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..
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.
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).
You can click on the white area in the field to add additional share buttons that you want.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To show the social share counts, you can choose from two sources.
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.
You can get the SharedCount API by signing up to for a free account on SharedCount.com website.
Enter your email address and a password. Then click Create Account.
The website will now send a confirmation link to your email address. You need to click the link to verify.
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.
Next, you need to click the drop-down menu and select ‘Settings’. From here you’ll find your SharedCount 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.
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).
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.
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.
You can simply add the block to your content area and then paste the 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Pagula Majorda says
Hi
Your writeup is good no doubt.
I want to ask about the icons placed in the Top Bar, do you simply put the url, if so, what purpose does it serve? On a marketplace demos, I found the icons urls automatically changed to reflect the article I was reading. How does one do that? Any ideas will not only help your readers (I am one of them too), but it will increase the coverage of this article.
Please keep up the good work
WPBeginner Support says
Using the Shared Count plugin would not require you to add a link to the social media platform, it would generate the post with a link to the post to share for the user and they would have the option to change the content before posting.
Admin
Sarwat says
Shared Count plugin is good but doesn’t have whatsapp.
WPBeginner Support says
Thanks for sharing that for those looking for a whatsapp button
Admin
Cathy says
do you know of a plugin that I could use my own custom icons for social sharing?
WPBeginner Support says
We do not have a recommended plugin for that at the moment but we will be sure to share if we have a recommended one
Admin
Robert B says
Well.. this plugin have not been updated since more than 2 years.
Do you have an alternativ?
WPBeginner Support says
We do not have an alternative we would specifically recommend at the moment but we are still using the plugin on our site. For the not updated/tested warning we would recommend taking a look at our article below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/should-you-install-plugins-not-tested-with-your-wordpress-version/
Admin
Lynn Phillipi says
All these explanations were very helpful. Thanks so much.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Allan Green says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
We hope our content continues to be helpful
Admin
Izhar Ahmad Danish says
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
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guides and content have been helpful
Admin
Sourabh says
Hey thanks for the guide.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad you found our guide helpful
Admin
Diane Hambrick says
Thank you for a great deal of valuable information! Sharing on social media is so important for our websites.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Khalid says
Nice info and explanation, loved the floating icons, I will try them out.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad you liked our guide and recommendations
Admin
Christie says
So helpful! Thank you for adding the visuals!!
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad our guide and visuals were helpful
Admin
Suzanne says
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?
WPBeginner Support says
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/
Admin
karima says
Great article as usual! Thanks
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you and you’re welcome
Admin
Syeda maham Fahim says
Great , Thank you
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome
Admin
Hemant Bisht says
Nicely Explained!
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you
Admin
Sojol Rana says
If you don’t mind, can you told me that what social share plugin you use in this site?
WPBeginner Support says
At the moment we’re using the shared counts plugin from this tutorial with custom styling
Admin
Ikechukwu says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
You would want to reach out to the support for your theme and they should be able to help with the footer display.
Admin
Daniela says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
We do not have a beginner-friendly method to add share buttons with JS and PHP
Admin
Benjamin says
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
WPBeginner Support says
We added custom styling for the shared counts to look like they do on our site
Admin
Benjamin says
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
WPBeginner Support says
Not at the moment but we will look into the possibility of including it in an article
Martin Koss says
Which social sharing plugin do you use yourselves on your blog (and this post).
Thanks.
WPBeginner Support says
At the moment we are using the shared counts plugin from the article
Admin
Valli says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
Either one is sufficient, they just have different design options depending on what you’re wanting to do.
Admin
Viktor says
Thanks for the description! I needed a few part of and I got the exact information!
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Lorelei says
Very helpful article and easy to follow! Thanks!
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad you liked our article
Admin
Aman says
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
WPBeginner Support says
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/
Admin
Kane Martin says
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?
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you, while we don’t have a recommendation at the moment, we will certainly keep an eye out
Admin
Xavier Jinan says
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 ?
WPBeginner Support says
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/
Admin
Chukwuezugo says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
That is one of the recommended options in a different article found here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/best-social-media-plugins-for-wordpress/
Admin
Micki says
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.
WPBeginner Support says
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/
Admin