How to Add a Social Share Counter on a WordPress Site

If you’re looking to increase traffic to your site, then adding social media share links is a great idea. There is massive traffic on social media sites and sharing your WordPress site’s link on those platforms could potentially increase your site’s visitors. However, if you add a social share counter, you can also monitor how many shares your website is getting on each platform.

Again, if your content is shared many times, visitors can see the social share counter and understand that your content is very popular. This will draw in more viewers and increase your website traffic.

But how do you add a Social Media Counter on a WordPress site? There are several ways of doing it. In this post, we will learn how to add a social media counter on a WordPress Site.

What is a Social Media Counter

A social media counter is a function that displays how many times your website’s URL was shared on social media. It is a good idea to add a social media counter on your WordPress website because it gives you an insight into how your website is doing. Moreover, if your website has a high number of shares, then it will become a badge of proof that your website or brand is popular and legit.

As your content gets more shares on social media, it will eventually gain more views and engagements. When your audience sees that your content has a high number of shares, it will encourage them to follow or subscribe. So adding a social media counter has a lot more benefits than you think.

Why add a Social Media Share Counter on Your WordPress Site

Social media is a big part of our lives. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. has high traffic. According to the global data firm Statista, there are roughly 2.96 billion active users of Facebook alone. This large number of people are logging in to Facebook daily. So the question should be, why are you not using social media shares?

If you own a website, it is crucial to share your content on your social media page and a social share counter will help you understand how your website is doing. It will also help you get to know your audience better and understand what kind of content is resonating with them. 

Many companies encourage people to comment on their posts. This is also a great way to increase user engagement and also understand what the people want.

How to Add a Social Media Share Counter on a WordPress Site

Now that you know how much the social share counter can help you, its now time to learn how to add a social share counter on your WordPress site. There are a couple of ways of setting up your social media counter. In this post, we’re using the WP Social plugin to set it up.

There are various social media sharing plugins that you can use. So don’t worry, you can use the one you like. Using WP Social you can display your social share counter using shortcodes or through widgets. We’ll show you both processes. So let’s add a social media counter to your WordPress site.

Displaying the Show Media Share Counter with WP Social Shortcode

There are several social media plugins for WordPress that let you set up the social share counter. WP Social is a popular plugin that allows you to show a social share counter. So follow the given steps to display a social share counter on your WordPress website using WP Social:

Step 1: Install and Activate WP Social

From your WordPress dashboard go to Plugins > Add New and on the search bar type in “WP Social”. The plugin is developed by WPMET and has 20k+ active installations.

Also, make sure the version of WP Social is compatible with your current version of WordPress. The plugin is always updated but still, it’s better to be sure.

Step 2: Setup WP Social

After installation, WP Social will add an option on your WordPress dashboard. Click on it and it will take you to the sign up page. From here, you can enter your email address or you can leave it and click on the “Next Step” button.

In the next part, WP Social gives you a bunch of free plugins that you can use for your WordPress site. You can install these if you want, but it’s not compulsory. So click on the “Next Step” button to continue.

In the next step, you can view the tutorial and learn how to integrate all social media features to your WordPress site. There’s a video placement on screen but if you click on the play button it will take you to wpmet’s official website. From the website, you can either go through the blog or view the documentation to learn more.

There’s also an agreement checkbox in the 3rd step. You can leave it checked to share some non-sensitive data which will help make the plugin better. If you’re uncomfortable about sharing these data, you can uncheck the box and click on “Next Step” button to continue.

When you move to the final step, there will be a button labeled “Save Changes”, click on it to finish the setup.

Step 3: Connect to your Social Media platforms

The plugin basically adds 4 different options, Social Login, Social Share, Social Counter, and settings. To keep this simple, we’re only going to work with the Social Counter option. But you can explore other options if you want. 

After you finish your setup, go to WP Social > Social Counter. As you can see there isn’t much to configure. There are 3 tabs and the first one is the Counter Settings. Here you only can choose how many times it will cache data per hour, use the default theme font or not, and get some shortcodes.

The default settings are ok and don’t need to be changed for now. If you want to change anything here, do it then click on the “Save Changes” button and click on the “Providers” tab.

This section consists of all the social media platforms you can connect your website to. Currently, there are 9 platforms and all these are disabled by default. Just flip the button on the bottom left side of each card to enable these. You can also drag and drop these cards to reorder them.

Click on the settings button and will new window will pop up. Here you can put in your social media platform’s information. These settings are different for each platform. For example, if you choose Facebook, you have the option to insert your Facebook page ID/Name, default Facebook fans, etc.

Once you fill out the boxes, click on the “Save Changes” button and click on the “Style Settings” tab.

Here you can pick a style to display your social media counter. If you have the free version you can only pick from 3 presets. With WP Social Pro you will get access to all the presets. So select the one you like and save your changes.

Now your WP Social is connected and all ready to go.

Step 4: Display your social media counter

After you’ve set up your WP Social, now you can display it on your website. Go back to the Counter Settings tab and copy the shortcode. Then paste this code on the place where you want to display your social share counter.

After you copy the shortcode, go to the page where you want to display your social share counter. Then find the place where you want to display it, then paste the shortcode there. In our case, we’re using the Gutenberg editor, so we took the shortcode block and pasted our code there.

Finally, update your page and view the page. Now your social media counter should appear.

So that is how you can display your social media counter on your WordPress website using the WP Social plugin.

Displaying Social Media Counter using Widget

WP social is a good social share counter WordPress plugin. It also adds some blocks that you can use on your widgets to display your social share counter. Here’s how you can do it.

Step 1: Go to Widgets

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets. This is the section where you can add your widgets.

Step 2: Add the WSLU Social Counter

Next, select the widget area where you would want to display your social media counter. Then add the WSLU Social Counter block. In our example, we’re using Gutenberg to add the block.

If you’re having trouble finding the block, search for WSLU on the search bar and these blocks should appear. Simply drag and drop the block on your preferred widget area.

Step 3: Customize the WSLU block

There’s one last step before you display the social media counter. Customize the counter settings. Select your counter title, providers, and display style. You can also choose a custom CSS class if you want. After you’re done, click on the “Update” button on the top right corner of the screen and see your changes.

That’s how you display your social media counter using widgets. As you can see the plugin is simple and efficient. That’s why we prefer using it.

How to increase your Social Media shares

Social media is now a big part of our lives. Social media platforms are flooded with traffic. This also opens up an opportunity to showcase your business to the people. It is a good way for businesses to get to know what their customers want. This will in turn benefit the business as well as the customers. Here are some ways through which you can increase your social media shares:

• Share your content more: This is a no-brainer. If you want more people to share your content, you must share your content on social media as much as you can.
• Create regular content: If you own a business, it is a good idea to have a blog or a channel where you can post daily content. If it’s not possible to post content daily, do it weekly. Just make sure people hear from you often.
• Ask for people’s opinions: The most important thing about business today is delivering what people want. You have to understand if your content is resonating with the people or not. Ask people for their opinions, and advice in the comment section. This could help you improve your business a lot.
• Interact with your audience: Remember, you’re making content for real people. When people comment on your post, answer them, interact with them, and create a live session. Interacting with your audience sends off a warm feeling. People get to know the faces behind the logos and promos. This helps create a friendly business environment.

Creating a business today is easy but there’s a huge competition. Even well-known brands are falling behind because they are failing to understand what people like. This is a serious issue for big brands but also positive news for new and upcoming businesses. So if you’re a new business owner, don’t worry, just follow these rules and you’ll increase your social media shares in no time.

Conclusion

Adding a social media share is a good way to get a perspective of how your website is doing. You’ll understand which type of content is doing better so that you can focus more on that type of content. Also, when users see that a post or website has more shares, it serves as a proof that your website is popular among the people.

There are several social share counter wordpress plugin out there. You can use any of those to display the social share counter. So that wraps up our post on how to add a social media counter on a WordPress site. We hope that it was helpful. Let us know in the comments section what you think.