An important part of content marketing is sharing your content - or, if you are lucky, having it shared for you. Today, marketers are using all kinds of tactics to do just that - from social advocates to simply including social share icons in their email newsletters or on specific webpages - which is what I will show you how to do today. When we're done, you will have a social share icon that you can include in a specific blog article or in a newsletter, allowing subscribers and users to easily share your content on their personal social media channels with a simple click of a button.
What is a social share icon? A social share icon is an icon that is linked to a specific article, blog post or web page. When users/subscribers click the icon, they will be able to share the specific content on their personal social media channels. Social share icons can be placed in emails or on specific pages throughout your website (e.g., a blog article page). So what happens when someone clicks the icon? When someone clicks on a social share icon, a pop-up window will appear, allowing the user to customize or add a message (alongside your article) to their post. Note: If users/subscribers are already logged into their social media channels, they will be able to utilize the one-click to share functionality. If not, they will simply be asked to login before sharing.
How to create social share icons
Please note: In this tutorial, we will be walking through how to create just one social share icon. You will need to create social share icons for each social media channel that you would like to use.
1. The first step is to create the share link that you will place inside the icon. I use a link generator to do this:
- Go to: www.sharelinkgenerator.com.
- Here, you’ll insert the article URL in the social media channel that you want the link that you want your email subscribers to be able to share this icon on (this can be one or all!). I’m going to use Facebook as an example.
- Then, click "Create the link".
- In the options that populate, copy the text from the "URL Only" box.
- Save this somewhere you can easily access it - we are going to need it later!
2. Find a social icon image that you want to use and copy its image address:
- Go to http://www.google.com/ and search for "Facebook social media icon"
- At the top of the search results, you will see "Images". Click to select and open the image results
- Then, click "Tools" (also at the top)
- From the list of options that appear, click "Usage Rights" and select "Labeled for Reuse". This will populate image results that can be used commercially, without citation
- Once you find the one that you like, right-click it and select "Copy Image Address."
- Save this somewhere you can easily access it - we are going to need it later!
3. Putting it All Together
- Now that you have the Share Link Generator and your icon image, you can create your linked social share icon!
- The code that you will want to use will look something like this (though the styling can be updated/added to make it look exactly how you want it):
- The blue text indicates where you need to place the URLs that we copied/saved earlier. Place the ShareLink Generator Code (from Step One) in the a href tag (the first link), and the image URL (Step Two) into the second.
- Once you've updated this code snippet, you can copy and paste it into the HTML of your email or webpage.
ClearVantage Association Management Software provides multiple ways to manage social networks for your own association and member organizations. Contact your Client Support Representative to learn more!