Visual social media updates are huge right now: You have higher chances to generate engagement to your social media update if it contains an attention-grabbing image:
- Major social media networks (Facebook and Google Plus) give your update a boost if there’s an uploaded image (or video) attached to it
- An update with a catchy image will naturally attract attention and spur an action (like, comment, share).
Plus, images open up more social media channels for you, like Pinterest, which can be a great traffic driver, especially in some industries. Visual strategy has become one of the most essential and fundamental elements of social media marketing.
Keeping that in mind, it may be a smart idea to enable your on-page image sharing on mouseover:
- Image mouseover sharing increases engagement: Many people will click the button inside an image out of curiosity to simply see how it works;
- Image mouseover sharing encourages more readers to post visual updates using your URL which will attract more attention and engagement.
Website owners don’t have a huge variety of options for image hover-over sharing but here are a few things to try:
Image Sharer Plugin by Sumome (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)
This plugin adds Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook buttons on mouseover.
You can play with the plugin here (hover-over the top image). The best thing is that the resulting Tweet is visual (The plugin actually uploads it to Twitter)
Hot Trends And Newsworthy Content http://t.co/A1oZ32bzNd via @adamjayc pic.twitter.com/J7Vnd9awal
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) August 14, 2015
Users need to authenticate both Twitter and Facebook to share but they’ll need to only do it once.
You can control where you want your buttons to be aligned inside the image and which message they should create as the social media update.
Note: There’s also a WordPress plugin that adds mouseover sharing buttons but the huge difference is that it creates regular (non-visual) update. You can play with the plugin here.
Shareaholic WordPress Plugin (Pinterest)
Shareaholic plugin is probably the easiest way to enable Pinterest sharing on mouseover. Plus, it doesn’t slow a page a bit. And it’s totally free.
You can play with the plugin here (hover-over the top image).
Here’s a tutorial on how to enable their Shareable Images feature.
Shareaholic WordPress plugin uses the article title to fill in the pin description box.
Note: If you install the plugin, make sure to opt out from the ads: While I love the plugin, I think it’s somewhat sneaky showing paid ads in “Related posts” section until you opt out.
Pinterest Pin It Button For Images
As the name suggests, this plugin adds a mouseover “Pin It” button to ALL your images.
You can play with the plugin here and download it here.
Note: There are some reports saying this plugin breaks your image alignment. But it does work for many, so it’s worth a test.
To achieve the same functionality but without the plugin (which appears buggy to some people), go ahead and use Pinterest official code.
Note the differences between the two:
- Pinterest script uses the image alt text to fill in the pin description box (Keep in mind when adding your images!)
- “Pinterest Pin It Button For Images” WordPress plugin uses the article title to fill in the pin description box
Featured Resources
If you are building your own Pinterest buttons, here’s a nice collection of free icon sets.
Spruce is Twitter-friendly visual quoting tool I discovered recently. What makes it stand out from the crowd of other online image editing tools is that it creates images in the perfect Twitter dimensions!
Also, if you come across sites that don’t offer mouseover image sharing functionality, here are tools for you, the sharer:
- Pinterest Right-Click Add-On for Firefox
- QuickPin for Chrome
