharing this useful tutorial on how to add social media on WordPress side bar. Can I use DigDig plug-in instead of Simple Social Icons plugin?
Ankit says
Great piece of information for beginners. A good read.
Adam says
Thanks so much.
Shahnawaz says
Dear Syed Balkhi, Sir I would like to thanks you very much and you are my best and favorite personality in WordPress world. Dear sir I will pray for you that always you will write for us. I am using your this plugin and I am daily visit you site and got updates and I will try these updates on my blog. Thanks
Keith Davis says
Great plugin – use it on all my sites.
Another winner from Genesis.