How to Create Social Media Buttons

Adding social media buttons to your website, blog, or email signature is one of the smartest ways to connect your digital platforms and grow your audience organically. These small but mighty icons act as a direct bridge, guiding visitors to your social profiles and encouraging them to share your amazing content. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create and install everything from simple follow buttons to custom-designed share links, step-by-step.

Why Spend Any Time on Social Media Buttons?

You might be thinking, "Are social media buttons really that important?" The answer is a big yes. In a fragmented digital world, these buttons create a seamless experience for your audience. They're more than just links, they are quiet network builders working for you 24/7.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what they accomplish:

• Grow Your Social Following: They convert website visitors or email recipients, who are already interested in what you do, into social media followers. This builds a warm, engaged audience.
• Increase Content Visibility: Share buttons make it ridiculously easy for readers to blast your latest blog post, product, or news to their own networks, acting as a free and authentic word-of-mouth marketing tool.
• Improve User Experience: Instead of making people switch tabs and manually search for your @handle, you give them a one-click path to connect with you. It’s a simple, respectful way to improve their experience on your site.
• Unify Brand Presence: They reinforce that your website and your social profiles are all part of one cohesive brand ecosystem.

Creating Social Media Buttons for Your Website or Blog

Your website is your digital home base, making it the most important place to add your social media buttons. There are two primary types of buttons you'll want to use: Follow buttons and Share buttons. It's helpful to know the difference and where to use each.

Follow Buttons vs. Share Buttons: Understanding the Difference

It’s easy to mix these up, but their jobs are completely different.

• Follow Buttons: These are static links that direct people to your social media profiles. The link is always the same: `https://instagram.com/yourusername`. Their goal is to get people to follow you. You'd typically place these icons in your website's header, footer, or sidebar - somewhere they can be seen on every page.
• Share Buttons: These are dynamic links that allow a visitor to share the specific URL of the page they are currently on. If a user clicks the "Share to X" button on your blog post "10 Tips for Better Coffee," the button generates a post pre-filled with a link to that exact article. These are best placed near the content people will want to share, like on blog posts, product pages, or portfolio entries.

The Easiest Method: Plugins & Native Website Builder Widgets

If you're not comfortable with code, don't worry. Nearly every modern website platform has built-in tools or third-party plugins that make adding social media buttons a drag-and-drop process.

For WordPress Users

WordPress has a massive library of plugins designed for this purpose. Look for plugins like "Social Media Share Buttons" or "Social Icons Widget." After installing and activating a plugin, you’ll usually find a new menu item in your dashboard. From there, it's typically as simple as:

1. Choosing which social networks you want to display (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.).
2. Pasting in the direct URL to each of your social profiles.
3. Customizing the look and feel (icon size, shape, color).
4. Using a widget or shortcode to place the buttons in your header, footer, or sidebar.

For share buttons on blog posts, many of these plugins will automatically add them to the top or bottom of each post for you.

For Shopify Users

Most modern Shopify themes come with built-in functionality for social media follow buttons in the theme customization settings (usually in the "Footer" or "Header" section). Simply navigate to Online Store > Themes > Customize. Look for your footer settings and you'll find a space to paste your social media profile URLs. For advanced share button functionality, the Shopify App Store has several options available.

For Squarespace & Wix Users

Both Squarespace and Wix have native "Social Links" blocks or elements that you can add directly to your pages. As with other platforms, you just drag the element to where you want it to appear, click to edit, and paste in your profile links. It automatically pulls in the official logos and styles them for you.

The DIY Route: Using Simple HTML Code

Maybe you don't want another plugin, or you need to place buttons somewhere your website builder doesn't allow. A little bit of HTML is all you need. This gives you complete control over placement and appearance.

First, you need icons. You can download free icons from sites like Flaticon or Font Awesome. Just make sure they're saved as `PNG` or `SVG` files and upload them to your website's media library.

The code for a single follow button is a simple link wrapped around an image:

<,a href="https://www.instagram.com/yourusername/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">,
<,img src="link-to-your-instagram-icon.png" alt="Follow us on Instagram" style="width:32px, height:32px,">,
<,/a>,

Let’s break it down:

• <,a href="...">,: This is the link tag. Replace the placeholder URL with your actual profile link.
• target="_blank": This smart little attribute tells the browser to open the link in a new tab, so users don't leave your website.
• <,img src="...">,: This is your icon image. Replace the placeholder with the URL of the icon image you uploaded.
• alt="...": This is important for accessibility and SEO. It describes the image for screen readers and search engines.
• style="...": An optional bit of code to control the size of your icon. Adjust the "32px" value as needed.

You can create one for each social network and place them side-by-side in an HTML block on your site.

Creating Links for Share Buttons Manually

Manually creating share links is a bit trickier because they need to be dynamic, but the major platforms provide simple URL structures you can use. Here are a few examples:

Share on X (Twitter):

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.yourwebsite.com/your-article&text=Check%20out%20this%20awesome%20article!

Share on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.yourwebsite.com/your-article

Share on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.yourwebsite.com/your-article

Most website platforms will have a variable you can insert (like `[post_url]`) to automatically grab the link of the current page, but this shows you how the underlying technology works.

How to Add Social Media Buttons to Your Email Signature

An email signature is another piece of highly valuable digital real estate. Adding social follow buttons here turns every email you send into a subtle networking tool. The process is pretty similar across most email clients. Here’s how to do it in Gmail.

1. Find & Prepare Your Icons: Search for small social media icons (around 32x32px or 48x48px is a good size). Download the ones you need. You can't use icons that are hosted somewhere else because they might break, it's best to upload them directly.
2. Navigate to Gmail Settings: Click the gear icon in the top right corner of Gmail, then click "See all settings."
3. Find the Signature Section: On the "General" tab, scroll down until you see the "Signature" box.
4. Insert Your Icons: Inside the signature editor, click the "Insert image" icon. Upload your social button icons one at a time. They should appear side-by-side where your cursor is. A tip here is to add a space or two between each one as you upload.
5. Add Your Links: This is the most important step! Click on one of your icons to highlight it. Then, click the "Link" icon in the editor's toolbar. In the box that appears, paste the full URL to your social media profile and click "OK." Repeat this for every icon.
6. Save Your Changes: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save Changes."

That's it! Now, your social profiles are just a click away for every person you email.

Bonus: Designing Your Own Custom Social Buttons

If the default social media logos don't match your brand's aesthetic, you can always design your own! It’s a great way to show attention to detail and offer a unique, cohesive user experience.

Tools to Use

You don't need to be a professional graphic designer. Tools like Canva make this incredibly easy. Figma is another fantastic option for creating vector files that scale perfectly.

The process is simple:

1. Create a new design with a small square canvas (e.g., 100x100 pixels).
2. Set the background to your primary brand color or leave it transparent.
3. Search the elements library for the logo of the social platform (e.g., "Facebook logo"). Most tools have simplified, single-color versions available.
4. Recolor the logo to match your monochromatic brand palette.
5. Once you're happy, export each button as a PNG file (with a transparent background) or SVG.

Then just follow the HTML steps outlined above to add your newly designed, on-brand buttons to your website!

Final Thoughts

Whether you're using a simple plugin, writing a few lines of HTML, or embedding them in your emails, social media buttons are a valuable tool for unifying your online presence. They silently work in the background, making it effortless for your audience to connect with you on their favorite platforms and share the content they love.

Once those new followers start rolling in from your website and emails, keeping your content schedule filled and responding to every interaction is the key to building a vibrant community. At Postbase, we designed our platform to manage exactly that without the complexity. Our simple visual calendar helps us plan content for Instagram, TikTok, Reels and more in one view, and the unified inbox makes it easy to handle comments from everywhere without chasing notifications. It helps us feel organized and lets us focus on the "social" part of social media.