If you understand how using social media can bring traffic to your website, another thing to keep in mind is that using your website, you can help build up your social network with social media buttons.
A visitor that finds your website might like the products or services that you offer, but might not need them just yet. Instead of relying on them to hopefully bookmark your website and remember to return at another time when they are in need of your services, having them add you to their social network can help you stay relevant.
In this guide I'll try to cover some of the many ways you can help add social media buttons to your website to easily allow visitors to start following you on their favorite social networks.
What are Social Media buttons?
I doubt you've been able to navigate the Internet much over the last few years without running into some form of social media buttons. These are basically just small icons that you place on your website linking to your social media networks.
As a matter of fact, if you scroll to the bottom of this article, you should see a Facebook, Google+, and Twitter like buttons. That way if you enjoy this article and want some of your friends on one of these social networks to also read it, you can easily share it with them
Typically there are 2 main types of social media buttons, ones that simply link to your social profiles, and then ones that keep track of how many likes, followers, shares you have on that page or on your website.
How to add Social Media buttons to HTML
In the simplest form, if you just have some HTML pages making up your website, you can easily add social media buttons to these pages with some simple code from each social network.
For the examples below I'll just be using this quick dummy page I created on example.com:
Facebook buttons
Adding some Facebook social media buttons to your website can help you spread your message via word of mouth to your visitor's friends. They have both a like button you can use on any page, and a like box you can use if you have a Facebook page for your business.
Facebook Like button
Visit the Facebook Like button, page and simply fill in some info for your button then click Get Code
Select the JavaScript code from the top box, and paste it in your HTML page right after the <body> tag.
Next select the HTML from the bottom box, and paste it where you want the button to display on your page.
You should now see your Facebook like button on your page where you placed it:
