Tips that save time.
⚠️ Update. This plugin has had a great run, no doubt about that! However, at this stage, I need to officially retire it. There are better solutions than it in the market right now, and I can’t reliably devote time to supporting the plugin at this time.
If you have a website, which you do, then you obviously need some social media share buttons.
But what if the buttons you currently use display all zeros? Like this:
There are probably very few things that are worse for your social proof than showing such numbers.
I guess this will sound quite obvious, but we’d surely wish to see this on our social media counters instead:
In fact, let’s just tell it like it is:
For new and up-and-coming sites, showing counters on social media buttons is negative social proof.
Now, you might be thinking that we all go through the low-numbers phase – that we all have to see those zeros before we can see 10s … 100s … 1000s (maybe).
So, do we?
…
Well, no.
Today, I want to give you the best quick fix I can think of.
I’ve developed a plugin that solves this problem.
Three of its main benefits are:
- It’s meant for new and up-and-coming sites.
- It gives you social proof you can leverage.
- It doesn’t give you negative social proof.
Introducing the Social Share Starter
In a sentence, it’s a social media buttons plugin. And while it may seem like the others, it’s not.
The two main features it offers:
(1) instead of showing an individual share number for each service, it shows a cumulative number for all of them.
(2) it allows you to set the minimal displayed number of shares.
By the way. Showing a cumulative number is a trend online, and we might as well just follow it.
Here’s what Pat Flynn does on his site:
Here’s what’s going on at Mashable:
Now, back to my plugin.
Here’s what the settings page looks like. All settings are optional:
Two examples of the usage:
Example #1: A page with a nice number of shares
If you go to my Sylvester Stallone post on this site, you’ll see the total number of shares, currently it’s 264:
But, when you put it through a popularity checker, you’ll see that the numbers are a bit less impressive from a service-by-service point of view:
Currently, I have 98 likes, 50 shares, 40 comments (Facebook), 18 Tweets, 54 LinkedIn’s, and 4 G+ actions. Together, though, they look great – 264.
So the plugin showcases nice social proof when it has the possibility to do so.
Example #2: A page that’s slightly less popular
Here’s the plugin in action on one of my older posts:
As you can see, there’s no negative social proof. Only the buttons are displayed without the counter.
Update
I’ve been getting some great feedback about this plugin, so I was forced to speed up the development a bit. Long story short, there’s been a big update and now the plugin has one more cool functionality – a shortcode.
Here’s what the shortcode looks like:
[sss_counters_here /]
Nothing fancy, right? Maybe at first sight, but what this shortcode does is it allows you to place the social media buttons wherever you wish. This includes:
Posts
In case you want to add another block of buttons in a specific place within your post.
Pages
I purposefully didn’t include any automatic placement for pages in the first version of the plugin. That’s because you don’t always want these buttons everywhere. For instance, my main email subscription page doesn’t have the buttons. The reason is simple, I don’t want people getting distracted, I just want them to subscribe.
But a shortcode is a great alternative. With it, you can selectively pick where exactly you want the buttons to appear on your pages.
Custom landing pages, custom post types, custom home pages, etc.
Basically, the shortcode works everywhere you need it to work.
The plugin is free
This is the first phase of its release, so I want to get it out to you and let you reap some of its benefits first before I release it to the official WordPress plugin directory.
How to get it?
If you’re reading this on the blog then all you need to do is tell me where I should send you the plugin.
If you’ve come here through the newsletter then you already have the direct link to the plugin in the same email message.
Feedback encouraged
I need your feedback on this.
If you like to share your experience with the plugin, don’t hesitate to reach me through the contact form on this site.
so is this available for non wordpress sites?
No, just WordPress. But I can send you the PHP script for counting shares by itself, so you can integrate it with anything.
I love the plugin, but my numbers would look awesome if Pins were incorporated!
Thanks! Stay subscribed, Diane, the Pins are coming in the next update. :)
Looks awesome, definitely one of the social sharing plugin to look forward
Thanks!
Awesome work. Great plugin with a lot of potential.
Thanks! And don’t forget to download the latest update. :)
Hi! Its possible to change the graph between the total number of shares and the buttons?
Not in the settings, but you can easily just switch the graphic file to something else. It’s called a2.png
Does anyone know how I would prevent this from loading on certain custom post types?
Yes, you just have to take the IDs of those posts and type them in the “excluded IDs” field.
Hmm ok. Would be great to have global options to exclude entire custom post types. If you have a post type that gets updated a lot then it really rules out this plugin because it’s not practical to exclude hundreds of post IDs.
Thanks for the suggestion, will consider it for future versions.
We are going to be using this great plugin on our new site Kajoler.com
Looking good!
I get this Error: Warning: curl_setopt() [function.curl-setopt]: CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION cannot be activated when safe_mode is enabled or an open_basedir is set
Hi Sina, thanks for downloading the plugin!
The cause of this error is the safe_mode that’s activated on your hosting account. It’s deprecated since PHP 5.3 and is almost impossible to get around for previous PHP versions. To be able to use the plugin, you would have to set safe_mode = Off in your php.ini file. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do from my end.
Hi, can you tell me, why the Buttons are not side by side, but like in the screenshot?
Can you give me the address of your site, so I can have a look?
Hi, Patt Flynn also has a vertical social share bar at SPI. Is that possible with this plugin?
No, just the horizontal bar. Quick and simple.
When it comes to vertical bars, I usually recommend Smart Layers by AddThis.
Karol, another question. Does your plugin include Buffer? If not, any plan in the future?
Doesn’t include Buffer right now, but that’s a good suggestion! Thanks!
Thanks for creating this plugin :).
No problem :)
Have just read about this on
http://premium.wpmudev.org/
This does look very good, and I’m pleased you’ll be adding in Pinterest. Will you also be adding email shares too? I’m surprised that email (and printing for that matter) are still such popular sharing choices.
Thanks
Pinterest is actually already added. Feel free to download the newest version. :)
When it comes to email, it’s on my list, but I’m not quite sure it would be that useful. Would it?
Not as important to most people as FB, G+ and the like, but thought it should be on the wishlist, if there’s sufficient demand.
Would probably trade that though for adding Buffer – which I’ve seen someone else suggest.
Thanks once again for a remarkable free tool.
Thanks! And yeah, I guess Buffer will have to be included.
Hello. Is it an option to add soundcloud or foursquare support for next updates?
Also, nice comment box here!! Is this a plugin? If so, which one is it? :)
Thanks!!
Sorry, no plans for soundcloud and foursquare. And the comment box is built with the default Disqus plugin.
Question… if you were to change would the prior social media shares transfer over?