If you have a social media presence (and who doesn’t these days), use for full effect. No matter what line of business you are in, there may be content that is more effective when shared on social media, or content that does not belong to you and cannot be hosted on your website, but that you find relevant and interesting to your visitors. social media can be bring more visitors to your websiteand there are numerous techniques you can use to promote your website on social networks. But it’s a two-way street: your website can help build your social community. Placing your social icons in your sidebar will make them the focal point for your visitors.
But should you? This and how to do it is what we will discuss in this article.
The sidebar is a common type of WordPress widget ready area. As the name suggests, it appears on the side of the page, separate from the main body of the page. A sidebar is normally used to host widgets that include: information about your website visitors contact information, special offers, search bars, highlights, etc. like whatever the specific content they are currently viewing.
Adding social icons to your sidebar will always keep your visitors in focus and at their fingertips. promoting traffic to your social media channels. Don’t want to host large video files in your website’s media library? Direct your visitors to your YouTube or Vimeo channel. Would you like to present your visitors with a feed of industry news? Put a link to your Twitter feed in your sidebar. Want to engage your users directly in a discussion without having to log in? Try showing them the path to your Facebook Group directly from your sidebar.
I didn’t mean it Internet users began to expect icons in their sidebars. They will know where to find them without attracting too much attention. In addition, the icons, no matter how they look, will not visually clash with your website’s style and will not get lost in the main body of your page’s content.
We will be using our Bridge theme for this demonstration. While themes may differ from each other, most have a sidebar widget area, and the procedure for getting your social media icons into your WordPress sidebar works pretty much the same: by dragging the right widget into the sidebar widget area and then configuring it. to your liking.
If you are using our flexible Bridge theme, you should have no problem adding social icons to your sidebar. Bridge even has a special widget for this. We’ll show you how to do it using a post. We randomly generated some content to fill the main body of the post. But first, you need to enable the sidebar in your theme. To do this, you need to edit a post or page in Gutenberg. If you’re using Elementor, you’ll still need to briefly switch to Gutenberg or the Classic editor to change the layout of the page to enable the sidebar.
Scroll all the way down and Qode Sidebar Go to the menu and choose a layout that shows the sidebar. this Default There is no layout, but you can choose the width of the sidebar based on the main body of the text and the orientation. we went with Sidebar 1/4 righti.e. the sidebar will occupy a quarter of the space on the right, but you can choose the left sidebar and the third page width instead of the fourth.
Next, you want to make sure the social icon appears in the sidebar. To configure your sidebar, go to: Appearance/Widgets Using the left side menu in your WordPress dashboard.
After that, you need to drag its instance. Qode Social Icon to the widget sidebar and place it wherever you want. Widgets placed there will appear in order from top to bottom. We want our social widget at the top, so that’s where we’re going to drag it.
Now you need to configure this widget. For this show we will choose apartment icon type, but depending on your website design you can choose a different one. font elegant icon pack (you can also use Font Awesome if you want) and excitement incoming icon Font Elegant Icon Drop down menu. You must enter custom size and Custom Shape Size if you like it (10 and 13 pixels for us respectively). We will also hyperlink our Twitter feed to: Connection field and change the Target to: New Windowwill open the link in a new window. Of course, you can choose any social network and icon you want. this Qode Social Icon The widget also includes a number of design options that go beyond the scope of this demonstration, but the large number of size, color and border settings make the widget versatile and adaptable to any style. then you need Save your Qode Social Icon update the settings and therefore sidebar.
And our Twitter feed icon is right there, at the top of our sidebar!
But what if you want to add social icons with accompanying text as elements to your sidebar? For this effect you can use: Qode Icon with Text Vehicle. Again, you need to enable it for the theme to show the sidebar. Open a post or page on Gutenberg, scroll all the way down. Find Qode Sidebar Choose a layout like and Sidebar 1/4 rightfor example, showing the sidebar.
Set route to Appearance/Widgets Using the menu on the right side of your WordPress dashboard. Next, find Qode Icon with Text Select the widget and drag it to the top of the screen. sidebar Vehicle.
This widget now needs to be configured. We will use this widget to connect to our Instagram profile, but it can be used for almost any social network. For box typewe will choose Normalfor Icon Pack we will choose font elegantand for Font Elegant Icon social_instagram. For Icon Type we will choose Normalfor Icon Position Leftand for Content Alignment Right. Of course, you can set it as you like, Font Awesome icons or different types of icons etc.
For Titlewe will write Visit us on Instagramand change Hashtag with P. The title can be anything you want, but other than that we find any title tag. P too large for this particular application. your profile URL for the link to work. Connection area (we’ll go with our Instagram profile) and Our Instagram for link text.
We’ll leave the other options as they are, but you can customize the sidebar to match your website’s layout and style.
This is how your social icon will also appear at the top of our sidebar.
Of course, you can create this type of link for as many social networks as you want. This widget also supports icon loading so you can make it work for your website style.
As always, we recommend using a theme’s built-in functionality for whatever you want your website to do. However, if the theme you’re using doesn’t support the effect you want, you can almost always do (or more than make do) with a plugin. The plugin we will use is Social Icons Widget and Block. You need to install and activate this plugin.
This plugin will provide you with widgets and blocks that you can use to display your social icons on your site, but we will show you how to display them in your sidebar. To do this, you will need to go to: Appearance/Widgets.
On the left, in Available Widgets find the section Social Icons from WPZOOM and drag it wherever you want. We want our social icons at the top of the sidebar, so we’ll place it, but you can choose the location you want.
Next, you need to configure the widget. For Titlewe will download Follow us on social media!, but you can choose any quick title you want. We will not touch any of the other settings. Suffice it to say that the plugin offers several size and color options that you can use to match your social icons to your website layout.
By scrolling down you can choose which icons are displayed in what order. The default values are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click to add another add more.
You will get another widget section with WordPress icon. say we want to add Pinterest profile. We’ll add our URL next to the icon and it will automatically turn into a Pinterest instead. Finally, you have to Save all your changes of course.
And just like that, your social media will be promoted for your website visitors.
As a result
As you can see, adding social media icons to your WordPress sidebar takes no time at all. You can choose to use your theme’s built-in options, as always is our first recommendation, or opt for a plugin, but in any case, it takes a little more than a drag, drop, and a few clicks of the mouse. So why don’t you try? Your social media visitors will appreciate it.
