Cheers, fellow bloggers! ♥
Today’s post is all about sharing. Yup, because that’s what blogging is all about, isn’t it? Connecting and sharing lessons learned with tips and techniques to help make this blogging journey an awesome one. It’s why I started blogging and the very reason I remain so passionate about it.
We all know how much time and effort goes into crafting an engaging blog post. It’s not a simple task.
But… sharing it is. And it’s a win-win for all. Yet it’s not always an option.
I’ll set the scene. 🙂
I arrive at the end of an amazing post, eager to share …. and facepalm. No share options!
Say it ain’t so. I know, right? Missed opportunities.
As bloggers, we value the time visitors spend on our site. If they decide to share our content… happy dance, my friends! Let’s be certain we make it easy for them to do so. ♥
*Disclosure: These are resources I personally use and value highly. So much so, I became an Affiliate member. As an Affiliate, I endorse the products and services I use and love. If you see the value in these products and choose to purchase via my referral links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. ♥
Perhaps you’re a new blogger? If so, welcome aboard!
Maybe you’ve been blogging for a little while, but you’re still getting used to the ins and outs of it all. That’s completely okay, but let’s start sharing your hard work. No more missed opportunities.
In this post, we’ll cover:
- How to edit and customize the “Share This” text
- How to add and/or remove sharing buttons
- How to change the share button style/format
- How to turn on/off the like button
- How to add our custom @TwitterHandle to pages and posts
Below is a screenshot of the sharing options in use.
Adding Social Media Sharing Icons
Adding social media sharing icons is a quick and simple means to increase blog traffic and circulate content. A couple of steps and a few clicks is all that’s required. Let’s do this!
If you’re using WordPress.com or WordPress.org and self-hosted with Bluehost, you can easily set up this sharing capability using Jetpack. It’s included with WordPress.com hosting and can be easily added to self-hosted sites using the free Plugin ~ Jetpack.
Jetpack ~ WordPress Plugin
Once we install and activate the plugin, we’ll see it located in the top left corner under Bluehost (in my case) and/or listed with our Plugins.
Jetpack offers numerous valued options and settings. It’s fantastic for viewing website stats and performance and can be easily accessed from the Dashboard.
There are multiple ways to access the Jetpack Dashboard.
We can click on Jetpack > Sharing > Configure your Sharing Buttons at the far bottom of the screen.
For this tutorial, we’ll access the Sharing Options via Settings > Sharing, as shown in the image below.
From here, we can:
- Edit the sharing label text
- Add or remove sharing buttons
- Choose the button style
- Turn on/off the like button
- Add our custom @TwitterHandle to pages and posts
In the sharing settings, we can also connect our social media accounts via Publicize Settings to automatically share a post via each platform.
Let’s add our Social Sharing Icons.
To add or remove an icon, we just click and drag each icon in place. We can also reorder the icons in the same manner.
We can add social share icons to display under the More button. This is an ideal way to keep a clutter-free look while ensuring access and ability to share via these other platforms.
To edit the Share Label text, we just edit Sharing Label Text with our custom greeting. By default, it’s set to Share This. We don’t necessarily have to change it, but having the option of personalizing it is much appreciated. In the image below, you can see I edited my text to Thanks for Sharing!
We can choose and change the Button Style. I’ve selected Icon and Text.
We can also choose where to display the Share Buttons. I selected Posts and Pages.
The last step is adding our Twitter handle in the Twitter Site Tag. We can also set up the Like Button. We can set it to On for all posts or Turn on per post.
Let’s save our changes.
Adding our Twitter Handle is an awesome feature because we’ll know if someone shares our content on Twitter. It’s not necessary, but always nice, to recognize the gesture. I like to personally thank him/her in a tweet. I love this aspect of social media.
When visitors share a blog post via Twitter, it will look similar to the image below. The post title, link, and Twitter handle are all there and ready to tweet.
Easy peasy!
And that’s it!
If you haven’t been using the social share feature, I hope this post encourages you to jump on board.
Have a tip you’d like to share? Please feel free to share in the comments below.
Until next time … happy sharing, my friends! ♥
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Blogging Essentials Guide
After seven years of blogging, I thought I’d put together a Resource Guide with a list of essential tools and resources I use in hopes that it may prove helpful to fellow bloggers – newbies and/or not-so-newbies alike. After all, we’re always learning in this form of engagement. ♥
I didn’t know about adding my Twitter handle to the share settings. I’ve just added it. Thanks very much for the helpful tip!
Warm welcome, Liz! Wonderful to know you found this useful. It’s a joy to share these tips. A blogger’s way of paying-it-forward. 🙂 Thanks again for stopping by. Wishing you a lovely day! 🙂
Thanks, Natalie!
Thaanks for writing
Most welcome, Lia! 🙂