Plugin To Add Your Social Media Follower Count

Social count plugin

If you have any kind of following then you really need to let people know about it! I have decided to add a social count plugin to my site for this reason. Although I communicate and update my subscribers via email, I do use social media to update those who are not yet a subscriber and for those of you who like social media! 🙂

So I thought I ought to have some visible sign of my followers. I have been looking for a good plugin to enable me to do this and I have come across one that I like called Social Count Plus.

Here is how you can add it to your own site if you are interested.

How To Add The Social Count Plugin To Your Website

Social count plugin

1. Upload the Social Count Plugin to your wordpress site. If you want to add it directly from your dashboard then search for “social count plus” and the first plugin should be the correct one.

Click install and then activate it.

2. Once activated go to settings > social count plus.

Now you need to set it up with your social media details. There are a lot of sites that you could enter your details with but I would recommend that you only fill out the details of those sites that you have the most visibility on. Displaying a whole load of icons is not very interesting but adding just a few gets the message across nicely.

Here is a list of the sites currently available for use with this plugin:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • You Tube
  • Google+ (no longer exists as of April 2019)
  • Instagram
  • Steam
  • Soundcloud
  • Post count – if you want to show how many posts you have on your blog
  • Comment count – if you want to show how many comments you have

I shall use just 3 – Twitter, YouTube and Facebook – for now anyway.

Twitter Setup

You will need an API and secret code in order to automatically update this plugin with your twitter follower count.

Click on the link to twitter API developer (it is shown within the plugin settings). You will need to sign into twitter and then you’ll see this page:

twitter API

I don’t have any apps. You might already have some apps in which case you’ll probably see a list of your apps.

You need to create a new app so click on Create New App

Twitter app formEnter the details as shown – you don’t need to add a call back URL. It doesn’t matter what you call the app but it makes sense to name it something that you will know what it is in the future.

You might find that the name has already been taken so you will have to come up with a new one – you could just add a number on the end.

You will need to agree to the terms and then click Create Your Twitter Application

You’ll now see your application page. Click on the API Keys tab along the top. Now scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on Create my access token

access token

The page will refresh and you’ll see a message that the changes have been made. You can now test your app by clicking on TestOAuth (you will need to sign in again using your twitter username rather than email address).

test app

Now you’ll see the details that you need to enter into the plugin settings.

 Facebook Setup

1. Add your Facebook page ID. If you are not sure how to do this then use this really easy online tool – https://findmyfacebookid.com/. Just type in your fan page URL and it will find your ID.

Here is a video showing this procedure:

Make sure you save the settings after you have entered all the details.

Plugin Settings

So now you can change the settings so that that it will appear where you want it to and in the style that you like.

Decide if you want it shown horizontally or vertically and the style of icon you prefer by going top the Design tab while in the plugin settings.

If you click on the Short Codes tab you can insert the code where you want your icons to appear. You can add them separately or as a whole within any post or page.

Alternatively you can add the Social Count widget to your sidebar. If you use the widget then you will notice that by default they are displayed vertically (even if you set the design up to horizontally).

To solve this you need to add this code to your themes CSS style sheet (style.css ):

.social-count-plus li {
width: 55px !important;
}

Then they will be shown horizontally.

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