You know how I’m always saying we all, regardless of our experience, have something to learn…well, I’m serious. This post is exhibit A. When I first re-launched SMFS, I knew I wanted to have social media icons that linked to the respective networks I have set up. I was shocked when the widgets menu didn’t have one, and was frustrated that I might not be able to have icons at the top of my site – something that I am always strongly recommending for clients. Thankfully, I figured out how to set it up using the “Text” widget. Here’s how to set up social media icons on WordPress.com:

Step 1: Find the social media icons you want to use.

Do a Google search for “free social media icons” and browse different icon images. Once you find some that you like, download the image files and save them to your computer.

Step 2: Upload the icon images to a post draft on your blog.

I found it easier to upload each icon individually, in the order that I want them to appear, and selecting “None” for alignment. In this stage you can also assign each image a unique URL, i.e. for the Facebook icon, set it to link to your Facebook profile or page.

Step 3: Switch to text view in your post draft and copy the code.

Literally just select all and copy the code. You could also make sure to save your draft at this point.

Step 4: Go to widgets menu and insert a “text” widget into your sidebar.

Once you add the text widget to your sidebar, paste the code you copied into the text field of the widget. Click “save.”

Step 5: Go to your homepage and refresh.

Voila! You now have social media icons that link to your channels on your WordPress.com site.

Did you get lost along the way? Are you unsure of how to complete one of these steps? Ask me in the comments!