Pied Piper Icons in Your Sidebar

Follow Me, Follow Me

It is an aberration of what Donkey said in Shrek.   But it is what many are wanting to have on their blogs to increase those that follow them on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.   It is like collection friends (I guess).   You can do this straight or with a sense of humor, it is up to you.

This post is the result of an email I received this morning inquiring about a plugin to do this:

“Scott wrote:
Hi Dave,
Do you have a recommendation for a plugin/widget I can use in my right column that has a “Follow me on” then has a logo of twitter, facebook, RSS symbol, etc?  Do you know if there is a specific plugin for that or is that more custom?  Thanks in advance.”

The Sociable plugin is kind of what Scott is wanting but I have a feeling Not Really.

It isn’t very hard to do this for your sidebar.   Here is what you need for this project:

1. The images for your logo/icon
2. The link for your social site (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
3. A Text Widget to put your code into the sidebar
4. Your WordPress editor

If you are an RE Codehead XHTML Geek you don’t need this post.   You already know how to do this and by now have done your Homer Simpson impersonation complete with “Duh” and have headed off for a doughnut.   I’ll be right there.

The Images

The process is the same for all images and links to the social media sites so I’ll show what I did for the Twitter “Follow Me”

I looked around for a Twitter logo with a blue bird and feathers flying in all directions.   I didn’t find one so chose one of a big blue bird in a hardhat.

There were two of them together, I took the one I wanted, resized it down for my sidebar and added the “Follow Me” text to the side.

The Links

I don’t really have to cover this do I?   You all know the link to your social media site.   Like mine for twitter is http://www.twitter.com/daveintucson

The Editor For Putting it together

The simple way to get the code right it so use your editor.

• Upload the image into a post.
• Set the link URL associated with the social media site as the link for the image
• add it to your post full size
• switch to the HTML tab and copy the code
• Insert the code into a text widget and save

Here is the code:

<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/daveintucson”><img title=”Follow me on Twitter” src=”http://www.realestatebloglab.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/HardhattwitterGreenT.jpg” alt=”Follow me on Twitter” width=”202″ height=”130″ /></a>

Now paste it into a text widget and just like that I have a Pied Piper Icon in my Sidebar.

Doing a google image search for free logos for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn will net you a lot of options.

No need for a plugin, just a few simple steps and you are piping away for other twits, (can I call them twits?) Facebookers and Those LinkedIn will be able to find and follow you.

Remember “Content is King” give them a reason to follow.