How to Create and Add Share and Follow Buttons on Medium
Hey, Medium blogger! I found a little hack on how to add easy-to-notice share and follow buttons on Medium. And I share how to design these buttons on Canva, and make them clickable on Medium.
Since I've been reading on Medium, it has never been “encouraging” for me to share posts to Twitter.
I’ve read amazing articles that I want to tweet with one click. But I’d have to copy the link from my browser, and paste it on Twitter.
Sometimes, I copy the link to my clipboard when I don’t want to go on Twitter yet, promising myself to tweet it when it’s “Twitter time”.
But when it’s “Twitter time”, I don’t tweet about that amazing article. I just scroll aimlessly, chuckling at funny dog memes and cheesy puns.
Then one morning, I thought, “Oh crap! Life isn't hard. There should be a button to share articles from Medium to Twitter”.
So, I asked Google if Medium had social share buttons, it showed me a cool hack by Gabriel Morin, and I tried it out.
Two minutes and 59 seconds later, I realize that Medium actually had share buttons! (I share my frustration in my first Medium post.)
“Adding share buttons is one way to eliminate the friction behind sharing, and persuade the reader to share your content.” — Neilpatel.com
But, Medium share buttons don't persuade and remind me to share. So I decided to carry on with this hack on adding share buttons to Medium articles.
I could even include a Pinterest share button — since Medium didn’t.
This article covers how I designed these buttons, and made them clickable links.
If this sounds like cool stuff, let’s roll.
How to Add Share Buttons to Medium Articles
1. You Need Images, Buddy!
Design a simple button image on Canva! This is the part that takes some time. Although, it won’t take you a lot of time if you know what to do.
So, what do you do?
- On Canva, create a new design with a dimension of 720×100 pixels.
- Search Canva elements for “click buttons” and use any button that catches your fancy.
- Include a logo, and make the button the color of the logo.
- Add a simple text.
- Align the text and logo on the button properly, and group all three elements.
- Align the buttons. Here’s how I did mine:
→ I moved my first button to the right edge of the canvas, creating a lot of white space at the left-hand side.
→ Next, I made two copies of the design. This is to make the buttons and text even throughout.
→ On the second copy, I ungrouped the elements, and switched the logo and text to Pinterest. I didn’t move the button, since Facebook and Pinterest would be above each other.
→ On the third copy, I did the same thing with Pinterest for Twitter, but moved it to the left of the canvas.
→ I created a new copy of Twitter, ungrouped, and changed it to LinkedIn — like I did with Facebook and Pinterest.
* After you upload the images, you’ll see why creating the white space this way is important.
- Download your designs without background as PNG.
- Get yourself a gelato for being such a badass. Bills on me.
2. Upload Your Images
Now that you have your images, it’s time to upload them at the end of your article (or wherever you want them to be).
Using the image grid feature on Medium, select and upload them all at once, so they appear in a grid of 2 by 2.
Know that your files will appear on Medium in the alphebetical order of their file names.
💡 A little tip: Rename the images in the order you want them. For instance, I renamed mine as “Icon1”, “Icon2”,“ Icon3”, and “Icon4” in the order I wanted.
Now that you’ve uploaded your images, they should look like this:
3. Hit Publish
Nope, you’re not done. But you need the link to your article, and until you publish your post, you just have a draft link.
Do everything you’d normally do before you publish your Medium articles.
Then hit publish.
4. You Need Links Buddy, Get ‘em!
You need links to embed into those images.
In a new tab, open a URL generator. Inntopia social share link generator is the best I’ve tested so far.
It’s straightforward, creates links for five social media (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Facebook, and Tumblr) all at once, and is free!
Copy the URL to your published article, and paste it in Inntopia.
Add a custom tweet, and include your Twitter username, so when people share your articles to Twitter, you get tagged — this is optional though.
Include the link to your Pinterest blog graphic if you want Pinterest to grab a nice image when people pin your posts.
Create your links, and test them to be sure they do the right thing.
Websiteplanet and Sharelinkgenerator are also link genetators tools you can use.
5. Make Those Buttons Clickable!
Now that your links work perfectly, copy them one after the other and embed them in their respective images.
To embed a link in an image in Medium, rightclick on it, giving it a green border, then press Ctrl + K (on Windows) or Command + K (on Mac), and paste the link you just copied.
Do this for all the button images.
Your images are now share buttons. Save and publish your article, and you’re done!
How to Add Follow Buttons
For follow buttons, use the same steps above to create and upload them.
But instead of using a URL generator, copy the URL to your social profiles and embed them in your follow images.
Boom! You have easy-to-notice follow buttons like the ones below!
You can add them to the bottom of your posts, on your about page, or even both!
Personally, I like the follow buttons on my about page only.
If you’d use follow buttons, where would you place them? I’d love to know in the comments.
Conclusion
You did it!
Now you have easy-to-notice share and follow buttons on Medium.
It took a bit of my time though, but it was totally worth it. I enjoyed designing those images, and switching things up on Medium.
What do YOU think about this hack?
Will you try it out, or not? I want to know, tell me in the comments.
If you ever try this out, keep me posted in the comments. And if you found this helpful in anyway, don’t forget to clap this post.
Cheers!
PS: Don't forget to pay for your gelato, that’s not on me. If you don't know why I'm talking about gelato, you should go back to step 1!
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