How To Add Facebook Like, Follow Buttons On Your WordPress Blog [With Codes]

Facebook is the largest referrer of social media traffic to online business and websites.

With over 1.8 billion monthly active users, being on Facebook, using Facebook buttons on your website is a no brainer.

If you want to add Facebook like and follow buttons on your WordPress, here is a handy step-by-step tutorial about adding Facebook buttons and widgets on your website.

But before diving in, let’s see why you should add Facebook widgets to your website and why that matters.

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What Are Facebook Buttons? And Why They Matter?

Facebook buttons are the widgets on your website that helps your readers connect with you on Facebook. This could be liking your Facebook business page, liking and sharing an article on Facebook which can bring you additional exposure and referral traffic.

Advantages of Adding Facebook Like/share and Follow Buttons On Your Website

Adding any sort of social media widget (or button image that links to social media accounts) to your blog allows you to connect to your users over that platform and get more exposure.

By adding Facebook buttons on your website you tap into the huge platform of over 1.8 billion users and get the chance to connect with your audience there.

Here are the benefits of having Facebook buttons on your website:

• Allows your readers to like your Facebook business page.
• Allows readers to like and share the article they are reading so that it reaches more similar minds and hence bring you more traffic and leads from Facebook.
• Facebook is the largest referrer of social media traffic so you can get good traffic.
• It is always good to have an alternate source of traffic or a platform other than Google so in case your site doesn’t perform well on search engines, you can have alternate means to interact with your audience.
• Facebook pages & groups now have the ability to sell or go LIVE so if you leverage your organic visitors and diverge them to connect with you on Facebook, you can sell and perform LIVE webinars for them.
• Having a good number of shares and likes on your social profiles give you an authority boost in the minds of your readers and hence increases trust levels.

How To Add Facebook Buttons To Your Website (Step-By-Step Tutorial)

Like all other WordPress tutorials, you can add Facebook buttons and widgets on your site in two different ways.

• Manually: By getting the code from the official Facebook’s developer page where it has customizable settings to create like like, share widgets using the Extend Facebook Markup Language (XFBML).
• Using Plugins: If you’re not techy enough to mess with the codes, the beauty of WordPress is, they have plenty of plugins out there. You’ll explore the best plugins to add Facebook buttons and widgets.

In this article, I’ll walk you through both the processes of adding Facebook widgets on your website.

Adding Facebook Buttons Using Official Facebook Developers Page (via manual code snippets)

In this method we’ll discuss the process of adding Facebook follow buttons with the XFBML code that you can get from the developers page.

PLEASE NOTE: All the processes in the manual method of adding Facebook widgets to your blog, you get 2 code snippets. If you’re adding more than one button, you need to add the first snippet only once because it is the same for all the buttons.

1. Adding Facebook Like & Share Button On WordPress Sites

1. Head over to the official Facebook like button page.
2. Click on the “like button configurator” button.
3. In the next screen, you get various options to customize your like button, namely the URL to like (ideally this should be your Facebook business page, but you can place any link you want), the layout of the button (box format, button format etc). There are other options like adding Facebook share button along with the like button or showing the faces of likers along with the button etc.
4. Choose what you want.
5. After you’ve zeroed in with what layout you want, click on the “get code” button to generate the code.

This will activate a popup window which will have your Facebook like/share button HTML code to be added on your WordPress website.

This pop up generates two codes out of which 1st one (marked as part 1 in the image) has to be added to your theme’s footer.

Now, if you have a SEO optimized WordPress Theme like StudioPress, you can do it with a breeze because they have inbuilt settings to add codes to your theme’s header and footer.

However, if you do not have StudioPress, you can do with by adding  insert headers and footers plugin.​ Then place the above code to the header space of the plugin.

You can add the 2nd part of the code to whatever page​/post you want the button to appear on. If you want to display Facebook like button on the sidebar of your blog, add the code to a text/HTML widget.

That’s it!

2. Adding Facebook Follow Buttons To WordPress Sites

1. Head over to the official Facebook follow button page.
2. In the next screen, you get various options to customize your follow button. Add your profile URL, width of the button and the layout of the follow widget you want.
3. There are other options like adding Facebook share button along with the like button or showing the faces of followers along with the button etc. Choose what you want.
4. After you’ve finalized what layout you want, click on the “get code” button to generate the code.

In the next pop up you get two code snippets.

The first part has to be placed before the closing header tag (using this plugin) and the 2nd part of the code has to be added wherever you want the button to appear.

3. Adding Facebook Save Button To WordPress Blog via Facebook Developers Option

Facebook save button enables the users to save a specific item, article or service to a private list that can be shared with friends. Users can then use it to receive updates and notifications about those items.

This can come handy if you’re a small business website and run offers and deals for your customers. Here is how to add a “Facebook save button”​ to WordPress.

1. Head over to the official Facebook save button generator page.
2. In the next screen, enter the website link or product link that you want people to save on Facebook.
3. After you’ve finalized what layout you want, click on the “get code” button to generate the code.

In the next pop up you get two code snippets.

The first part has to be placed before the closing header tag (use this plugin) and the 2nd part of the code has to be added wherever you want the button to appear.

4. Adding Facebook Send Button To WordPress Blog via Facebook Developers Option

Facebook send button helps people to privately send your articles/pages to their friends on Facebook. This is a great method of sharing for those who don’t want to clutter their personal profiles with sharing publicly.

Here is how to add a “Facebook send button“​ to WordPress.

• Head over to the official Facebook send button generator page.
• In the next screen, enter the website link or product link that you want readers to share on Facebook.
• After you’ve finalized what layout you want, click on the “get code” button to generate the code.

Like always, in the next pop up you get two code snippets.

The first part has to be placed before the closing header tag (use this plugin) and the 2nd part of the code has to be added wherever you want the button to appear.

Adding Facebook Buttons & Widgets Using WordPress WordPress Plugins

1. Best WordPress Plugin To Add Facebook Like, Share & Follow Widgets:

• Save

Facebook button by BestWebSoft is the only WordPress plugin (as far as I know) that can add Facebook like, share and follow buttons to your blog.

Feature Highlights:

• Best plugin to add like, share and follow buttons
• Allows full customization including colour scheme, layout, button positions and more.
• Multi-language compatibility.
• Choose action for like button.
• Easy to set up.

Install Plugin ››

2. Best WordPress Plugin To Add Facebook Save Button For Your Blog

FB Save Button for WP does what it is named after. It allows you to add a save button to your WordPress site. You have the freedom to choose where you want to place the save button like above the post and below the post.

FB save button plugin also has shortcode options to add save widget wherever desired.​

Feature Highlights:

• Allow addition of save button in posts or pages.
• Allow addition of button after or before the content
• Shortcode options
• Very easy to set up

Install Plugin Now ››

3. Best WordPress Plugin To Add Facebook Send Button To WordPress Websites Or Blogs

Facebook Send Button for WordPress plugin allows you to add send button on your WordPress blog. With Send button, your readers can send your post to their friends.

They also can share the article/page link to groups they are a part of.

Feature Highlights:

• Allow addition of send button in post or page
• Allows addition of send button in post or page
• Shortcode options using the code [wpfbs]. For example, [wpfbs link=”http://example.com/”] places a send button.
• Very easy to set up

Install Plugin Now ››

How to Add Facebook Like and Follow Button On WordPress Blog (With Images)

There is another alternative method to add Facebook buttons through images. This works in a similar manner you do to add a simple clickable image widget on WordPress.

If you do not want to mess up with codes or don’t want to take a toll on your server resources with plugins, you can try adding Facebook buttons images and add clickable links to them.

N.B. This method will only work for creating Facebook like button images for pages and follow button images. It is not suitable to create share/send or save button images for each and every article manually.

This method works for:

1. Facebook follow buttons
2. Facebook page like buttons
3. Clickable buttons for Facebook Live and audience network
4. Clickable button images to direct users to join your Facebook group etc.

Step by step process of adding Facebook widgets via clickable images:

1. Get your desired Facebook like and follow button images from official Facebook branding assets site or download some fancy ones via regular sites.
2. Upload each image to your WordPress editor as you do while writing a blog post.
3. Click the image to add link to your desired action. Like if it is a “follow us on Facebook button” image, add link to your profile page and so on.
4. The go back to the text mode to get the HTML code of the whole thing.
5. Add it to a text widget (to place it on the sidebar as a widget) or add it on a blog post/page.

Wrapping Up: The Easiest Way to Add Facebook Buttons With Codes To WordPress

With the above methods, you can easily add Facebook like, share, follow & send buttons to your WordPress sites. Like I said, manual methods are the best, but you can go plugins way if you don’t want to hassle with the codes.

If you’re adding codes to get the Facebook widgets, make sure to backup your site. This will help you go back to a restore point in case you mess up.

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