Sharing links on social media is a powerful way to promote content and drive traffic to your website. There are several methods for posting links to social media, but one of the most common is to use sharing links. You can create social media share links to allows users to easily share your content on their own social media accounts with a single click. In this article, we will take a look at how to create sharing links for popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and email.
To create a sharing link for Twitter, you can use the “intent/tweet” endpoint provided by Twitter. This endpoint allows you to pre-populate the tweet text and URL, so that users can simply click the link and post the tweet without having to manually enter the text and URL. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=<TEXT>&url=<URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_twitter.png" alt="Twitter Icon" />
</a>In this example, “text” is the text you want to post and “url” is the link you want to share. Once a user clicks on the link, they will be taken to a Twitter “compose tweet” page where they can review the tweet text and URL before clicking the “tweet” button.
View the Twitter developer docs
To create a sharing link for Facebook, you can use the “sharer.php” endpoint provided by Facebook. This endpoint allows you to pre-populate the post text and URL, so that users can simply click the link and post the status update without having to manually enter the text and URL. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="https://facebook.com/sharer.php?t=<TEXT>&u=<URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_facebook.png" alt="Facebook Icon" />
</a>In this example, “t” is the text you want to post and “u” is the link you want to share. Once a user clicks on the link, they will be taken to a Facebook page where they can review the post text and URL before clicking the “post” button.
View the Facebook developer docs
To create a sharing link for WhatsApp, you can use the “wa.me” endpoint provided by WhatsApp. This endpoint allows you to pre-populate the text and URL, so that users can simply click the link and share the message on WhatsApp. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="https://wa.me/?text=<TEXT> - <URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_whatsapp.png" alt="WhatsApp Icon" />
</a>In this example, “text” is the text you want to post and “url” is the link you want to share. Once a user clicks on the link, they will be taken to the WhatsApp Web or WhatsApp mobile app where they can review the text and URL before sending.
View the WhatsApp developer docs
To create a sharing link for LinkedIn, you can use the “sharing/share-offsite” endpoint provided by LinkedIn. This endpoint allows you to pre-populate the URL, although there is no text field on this one. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=<URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_linkedin.png" alt="LinkedIn Icon" />
</a>Telegram
To create a sharing link for Telegram, you can use the “share/url” endpoint provided by Telegram. This endpoint allows you to pre-populate the text and URL, so that users can simply click the link and share the message on Telegram. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="https://telegram.me/share/url?text=<TEXT>&url=<URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_telegram.png" alt="Telegram Icon" />
</a>In this example, “text” is the text you want to post and “url” is the link you want to share. Once a user clicks on the link, they will be taken to Telegram Web or Telegram mobile app where they can review the text and URL before sharing to their contacts or groups.
View the Telegram developer docs
To create a sharing link for email, you can use the “mailto” protocol. This protocol allows you to pre-populate the subject and body of the email, so that users can simply click the link and send an email with the pre-populated text and URL. The format of the link is as follows:
<a href="mailto:?subject={{ get_the_title() }} %40 Holler House&body=Read more about this event here - <URL>"
target="_blank">
<img src="icons_email.png" alt="Email Icon" />
</a>In this example, “subject” is the subject line of the email, “body” is the content of the email and “URL” is the link you want to share. When user clicks on the link, the default email client of their device will open up with the pre-populated subject, body and URL.
View this 2010 RFC about mailto links
Check Your Social Media Share Links
Using social media sharer links to post to social media is a simple and effective way to promote your content and drive traffic to your website. By using the endpoints provided by popular social media platforms, you can create social media share links that pre-populate the text and URL, making it easy for users to share your content with just a single click. You could even make it part of a WordPress child theme.
It is important to note that, Social Media platforms tend to change the format of their sharing links and the way they work. So, you should check the official documentation and examples of the social media platform that you want to use and make sure that the above code and examples are up-to-date. You should be safe with email links though, that hasn’t changed for decades.