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Add Po.st Social Media (Facebook, Google Plus) widgets to your blog?

February 7, 2012 / Dave Taylor / AdSense, AdWords, and PPC Help, HTML & Web Page Design, Reddit Help, Twitter Help / 5 Comments

I really like the set of social media buttons you have on the pages of your AskDaveTaylor site, Dave. What are they, and how did you add them to your site? In particular, a lot of the ones I’ve looked at have uninteresting sites like Delicious and Reddit, but don’t yet support the new Google Plus “+1” button, so yours is really slick. What’s the story?

Glad you noticed it! You readers are an eagle-eyed lot, I have to admit. The new social media widget that I’m using on this site is from a very interesting company called Po.st and adding it to your own site is about as easy as you can imagine. Even with my sites mostly running on the older blog tool Movable Type rather than WordPress, requiring me to hack source code, it’s still a breeze.
To demonstrate, I’ll show you how I added the po.st social media widget to my popular Dave On Film blog. You did know I’m also a professional film critic, right? Either way, pop over, enjoy some of my reviews while you’re at it…
Worth noting before we proceed, however, is that po.st is the only social media widget I’m aware of that actually has a potential revenue stream for your site too. As the company explains on the site: “Monetized Sharing Widget — A 300×250 display ad that can carry your advertisers or ours. The ad unit appears only after a user has shared your content.” Cool and extremely low key.
To get started with my film blog, I actually created a new po.st account for it. To do that, I simply went to their home page and clicked on the big “get it now” button. I’m immediately shown the default style of widget:

add po.st buttons 1

That looks good, and has the most important ones — remembering that the Google Plus “+1” button shows up elsewhere — so let’s keep looking acros the page. On the right side, it shows a set of possibilities for the widget style and button sizes:
add po.st buttons 2

At this point I don’t really like the default, selected, so instead choose the third option, a string of common social media services with common icons shown: Google’s “+1”, Facebook, Twitter, Email and the “P” for po.st (though I always think it’s a Pinterest button, to be honest). I select that and, just below these widget options…
add po.st buttons 3

Got the style and widgets you like? Click on “Register” and it’ll ask you just a few questions so Po.st can set up your account:
add po.st buttons 4

If you look closely, you’ll see a trick that I use: Google’s Gmail service actually lets you have any random string you want after your regular account name, as long as you separate them with a “+”, so I’m using my “d1taylor” account here but customizing it for this purpose by adding my sitename: “d1taylor+daveonfilm” all @gmail.com.
Want to potentially make a few bucks too? Great. Click on that check box.
When you’re done, click on “Create new account” and it’ll set things up and show you the code you’ll need to add to your pages / blog template to actually get it up and running:
add po.st buttons 5

As I said earlier, my Dave On Film blog runs on Movable Type, so I just go to the Template Editor and paste in the new code:
add po.st buttons 6

A click on the “Save and Rebuild” button and the widget strip instantly shows up on all my film review pages:
add po.st buttons 7

It really couldn’t be much easier!
Wondering what it looks like? On this particular page, a review of the film Soylent Green, I’ll click on the “+1” button and a window pops up:
add po.st buttons 8

As you can see, I’ve added a comment, including using the special “_xx_” notation to get something in italics and “*xx*” to get it to show up in bold. A click on “Share” and we’re good to go!
add po.st buttons 9

Nice. Now what’s stopping you from signing up for Po.st and adding their social media widget to your own site?

Disclaimer: I run Po.st on this site and received some compensation from the company as part of our initial test. As you can see, however, I’ve kept the widget live because, well, it’s just better than any of the alternatives I’ve seen in the marketplace.
About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the early days of the Internet. Author of over 20 technical books, he runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech help site. You can also find his gadget reviews on YouTube and chat with him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

5 comments on “Add Po.st Social Media (Facebook, Google Plus) widgets to your blog?”

  1. Rodrigo says:
    June 10, 2015 at 7:20 am

    I’ve been using Social Media Widget for a long time and I’m really satisfied with it.
    It works perfectly with my bilingual blog. In the English version I put a Facebook link to my English Facebook page and the other way around on my Portuguese page.
    Have all the same for Twitter, Google + and so on.
    Here are examples of the same pages in two different languages:
    http://outofyourcomfortzone.net/how-to-buy-travel-insurance/ (English)
    http://foradazonadeconforto.com/como-escolher-e-comprar-seguro-de-viagem/ (Brazilian Portuguese)
    Just a great Plugin.

    Reply
  2. Hugh says:
    January 23, 2014 at 12:19 pm

    What eCPM are you getting?

    Reply
  3. Sphumuzo says:
    September 9, 2012 at 2:25 am

    Thankx for the answers

    Reply
  4. suraj says:
    February 19, 2012 at 10:39 am

    I am Looking to add this widget in my new blog. thanks for share a article. I like the you explain everything on the post.

    Reply
  5. Vincent Wright says:
    February 16, 2012 at 9:34 am

    Simply OUTSTANDING share, Dave! I’ve been looking for a set of social media buttons and this fits the bill better than I expected… Adding it to Brandergy.com today…
    BIG THANKS, Good Man!
    +Vincent Wright

    Reply

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