These days, having a presence on social media is almost as important as having a website for your business. Some people prefer to focus on one more than the other, but there’s no reason why you can’t have both a strong social media presence and a well-performing WordPress website. In fact, you can even find ways to integrate the two.
In this article, we’ll cover three types of social media integrations with WordPress, including:
- Use a WordPress social media plugin.
- Integrate WordPress with social networks using a third-party platform.
- Leverage the embed functionality of your social media platform.
There are many options when it comes to combining social media with , so let’s get to work!
Why should you integrate WordPress with social media platforms?
If you have a moment, visit some of your favorite websites right now. I’ll bet you all of them have social media profiles set up, and they will most likely display links to multiple platforms. The reason website owners go to all that effort is because social media is one of the best ways to drive more traffic to your website. Y share your content.
The problem is that your website and your social media profiles are different entities, even if you use largely the same content on both. This means that each must be managed separately, which can add a lot of work.
However, by finding ways to integrate WordPress with social media, you can significantly reduce that workload. Additionally, these integrations often come with a number of additional benefits, such as:
- Attract additional traffic. As we mentioned earlier, social media platforms are great sources of organic traffic.
- Provide new channels for the involvement of your users. The greater the number of social media platforms you are active on, the more likely your visitors will follow you on at least one of them.
- Make it easy for users to share your content. For example, integrating WordPress with Facebook allows your visitors to share your posts with a single click, leading to more views and exposure.
When we talk about WordPress and social media integrations, we mean a whole host of possible strategies. For example, you can connect WordPress with Facebook and add reactions to your posts. You can also allow your visitors to share your content on Twitter, LinkedIn and more using simple buttons.
Those are the most basic examples of WordPress and social media integrations. However, you can also configure more advanced features. For example, by connecting WordPress with Instagram, you can automatically share some of your Instagram photos on your website. That means you can save a lot of time by avoiding having to post to both platforms manually. This same integration is also possible on other platforms.
In the following sections, we will teach you how to connect WordPress with Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. So get to work!
3 Easy Ways to Integrate WordPress with Social Media
In this section, we’ll show you three approaches to integrating social media and WordPress. You can use a plugin, a third-party platform, and even a manual method. Let’s start with the simplest solution.
1. Install a WordPress social media plugin
As you might expect, the easiest way to integrate WordPress with social media is to use plugins. There is a wide range of plugins that allow you to connect WordPress with Facebook and other platforms. An example of this is:
What this plugin does is that it allows you to include share buttons on your WordPress posts. With this tool, you can connect WordPress with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and dozens of other platforms.
Another great option for social media and WordPress integration is . This tool gives you the option to automatically publish content on multiple platforms. For example, you can connect WordPress with Instagram, and your content will be shared on both:
The plugin also supports many other types of integrations. You can set it to repost old content from time to time and schedule social media posts in advance. It works with all major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and the aforementioned Instagram.
Those two plugins should give you an example of what you can do with WordPress and social media integrations, although there are many more options available. For now, let’s take a closer look at an example of an easy integration, connecting WordPress with Instagram.
To do so, you will need to install possibly the best social media plugin for WordPress: Blog2Social.
Once you activate the plugin, a new tab will appear. Blog2Social in your control panel. Click on it and select the option network. Inside, you will find a list of all the social networks that the plugin allows you to connect with WordPress.
Some of these platforms will only work with , but Instagram is not one of them. Simply select the button + profile to connect WordPress with Instagram:
Next, the plugin will ask you for your Instagram account details. Now enter your credentials, and then press the button authorize:
After you confirm that the account is yours, it will appear in the tab Blog2Social > Networks:
Then go to the tab Blog2Social > Post & Sharing. Inside, you will see a list of your existing WordPress posts. If you click the button Share on Social Media To the right of any post, you’ll see a list of accounts you can share that content to. In addition, you can configure how your social media post will look like:
At this point, you’ll probably notice that there’s a dropdown called share now at the bottom of the screen. If you are using the free version of the plugin, you can only share posts instantly instead of scheduling them in advance. However, the plugin still saves you time by allowing you to attach a featured image, link, and post text directly from this screen.
When you’re done, select the button Compartir. That is all! There should now be a new post on your Instagram profile, linking to your WordPress post. Just remember that you will have to repeat this process every time you want to share WordPress content on Instagram. Also, you can connect multiple social media profiles and share the same content with as many as you want.
This is just one example of the many WordPress social media integrations you can do using plugins, so you’ll want to explore all the options thoroughly. For now though, let’s move on to another way to connect your WordPress site with social media.
2. Use a third-party platform
There are many platforms that specialize in connecting online services with each other. One of our favorites is called . This service allows you to create ‘applets’ or small applications that connect multiple platforms. For example, you can create an applet that integrates WordPress with Facebook and allows you to share new posts with Facebook automatically:
Let’s see how it works. Go to and create an account (which is totally free). When your account is ready, click the tab MyApplets at the top of your control panel. A new page will load, and you will see another button called new-applet:
Next, IFTTT will ask you to choose the first service you want to connect to. Find the WordPress button and select it:
On the next screen, press the button Connect:
IFTTT will ask for your WordPress URL and login credentials, so it can connect to your admin account. Enter the data and press the button Connect when you’re done:
After connecting WordPress with IFTTT, you will be able to choose the action that will trigger the application to run. The platform might show you only a few options at first, but there are dozens of hidden options. You can access them by clicking the button Suggest a new trigger (Suggest a new trigger) at the bottom of the screen.
For now though, choose Any new post (Any new post):
As the trigger description says, this will automatically launch the app every time you post new content to WordPress. This is the ‘if’ part of the applet. Now it’s time to tackle the ‘that’ part, so click + that on the following screen:
Once again, IFTTT will ask you to choose the service you want to connect to. We are going to integrate WordPress with Facebook, so look for the latter among the options that the platform shows you:
After choosing the service that will perform the action, you now have to specify what that action is. In this case, we are going to create a link input (Create a link post). This will automatically link to your WordPress post from Facebook when you post something new on your website:
Next, you can choose the look of your Facebook posts. By default, they will include your WordPress post URL. That means Facebook will also get all the metadata it can find, like the post description and the . However, you can also add your own pre-recorded message to each post:
Once you’re happy with your settings, click the button Create action (Create Action) and you’re ready to go. IFTTT will show you your finished applet, which will be activated by default:
If at any time you want to disable your applet, just go to the tab MyApplets and open it. You’ll see a quick toggle to turn it off at the bottom of the screen:
IFTTT works with dozens of services and offers hundreds of applets. There are a ton of fun WordPress social media integrations you can apply, so take a look and see what you find!
3. Test the embed functionality of your social media platform
Last but not least, most social media platforms allow you to manually embed your posts on other websites. Until now, we have only focused on sharing your WordPress content on social networks, but this will allow you to do the opposite.
Each platform’s embed functionality works a little differently. For example, you can click the three dots at the top of any Facebook post and you’ll find an option to insert:
Clicking this option will show you what the post will look like when embedded, and give you a code snippet that you can use on your website:
To use that code, open the WordPress editor for whatever page or post you want to use. Later,…
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