Strategically Communicating

Our focus in class so far has been social media, and we discussed the importance of giving the reader easily accessible social media and sharing tools. Therefore I was disappointed to find that WordPress itself does not offer a social media widget with multiple choices. I lurked around Google for a bit, trying to find a social media button block similar to this one that my friend implemented on his site:

This is SexyBookmarks, and I can see that they live up to their name. Unfortunately, it’s not WordPress friendly, and it would take far too much JavaScript for my beginner coder’s brain to make it work.

After looking around a bit more, I found Add This, a social media AND analytic tool in one. Score! Now, I was a little disappointed because the fancier button blocks on the site don’t play well with WordPress, but I’m pretty satisfied with the one I implemented.

If you’d like something similar, or maybe something more like this,

 
I’d recommend starting on this page to make sure you get one that works with whichever blog platform you’re using.

In WordPress, a user needs to paste the html for the button into a “text/html widget” on the widgets page. If you’d like a break between your text label and your buttons, you can add <br /> before the pasted text.

Now you can have a cool sharing tool in your sidebar, too!