Optimize your site with customized Social Media Buttons

 

It is a well known fact in the marketing world, that for a blog or business to be at least mildly successful, it needs to be branded. There needs to be a set system of not only colors and fonts but also of language and overall user experience. Everything has to tie together and appear coherent.  A website or blog that has a well thought out visual strategy is instantly more noticeable and more relatable that those that are not.

To what extent does every element in your site need to follow your brand? That is up to you. The branding can be as minimal as colors and fonts or it can be as global as buttons and web elements specially chosen or designed to fit your brand.

One of the options you have when designing a branded site is the use of customized Social Media buttons. A website or blog cannot skip out on the use of Social Media buttons, it will get lost in the vast bubble of internet content and never see the light of day. Social Media is the information highway and if your site doesn’t have a launching strip or landing pad, your content will go nowhere.

 

What two kinds of Social Media buttons does every site need?

1. Social Media follow buttons: these are the buttons that readers click to follow you on all the different Social Media channels like your Facebook Page, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and more.

2. Social Media share buttons: these are the buttons that readers click to share your blog posts on their own Social Media channels.

Did you know that you can use customized Social Media buttons for your site?

Share buttons can be customized inside social sharing programs like Social Warfare and AddThis. It is not recommended to over-customize the share buttons as these are quite standard on every site and you don’t want to confuse your readers. In fact, the more recognizable and easy you make these for them, the better. Don’t mess too much with the Share Buttons, stick to what the sharing programs offer.

 

Collection of social networks logos Free Vector

 

The follow buttons on the other hand, can be designed to fit your brand. You can and should get quite creative with your follow buttons!

 

Guidelines to Follow when creating Social Media Follow Buttons

You have two choices for customized Social Media Follow Buttons, download a set of icons from Freepik and use a vector editor to customize the colors to fit your brand better, or create your own from scratch. Whichever you choose there are some guidelines you should follow.

1 – The icon for each Social Media channel has to be exactly the same as the original, if it is handdrawn it needs to be extremely recognizable. The Facebook F needs to have it recognizable shape, etc.

2 – The button shape should be either round or square, not rectangular or triangle or any other shape that doesn’t really sit well as a “button”. If your buttons are created as watercolor splashes for example, they should have a circular shape.

3 – Each Social Media channel has their own particular color, blue for Facebook, red for YouTube, etc. When creating your buttons you have two choices, to use the actual colors or unify all the buttons in one color, for example black, grey or red. If you do unify the colors, then it is more important to keep the original shape of the logo/icon that everyone will recognize.

4 – When your buttons are ready to be used in your site, it is best to create a widget that can be added in your sidebar or footer or underneath your header. Hyperlink each button to the corresponding channel and then just insert the code wherever you want on your site.

5 – If you don’t know how to create a widget with html code, refer to this article on an easy way of generating a widget with your wordpress editor. If you know html, you will have absolutely no problem putting your new buttons in a widget and generating the code.

Isn’t this a great idea to make your site and blog just a little bit better? By having customized Social Media Follow buttons, it shows that you put a bit of thought into user experience and your readers WILL notice. If you are a web developer or web designer, offering a bonus service of customized Social Media buttons will make you look like a more creative professional and who doesn’t want that!?

 

Social media with watercolor stains Free Vector

Dark metallic social media icons Free Vector

 

Have fun and come back to show us what you’ve created. In this article are some examples of already designed Social Media icons that you can download from Freepik and use on your site.