Tuesday, October 1, 2013

How To Add Follow Me Buttons to Blogger

Have you been seeing those cool little Follow Me icons on people's blogs and websites? Well, Mary Vee had and she emailed me last week to see if I knew how to get those little icons onto her blog. "Nope," I said, "but let me ask Google and I will find out!" (Actually, I didn't say that to her. I just figured it out and made it seem like I knew what I was talking about...ahem!)

First, let me show you a picture of Rachelle Gardner's fabulous website and the icons that Mary was talking about.


Aren't those buttons great? Well, I found this great site where you just input your unique web address for your social networking site and it builds the code FOR you! Soooo easy! Let me spell it out for you:

Step 1:  Go to AddThis. (You may be required to sign up for AddThis). First you will need to check whether this is for a website or for Wordpress. Unless you have Wordpress, check website.

Step 2: Decide whether you want a header or not, and what you want it to say. I chose not to get a header, because when I put it into blogger, the header is in the font that matches all my headers on my blog.

Step 3: Choose what layout you want. You can choose one of 4 layouts: Horizontal Large Menu, Horizontal Small Menu, Vertical Large Menu, or,  Vertical Small Menu. I choose the vertical small menu so that I could put it into the side column.

Step 4: Choose what social networking sites you want to include. You can choose from: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Youtube, Flickr, Vimeo, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, and RSS Feed. All you need is the web address to your profile page.

Step 5: Copy the code in the box to the right.

Step 6: Go to layout in Blogger. Click "add a gadget" in your side bar or below your post. Choose ADD HTML. Then  paste the code in the space provided. You can add a header here if you didn't choose to add one on the AddThis page. Click SAVE.

Step 7: Click PREVIEW in the top right hand corner off the layout page to see if it looks like you want it to. If you like it, then click Save Arrangement.

All done!

Have you added these buttons before? Used another site for your Follow Buttons? Share whatever tips you have!

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This post is brought to you by
 Sherrinda Ketchersid

Sherrinda is a minister's wife and mother to three giant sons and one gorgeous daughter. A born and bred Texan, she writes historical romance filled with fun, faith, and forever love.

28 comments:

~cjoy said...

Bless you!!
I was just thinking about this and how I had STILL not tried to figure it out. You just saved me so much frustration. :)

Pepper said...

What a great overview, Sher. And it's step by step. You were thinking of me when you wrote this, weren't you? :-)

H. R. Sinclair said...

Wordpress had a built in follow widget which is handy. I coded mine myself because I wanted to use my own icons.

The site you recommend sound like a great help to get all the buttons at once!

Joanne Sher said...

DONE - and so VERY happy!! (Doesn't take much these days LOL) Thank you thank you THANK you!!! I love it!

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

cjoy, you did it and it looks great! Wasn't it easy? I love easy things like that!

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Pepper, you goofball! You are so proficient at everything you do, I didn't give you a second thought! What...you don't already have those buttons????

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Southpaw, I'm soooo impressed by people who can do code. I've done a little bit, but I always need a tutorial to do it. I can't remember it to save my life! (And your's looks GREAT, btw!)

~cjoy said...

=)
everything should be this easy

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Joanne!!! The buttons on your site looks great! Did it go easy for you? I'm so glad this helped!

Mary Vee Storyteller said...

Sherrinda,
You are the best at figuring things out.
Thank you, thank you.

Unknown said...

This was by far the best how to article I've come across. I am currently building my own blog and everything is new to me. I had some difficulty trying to set up "follow me" widgets until I came across your blog.
Great job! Thanks for the help.

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Rosa, I'm so glad you found it helpful. Starting a blog is challenging and we need all the help we can get! Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Hi Sherrinda,

I want to say thank you! I created my first blog a few days ago, and I have to say, Google made it a lot more complex than it had to be. Your post gave me a way to add a simple, visible and intuitive Follow tool that anyone could understand, nothing quite like the numerous HELP centers and forums I came across fumbling over Google sites, all the while pulling out my already thinning hair.

So, THANK YOU, and a Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Cheers,
Kevin.

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Bible Follows: I'm so glad the post was helpful! Google is a great tool to learn things, but sometimes tutorials are hard to understand. I like it EASY!

Unknown said...

Thank you so much! This was extremely helpful!

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Paul, I'm glad it helped!

Unknown said...

WOW!! Thank you SO much for this simple and easy to follow instructions. So excited! I was able to follow your directions easily and added it with no problems!! :)

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Prepping Mom, I am sooo glad it was easy for you to do! Thanks for stopping by!

Skye Perkins said...

Another very grateful reader. I could not manage to figure this out on my own, read your post and two minutes later it's all up and running. Thank you very much.

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Hey Skye! I'm so glad you were able to get it up on your blog. Thanks for stopping by!

Teronda said...

Hi! I'm so technically-challenged and had no clue what to do with what appeared to be strings of generic code AddThis generated. I ran across your blog, and VOILA, somehow it worked! *Exhales*

Sherrinda Ketchersid said...

Tee Elle, I'm so glad it worked for you! Techie things can be so frustrating so when it works...I celebrate!

Enz F said...

i followed the instructions but the icons aren't appearing on my blog. Which codes are you referring to? They gave me two codes and tried each one but still no icon is appearing. Please help.

Unknown said...

I followed the instructions but didn't work. It says error each time I try it:(

Pamela Gold said...

I must be doing something wrong because it doesn't show up on my blog?

Unknown said...

OMG! Thank you so much! I was trying to implement these follow buttons to my blog for two days already. I read and watched all kind of tutorials and all of them explained how to do this editing the blog HTML. Now you explain how to do with a simple widget... I wish The Writer's Alley had been the first blog i had checked...

Chris Wong said...

I enjoyed doing this instructions. It really worked. However, I'm just wondering if you can have the follow me buttons follow more than one person instead of just me, because there's another contributor to my blog.

Unknown said...

Nicely explained. Thanks