At the bottom of each post and page you can include sharing buttons for your readers to share your content across a range of social networks/services.

Watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works, and read below for more examples and settings.

To customize your blog’s sharing options, go My Sites, then click Configure → Sharing in menu options.

On the Sharing page, select the Sharing Buttons tab. (For detail on the Connections tab, visit these instructions.)

You can add any or all of the following services to your posts and pages:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• Pocket
• Press This
• WhatsApp
• Telegram
• Skype
• Email
• Print

Customize Your Services

There are a range of sharing services available. By default, these are simply links to the sharing service that pre-load a new entry or update with the post or page details:

The buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Pocket may also be displayed in “Official” mode. Other than Twitter, official buttons display the number of shares in real-time on your blog as reported by the specific service. (Note that these may differ from the Share Stats within your Dashboard.)

Notes: Pinterest’s Pin It button will only appear on pictures when using the Official Buttons style. Facebook Share numbers are a total of shares, likes, and comments on Facebook.

To enable the official buttons, go down to the Button style menu and select Official buttons.

To configure which services you are using, click on Edit sharing buttons:

To add sharing buttons, select the services you want to use in the Edit visible buttons area. As you do, you’ll see them added to the preview above.

To disable a button, select it again to deactivate it. You can also reorder the buttons by clicking the Reorder button. You’ll then be able to drag and drop the buttons into any order you’d like.

Additionally, you can add a More button that contains sharing buttons that you want to display but only in a hidden dropdown by clicking the + Add ‘more’ button button.

They will appear on your site like so:

Note that some services are not available if your blog is marked as private.

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Customizing Sharing Settings

You can also customize how the buttons behave and look and where they appear with the settings in the bottom half of the page:

• Button style allows you to choose whether you only want the button icon, the text link, or both, or whether you want to use the full Official Buttons where available.
• Reblog & Like allows you to choose whether or not to display the reblog and/or like button alongside the sharing buttons.
• Show buttons on the front/archive/search results page, individual posts, pages, and media.
• Comment Likes allows you to enable or disable comment liking on all posts.
• Twitter username allows you to provide your Twitter @username. It will automatically be included in tweets when people share your content using the Twitter button.

Save your changes and check out your blog to see the results.

You can also edit the label next shown above the sharing buttons by clicking the Edit label text button at the top of the page.

Again, be sure to save your changes.

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Disabling Sharing / Likes On Specific Posts

You can disable the sharing and/or like buttons on a per-post or page basis with the checkbox(s) in the Sharing tab of the editor:

For more information on the Like button please see this support document.

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Share Stats

You will now be able to see what your users are sharing and what services they are using to do so in your blog stats. Only the standard share links are counted, so if you are using the “Official” buttons or the Facebook Share/Like button, then the stats for these shares will not be counted.

Note: to find Share Stats, you’ll need to be in the stats available in your WP Admin tools. To find them, add “/wp-admin” at the end of your blog’s URL, then go to Dashboard → Stats.

On the stats page, you will now see the total shares across all your posts and pages:

Click on the number, and you’ll be able to see:

• Which sharing options are used most frequently by your readers, and which posts or pages were shared using those services.
• Which posts and pages are shared most frequently, and which services were used to share them.

 

 

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WordPress.org Plugin

Self-hosted/installed WordPress(.org) users can enjoy similar functionality as part of the Jetpack plugin.

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Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble showing the sharing buttons on your blog, please check the following:

• I can’t see the buttons on the front page.
  Make sure to select “Front Page, Archive Pages, and Search Results” for “Show buttons on” setting.
• The Twitter sharing button is using “via @wordpressdotcom” but I want it to use my Twitter username.
  To have your Twitter sharing button use your Twitter username you need to set up the Publicize feature.
• Many of the Available Services are missing from the selection on the sharing settings page.
  If your blog is private, you will see fewer number of services listed.
• I changed my site’s domain from mysitehere.wordpress.com to mysitehere.com, and now my share counts are all at zero! Can I get the old share counts back? No. Those counts come directly from the social networks, not from us, and they will not migrate counts made toward a specific URL that has since changed.
• What does the Facebook share count actually calculate? According to Facebook, if you’re using the official Facebook share button, the count includes:
  • the number of likes of your post’s URL
  • the number of shares of your URL (includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)
  • the number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about your URL

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Learn more

Social Traffic: Five Ways to Make Posts More Shareable (The WordPress.com Blog, January 27, 2014)