If you want to know the three best places to put your social media icons on your Wordpress blogs and how to open them in a new window, read my article.

1. Where should my Social Media Icons be put on my
blog?
bloglosophy.com/social-media-icons-put-wordpress-blog/
I imagine you all have a f ew social media pages set up by now. If not, get to it. You need at least:
Facebook, though it is getting more and more difficult on

2. there since it became a public company and therefore an
impersonal business
Pinterest, which is currently the best way to get a good
flow of traffic to your blog.
Three Places to Put your Social media Icons
1. In your sidebar
The social media icons that go here are the ones that take people to your social
media pages, not the sharing ones. You already know that your optin f orm goes at the top of
your sidebar, but the social media icons come right underneath. Use a f airly good sized icon so
they can be seen. When you f irst install WordPress and your theme, there is usually already some
kind of widget under Appearances that you can drag across into your sidebar. You can read about
how to do that in my article, How to Place Widgets in the Sidebar of Your WordPress Blog. Use
what is available f or now – it is more than adequate. In the f uture, you might want to use your
own specially made social media icons but be caref ul not to change them too much f rom the
immediately recognizable standard ones, or readers, when they glance around, won’t see them
because they are not what is expected. You really can spend your time more wisely than to muck
around with something that already works. It’s like people who keep changing their headers and
think that will sort the problems of a lack of traf f ic. It couldn’t be f urther f rom the truth. A wonky
header is never the reason f or a lack of traf f ic. See below f or how to make sure your special
icons open in a new window.
2. In your footer
The f ooter is the great f orgotten wilderness that gets ignored and yet, if someone reaches the
end of your post, it will be right there in their f ace. Along with your optin f orm, place the same
social media icons here. To do this, go to Appearances/Widgets and pull the same widget into
your f ooter area.
3. Under your posts
The social media icons that go here are the sharing ones and, f or these, you can use a plugin like
Jetpack and enable Sharing. Then you can go to your Dashboard menu and f ind Settings/Sharing.
In here, you can drag the icons you want to use down into the Enabled Services area and you will
see the Live Preview of what it will look like below that. You can then choose what Button Style
you want. I recommend the icon and text. Always choose New Window in Open links in. Choose
where you want your icons to show and then click Save.
How to Make Sure Your Special Social Media Icons Open in a New
Window
If you use a widget that already exists, it should give you a tick box to make sure they open in a
new window. The last thing you want to do is lose your readers f rom your blog even if it is to your
social media pages. Remember what I have said bef ore, you want to keep your readers on your
blog or with an easy way to return. Social media is an adjunct to your blog but your blog comes
f irst. Let me show you the code I used to place my customized Twitter image on my blog, Strands
of My Lif e.
<a title=”Strands of My Life on Twitter” href=”https://twitter.com/suzanneper”

3. target=”_blank”> <img src=”http://www.strandsofmylife.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/butter_twitter.png” alt=”” width=”40″ height=”40″ border=”0″
/></a>
If you analyse this, you will see: - the link to my Twitter page: https://twitter.com/suzanneper
- the link to the image I created and uploaded to the Media Library:
http://www.strandsofmylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/butter_twitter.png
- the size of the icon: width=”40″ height=”40″ border=”0″
- And you will see this: target=”_blank” That is the part that makes sure it opens in a new
window, so add that to your code if your icons are opening in the same window. Add it in exactly
the same place as this, af ter the link to Twitter and bef ore the >.
There you go. Take note of these three places f or your social media icons and, if you haven’t
already done this, get onto it right now. It will take you all of three minutes.
Related Posts
5 Widgets You must have on Your WordPress Sidebar
The 4 Sorts of Traf f ic you want to your Blog
How to Create Pages in a WordPress Blog
How to do an RSS f eed campaign in MailChimp