WPBeginner

Beginner's Guide for WordPress

  • Blog
    • Beginners Guide
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Showcase
    • Themes
    • Tutorials
    • WordPress Plugins
  • Start Here
    • How to Start a Blog
    • Create a Website
    • Start an Online Store
    • Best Website Builder
    • Email Marketing
    • WordPress Hosting
    • Business Name Ideas
  • Deals
    • Bluehost Coupon
    • SiteGround Coupon
    • WP Engine Coupon
    • HostGator Coupon
    • Domain.com Coupon
    • Constant Contact
    • View All Deals »
  • Glossary
  • Videos
  • Products
X
☰
Beginner's Guide for WordPress / Start your WordPress Blog in minutes
Choosing the Best
WordPress Hosting
How to Easily
Install WordPress
Recommended
WordPress Plugins
View all Guides

WPBeginner» Blog» Tutorials» How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

Last updated on March 7th, 2020 by Editorial Staff
165 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Pin
Free WordPress Video Tutorials on YouTube by WPBeginner
How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

Do you want to add social share buttons in WordPress? Social media websites are where people spend a lot of their time on internet.

You can use social media to build user engagement and bring new users to your website. The simplest way to do this is by adding social sharing buttons to WordPress posts and pages.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add social share buttons and display share counts in WordPress. We will cover couple of different ways to do this, so you can add social buttons above and below post content or make a floating share bar..

How to Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress - Easy Way

Why You Should Add Social Share Buttons in WordPress?

Social networking is one of the most popular online activities today. It is estimated that by the end of 2019, there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe. (Source)

That’s why social media marketing is now a crucial part of any businesses’ growth strategy. If you want to reach more potential customers, then social media platforms are highly effective channels to communicate with them.

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

The best way to reach people who don’t follow your business on social media is by adding social sharing buttons to your WordPress site.

Social share buttons prompt your website visitors to share your content on their social media timeline. This allows your content to be seen by their friends and followers who can then add comments, like, and re-share it.

Adding social sharing buttons to your website can help you:

  • Get more traffic to your website
  • Increase your social media following
  • Generate more leads and sales
  • Build social proof and brand recognition

Having said that, let’s see how to easily add social share buttons in WordPress.

Adding Social Share Buttons in WordPress

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Shared Counts plugin. It is the best WordPress social media plugin available on the market.

Using this plugin, you can easily add social share buttons in your WordPress posts and also display the share counts. The best part is that it is optimized for performance and doesn’t slow down your website.

Unlike other social sharing plugins, Shared Counts uses a unique caching method to have minimal impact on your website’s speed and performance.

The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Shared Counts plugin. For detailed instructions, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After you’ve installed the plugin, you need to go to Settings » SharedCounts menu to configure plugin settings.

Shared Counts WordPress menu

Next, you need to scroll down to the ‘Display’ section and choose the share buttons you want to display. By default, three buttons are selected (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest).

Shared Counts Plugin - select social share buttons

You can click on the white area in the field to add additional share buttons that you want.

Add social share buttons in Shared Counts

Next, you can choose the share button style from the dropdown menu labeled “Share Button Style”. Shared Counts plugin comes with 8 beautiful button styles.

Shared Counts share button styles

After that, you’ll need to select the theme location where you want to display the social share buttons. You can choose from 3 options: Before Content, After Content, and Before and After Content.

Theme Locations for Social Share Buttons

Lastly, you need to select the supported post types. It has ‘post’ selected by default.

If you want to display share buttons on your pages and other post types, then you can check the box next to page option.

Supported Post types Shared Counts

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Once done, you can visit any post on your website to see the social sharing buttons in action. Here’s how our demo website looks with the ‘Classic’ button style on default Twenty Nineteen theme.

Social Share Buttons by Shared Counts

How to Display Social Share Counts in WordPress?

As the name suggests, Shared Counts plugin can also show your social share counts without slowing down your website.

To enable social share counts, you’ll need to go to the Shared Counts settings and set up the share count source.

On the Shared Counts settings window, you’ll see the ‘Share Counts’ settings at the top.

By default, you’ll see the None option selected for ‘Count Source’ which means that share counts are not being retrieved and displayed.

Share Counts Source none Shared Counts

To show the social share counts, you can choose from two sources.

Share Counts Source Options

The SharedCount.com is the recommended option for the plugin. If you choose this option, the counts are retrieved from the SharedCount service API. It allows fetching all counts with only 2 API calls which is the best for performance.

If you choose the ‘Native’ option, share counts are retrieved from the respective social service, like Facebook API for Facebook counts, Pinterest API for Pin counts. This method can slow down your site because it will require multiple API calls.

We recommend choosing SharedCount.com as your count source. Next, you’ll see a field for SharedCount API key.

Shared Counts API field

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

Register for SharedCounts com

Enter your email address and a password. Then click Create Account.

Create SharedCounts.com account

The website will now send a confirmation link to your email address. You need to click the link to verify.

SharedCounts.com account verified

Once your email is verified, you need to log into your SharedCount account and navigate to your account at the top right side of the screen. There, you’ll see your email address and a dropdown icon next to it.

SharedCounts.com account

Next, you need to click the drop-down menu and select ‘Settings’. From here you’ll find your SharedCount API key.

SharedCounts.com API key

You need to copy the API 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.

Insert SharedCounts API key

Below that, you’ll see some other settings related to social share counts. You can review and change them if you like.

If you want to show the total counts, then you can check the box next to ‘Count Total Only’ option.

We also recommend checking the box to hide empty counts instead of displaying a zero (0).

Share count options

Next, you will see a new ‘Total Counts’ field in the Display section. This allows you to show total share counts alongside your share buttons.

Add Total Counts button Shared Counts Plugin

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

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

Adding Social Share Buttons on Selected Pages

Typpically social share buttons aren’t usually added to WordPress pages however sometimes you may want to enable them on some specific pages.

If so then, you can use the Shared Counts shortcode: [shared_counts].

You can add this shortcode anywhere on your website to display the share buttons.

To add shortcodes in WordPress, there is a shortcode block in the WordPress block editor.

Shortcode Block in Gutenberg Editor

You can simply add the block to your content area and then paste the Shared Counts shortcode.

Insert Shared Counts Shortcode

Using the shortcode, you can add social share buttons really anywhere on your site.

Adding Floating Social Share Bar in WordPress

The Shared Counts plugin allows you to add social share buttons above content, below content, or both above and below content. These share buttons are static and not visible all the time.

Another popular way to display social sharing buttons is by adding a floating social sharing bar. It is a social sharing menu that sticks on users’ screens as they scroll down.

Unlike the standard sharing buttons, the floating social share bar will be seen the whole time a user reads your article. Making them more noticeable and helping you boost social sharing.

Some user experience experts argue that it makes your website look bad as it fills out the white space. However, if you can keep it clean, then it can be quite useful.

For the floating social share buttons, you need to install and activate the Sassy Social Share plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Sassy Social Share’ to your WordPress admin sidebar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s settings page.

Select your button style

First, you need to choose an icon style. The plugin comes with square, rounded, and rectangle buttons. You can choose styles for both the floating social share bar and the standard share bar.

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Standard Interface’ tab. From here you can enable or disable the standard static social sharing buttons.

Standard sharing buttons

We recommend using either floating or static social buttons. Using both of them will be an overkill and may create a bad user experience.

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Floating Interface’ tab and check the box next to ‘Enable Floating sharing interface’ option.

Floating social share plugin settings

After that, you need to choose the social media websites you want to display. You can add or remove buttons and rearrange them by simple drag and drop.

Once you are finished, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see floating social share buttons in action. Here’s how it looked on our demo website.

Floating social share buttons

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 how to add the social icons to the sidebar.

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.

165 Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Pin
Popular on WPBeginner Right Now!
  • Checklist

    Checklist: 15 Things You MUST DO Before Changing WordPress Themes

  • Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons)

    Revealed: Why Building an Email List is so Important Today (6 Reasons)

  • Google Analytics in WordPress

    How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress for Beginners

  • How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Trusted by over 1.3 million readers worldwide.

The Ultimate WordPress Toolkit

48 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Allan Green says:
    Oct 7, 2020 at 6:47 pm

    New to the website builder club, and recently came across the wpbeginner group on facebook. Looking forward to learning lots of new things to build and improve my site.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 8, 2020 at 9:16 am

      We hope our content continues to be helpful :)

      Reply
  2. Izhar Ahmad Danish says:
    Oct 5, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    Wpbeginner is actually a WP-Pro

    I have been following your content for last two years, I have learned so many things from basic to pro. It also helped me in every minor errors, issues, even selection of Theme, hostings and Plugins.

    Kudos to Syed Balkhi and team

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 6, 2020 at 10:03 am

      Glad our guides and content have been helpful :)

      Reply
  3. Sourabh says:
    Oct 3, 2020 at 1:21 pm

    Hey thanks for the guide.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 5, 2020 at 11:04 am

      Glad you found our guide helpful :)

      Reply
  4. Diane Hambrick says:
    Oct 3, 2020 at 10:51 am

    Thank you for a great deal of valuable information! Sharing on social media is so important for our websites.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 5, 2020 at 11:15 am

      You’re welcome, glad our guide was helpful :)

      Reply
  5. Khalid says:
    Oct 2, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    Nice info and explanation, loved the floating icons, I will try them out.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 5, 2020 at 10:44 am

      Glad you liked our guide and recommendations :)

      Reply
  6. Christie says:
    Oct 2, 2020 at 2:23 pm

    So helpful! Thank you for adding the visuals!!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 2, 2020 at 3:15 pm

      You’re welcome, glad our guide and visuals were helpful :)

      Reply
  7. Suzanne says:
    Oct 2, 2020 at 9:25 am

    Thanks for your awesome tutorial solving step 1 in my issue with social media share butotns. Having successfully installed on a specific blogpost (icons are visible) the specific blogpost is not shared on fB, only a generic text and image about my site… what is missing?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 2, 2020 at 10:06 am

      For how your site is displayed on social media, you would want to take a look at our article below:

      https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-add-facebook-open-graph-meta-data-in-wordpress-themes/

      Reply
  8. karima says:
    Oct 1, 2020 at 5:21 pm

    Great article as usual! Thanks

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 2, 2020 at 9:20 am

      Thank you and you’re welcome :)

      Reply
  9. Syeda maham Fahim says:
    Oct 1, 2020 at 11:41 am

    Great , Thank you

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 2, 2020 at 9:08 am

      You’re welcome :)

      Reply
  10. Hemant Bisht says:
    Sep 11, 2020 at 2:02 am

    Nicely Explained!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Sep 11, 2020 at 11:02 am

      Thank you :)

      Reply
  11. Sojol Rana says:
    Aug 22, 2020 at 12:01 pm

    If you don’t mind, can you told me that what social share plugin you use in this site?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Aug 24, 2020 at 3:35 pm

      At the moment we’re using the shared counts plugin from this tutorial with custom styling :)

      Reply
  12. Ikechukwu says:
    Aug 11, 2020 at 3:04 am

    Nice article but I have a little problem in displaying the share bottoms to my blog category post.

    The bottoms only show in pages instead of post how do I fix that

    Thank you.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Aug 11, 2020 at 11:01 am

      You would want to reach out to the support for your theme and they should be able to help with the footer display.

      Reply
  13. Daniela says:
    May 1, 2020 at 6:49 am

    Hi well written article thanks.. I was wondering is there a possibility to insert and have the same effect without a plugin I mean with php and jv using Facebook sharing.. Thanks for your reply.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      May 1, 2020 at 9:46 am

      We do not have a beginner-friendly method to add share buttons with JS and PHP

      Reply
  14. Benjamin says:
    Apr 3, 2020 at 3:52 am

    Hi,

    What plugin are you using for your social shares?

    The share counts plugin doesn’t have an option to make it look like yours.

    Thanks

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Apr 3, 2020 at 9:25 am

      We added custom styling for the shared counts to look like they do on our site

      Reply
      • Benjamin says:
        Apr 3, 2020 at 9:55 am

        Oh, I see

        Is there anywhere I can find this styling to make it look the same on my website? I really like the look!

        Thanks

        Reply
        • WPBeginner Support says:
          Apr 6, 2020 at 8:41 am

          Not at the moment but we will look into the possibility of including it in an article :)

  15. Martin Koss says:
    Jan 5, 2020 at 2:29 pm

    Which social sharing plugin do you use yourselves on your blog (and this post).
    Thanks.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 6, 2020 at 11:32 am

      At the moment we are using the shared counts plugin from the article :)

      Reply
  16. Valli says:
    Oct 12, 2019 at 9:14 am

    As per this, am bit confused, whether you are suggesting to add both plugin “Shared count & Sassy social share” or any one is sufficient.
    curiously awaiting for your reply.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 14, 2019 at 10:39 am

      Either one is sufficient, they just have different design options depending on what you’re wanting to do.

      Reply
  17. Viktor says:
    Oct 6, 2019 at 9:00 am

    Thanks for the description! I needed a few part of and I got the exact information!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 7, 2019 at 11:01 am

      Glad our guide was helpful :)

      Reply
  18. Lorelei says:
    Jul 18, 2019 at 9:28 pm

    Very helpful article and easy to follow! Thanks!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 22, 2019 at 11:38 am

      You’re welcome, glad you liked our article :)

      Reply
  19. Aman says:
    Mar 24, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    It was a fantastic blog post,
    Is there any step by step procedure for beginner in WP, like sequence of blog post or e-book

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Mar 25, 2019 at 3:11 pm

      If you’re trying to create a post series, you could take a look at the plugin we recommend in the article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-effeciently-manage-post-series-in-wordpress/

      Reply
  20. Kane Martin says:
    Feb 23, 2019 at 4:21 am

    I am regular visitor of wpbeginner. Thanks for doing great job again. Information is well organized and easy to understand, will help me. Can you suggest me some plugins which can display Flickr album on website?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 25, 2019 at 2:59 pm

      Thank you, while we don’t have a recommendation at the moment, we will certainly keep an eye out :)

      Reply
  21. Xavier Jinan says:
    Feb 1, 2019 at 5:24 am

    Should i use them when my theme already have share buttons ? Because a blog on Hostnoc suggested that adding the buttons can slowdown your website. So why should i use it ?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 1, 2019 at 10:45 am

      If your theme already has social icons then you don’t need to use a plugin if you don’t want. For understanding how plugins affect speed, you would want to take a look at: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-wordpress-plugins-affect-your-sites-load-time/

      Reply
  22. Chukwuezugo says:
    Jan 29, 2019 at 11:01 am

    What about AddToAny social share plugin? That’s what I use and I love it. You can tweak it to give you either the standard share icons or the floating icons.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 29, 2019 at 11:50 am

      That is one of the recommended options in a different article found here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/best-social-media-plugins-for-wordpress/

      Reply
  23. Micki says:
    Jan 29, 2019 at 9:22 am

    I rely heavily on information found on WP beginner. The site has been invaluable to me in starting my blog.

    One question on this post: The plug in, Shared Counts, is untested with my version of WordPress. Since I update each time an update is available, I am assuming that it is untested with the most updated version of WordPress.

    I use the Classic Editor plug in, if that makes a difference.

    Is it still safe to use this plug in? It sounds like it is exactly what I am looking for but I am hesitant to install it.

    Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks so much for the on-going help found on the site.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 29, 2019 at 11:47 am

      For plugins not tested with your version, you would want to take a look at: https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/should-you-install-plugins-not-tested-with-your-wordpress-version/ :)

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy, and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

Over 1,320,000+ Readers

Get fresh content from WPBeginner

Featured WordPress Plugin
WP Mail SMTP logo
WP Mail SMTP
Fix WordPress email delivery issues. #1 SMTP plugin. Learn More »
How to Start a Blog How to Start a Blog
I need help with ...
Starting a
Blog
WordPress
Performance
WordPress
Security
WordPress
SEO
WordPress
Errors
Building an
Online Store
Useful WordPress Guides
    • 7 Best WordPress Backup Plugins Compared (Pros and Cons)
    • How to Fix the Error Establishing a Database Connection in WordPress
    • Why You Need a CDN for your WordPress Blog? [Infographic]
    • 30 Legit Ways to Make Money Online Blogging with WordPress
    • Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. Free WordPress.com [Infograph]
    • Free Recording: WordPress Workshop for Beginners
    • 24 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites
    • How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
    • 5 Best Contact Form Plugins for WordPress Compared
    • Which is the Best WordPress Popup Plugin? (Comparison)
    • Best WooCommerce Hosting in 2021 (Comparison)
    • How to Fix the Internal Server Error in WordPress
    • How to Install WordPress - Complete WordPress Installation Tutorial
    • Why You Should Start Building an Email List Right Away
    • How to Properly Move WordPress to a New Domain Without Losing SEO
    • How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting for Your Website
    • How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform (Comparison)
    • WordPress Tutorials - 200+ Step by Step WordPress Tutorials
    • 5 Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins Compared
    • 5 Best WordPress Membership Plugins (Compared)
    • 7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2021)
    • How to Choose the Best Domain Registrar (Compared)
    • The Truth About Shared WordPress Web Hosting
    • When Do You Really Need Managed WordPress Hosting?
    • 5 Best Drag and Drop WordPress Page Builders Compared
    • How to Switch from Blogger to WordPress without Losing Google Rankings
    • How to Properly Switch From Wix to WordPress (Step by Step)
    • How to Properly Move from Weebly to WordPress (Step by Step)
    • Do You Really Need a VPS? Best WordPress VPS Hosting Compared
    • How to Properly Move from Squarespace to WordPress
    • How to Register a Domain Name (+ tip to get it for FREE)
    • HostGator Review - An Honest Look at Speed & Uptime (2021)
    • SiteGround Reviews from 4464 Users & Our Experts (2021)
    • Bluehost Review from Real Users + Performance Stats (2021)
    • How Much Does It Really Cost to Build a WordPress Website?
    • How to Create an Email Newsletter the RIGHT WAY (Step by Step)
    • Free Business Name Generator (A.I Powered)
    • How to Create a Free Business Email Address in 5 Minutes (Step by Step)
    • How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress for Beginners
    • How to Move WordPress to a New Host or Server With No Downtime
    • Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch?
    • How to Make a Website in 2021 – Step by Step Guide
Deals & Coupons (view all)
SendinBlue Coupon Code
Sendinblue Coupon
Get Sendinblue, a powerful marketing automation toolkit for small businesses, for FREE.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting Coupon
Get an exclusive 50% off InMotion hosting plus a free domain.
Featured In
About WPBeginner®

WPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site for Beginners. WPBeginner was founded in July 2009 by Syed Balkhi. The main goal of this site is to provide quality tips, tricks, hacks, and other WordPress resources that allows WordPress beginners to improve their site(s).

Join our team: We are Hiring!

Site Links
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • FTC Disclosure
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Free Blog Setup
  • Free Business Tools
  • Growth Fund
Our Sites
  • OptinMonster
  • MonsterInsights
  • WPForms
  • SeedProd
  • Nameboy
  • RafflePress
  • Smash Balloon
  • AIOSEO

Copyright © 2009 - 2021 WPBeginner LLC. All Rights Reserved. WPBeginner® is a registered trademark.

Managed by Awesome Motive | WordPress hosting by SiteGround | WordPress Security by Sucuri.