This is probably one of the most important lessons from the getting started guide. Now its time to learn how to customize the information appearing for sharing. Why is social media optimization important? Social media optimization is crucial for anyone that wants to tap into the power of social media marketing. Given below are a few ways it helps your website:
- Build a Strong Web Presence
- Increases Your Reach
- Drive More Relevant Traffic
- Generate Better Leads
Optimizing Sharing Message for Facebook and All Other Social Networks Except Twitter & Pinterest
To personalize shared information to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many other networks you need to use Open Graph meta tags. Those tags are designed to communicate information about your website to Social Media sites when links to your site are shared. These tags allow you to craft custom titles, descriptions, and images to be used when your pages are shared.
Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress can generate those tags for you if the option inside settings is activated. Those tags can also be generated by the SEO plugin you are using. It is important to understand that getting the proper shared message requires to have only one instance of social media optimization tags on your site.
Enable Generation of Social Media Optimization Tags (SMO)
If you are running a fresh plugin install (or you reset to default settings) the social media optimization tags are enabled by default. So you do not need to enable anything. If you are not sure visit Social Sharing -> Sharing Optimization and ensure that Facebook Open Graph Tags (Used By Most Social Networks) is enabled (Yes).
The Global Settings Suitable For Every Website
The proper usage of social media optimization tags needs to do a quick general setup. That setup will ensure the working of tags on the way you need them.
Default Social Media Image
The default social media image is those that will appear if post, page or product does not have a featured image or custom sharing image. We always recommend providing an image inside the field. This will prevent any further problems with parts of the site without properly generated tags.
WooCommerce Stores
If you are running a WooCommerce store, Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress automatically will detect your products. For products, we will generate e-commerce product social media optimization tags. That will include the price, availability and gallery images (if such). Those functions are enabled by default. If you don’t need them disabling can be done from the Advanced Tag Generation Options.
This is the information appearing in the sharing of your homepage. You need to fill and change from the plugin settings.
Each post, page, product or any custom post type of your website will have automated social media optimization tags. Those tags contain the default components of content – title, description generated from excerpt and image from the featured image. For 50% of users that is good enough. But if you need to boost the social reach it is highly recommended to generate engaging and optimized sharing information.
That is why on each post or page in the edit mode you will see the Social Media Optimization tag fields. In the preview, you will see the default generated message. This is not a real preview, but an approximate view of what will appear when you share.
Using the fields you can customize one component of sharing or all.
In the social share optimization block on each post you can set:
- Social Media Image – Add an image that is optimized for maximum exposure on most social networks. We recommend 1200px by 628px
- Social Media Title – Add a title that will populate the open graph meta tag which will be used when users share your content onto most social networks. If nothing is provided here, we will use the post title as a backup. We recommend usage of titles that does not exceed 60 characters
- Social Media Description – Add a description that will populate the open graph meta tag which will be used when users share your content onto most social networks.We recommend usage of description that does not exceed 160 characters
- Customize Open Graph URL – Important! This field is needed only if you made a change in your URL structure and you need to customize og:url tag to preserve shares you have. Do not fill here anything unless you are completely sure you need it – not proper usage will lead to loose of your current social shares and comments.
- Article Author Profile – Add link to Facebook profile page of article author if you wish it to appear in shared information. Example: https://facebook.com/author
Optimizing Sharing Message for Twitter
Twitter is one of the networks that does not connect the social media optimization tags and shared message strictly. For you, this means that along with the social media optimization details you can also set up a custom Tweet message.Â
The Twitter social media optimization tags are similar to those used by Facebook and others. They are called Twitter Card details. To enable those on your website you can do this in the Social Media Optimization menu of the plugin. If you are using SEO plugin probably you already have those generated on your site.
Activation of Twitter Card Tags
The activation of those tags you can do from Social Sharing -> Sharing Optimization menu.
- Twitter Site Username – fill the username of Twitter account that will appear in the tags as connected to your site (enter information without @ in front)
- Twitter Card Type – The card type determines the information that will appear. Summary is a text based tags, Summary with image also include as addition featured image.
Setting Custom Tweet
The Tweet generated from the social share buttons is based on the post title. It will be automatically populated but you can change that on each post or page (recommended for higher engagement).
Below the content editor in WordPress, you can find the Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress Share Options box. Inside this box, you can customize various share options and one of them is the Tweet.
- Tweet – set own tweet message. Above on the preview, you can see the approximate length based on Twitter settings. Do not add a link to the post/page – it will be added automatically. Internal hashtags are allowed but they will perform better if you include in the separate fields of this.
- Hashtags – add own hashtags to this Tweet. You can fill one or more tags separated with a comma without the # symbol. If blank, plugin will look for the default hashtags in Social Sharing -> Networks -> Additional Network Options -> Twitter.
- Username – add a Twitter user to be mentioned in the Tweet (without filling the @ in front). If blank plugin will look for the default username in Social Sharing -> Networks -> Additional Network Options -> Twitter.
Customize Pinterest Information
The Pinterest share button in Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress has two different modes that you can use. To switch between those modes you need to visit Social Sharing -> Networks -> Additional Network Options -> Pinterest. The running mode depends on the state of option “Disable Pin of any image from the page”.
Pin any image from the page (default mode after plugin installation)
When Pin of any image is active on-page, the Pinterest button will show an image picker with all images that are on the page. The visitor will be able to pick the one wishes to share. In this mode, the description message that will appear in the Pinterest share is taken from the image alt and title settings. The mode also supports the deep Pinterest message creation via the data-pin-description attribute (you can use any of them to prepare the shared snippet). Example of setting custom message: data-pin-description="My custom share message for Pinterest".
In this mode, the plugin loads the Pinterest picker directly on-page and you do not have any specific control over the images. In case there are images that you do not wish to appear in the picker than you need manually to add the following attribute data-pin-nopin="true".
Examples:
- Image with a custom Pinterest message
<img src="https://socialsharingplugin.com/my-image.jpg" data-pin-description="Custom Pinterest messages goes here"/>
- Image that will not appear in the Pin (ignored)
<img src="https://socialsharingplugin.com/logo.png" data-pin-nopin="true"/>
Pin only selected image with custom optimized message
In this mode instead of Pinning all images from the page, you will be able to select a specific optimized in size and visual image and setup custom share message for each post or page. This share button mode provides you the most advanced customization you may need to get the best from Pinterest sharing.
To start using it you need to change at first the mode from the location in settings. The option to “Disable Pin of any image from the page” should say Yes.
As soon as you save settings new options will appear in the post/page editing screen. In those settings, you can select the custom Pinterest image and description.
- Pin image – Choose personalized image that will be used to when you press Pinterest share button We recommend using an image that is formatted in a 2:3 aspect ratio like 735 x 1102. The default image will be post featured image if nothing is selected
- Description – that will be the custom title of the Pin. The default value is the post title
