Monarch Social Media Sharing

Your buttons ask the favor before anyone has read

You place a row of icons above the title and another at the end. The visitor arrives, sees a request to share a text they do not know yet and moves on. When they finish reading and might actually recommend the article, that row has stayed up top, off the screen.

Sharing is a recommendation with the sharer's name in front of their contacts, and that decision usually comes after reading, commenting or buying. So how many buttons you have matters less than the moment they appear.

Monarch, the Elegant Themes plugin for sharing and following on social networks, lets you choose both the place and the moment.

Five places, each with its own way of asking

• Floating sidebar: buttons on the left that follow the visitor while scrolling. On mobile it becomes a sliding toggle.
• Inline: buttons above or below the content.
• On images and videos: they appear when hovering over the media.
• Automatic pop-up: a box that seeks attention based on visitor behavior.
• Automatic fly-in: a box that slides up from the bottom of the page.

You can show more than 20 sharing networks and mix these places according to the type of site. The override option on each post or page changes the places for that content only.

Six signals that the moment is right

Pop-ups and fly-ins, and only those two places, fire on triggers:

• Timed delay, in seconds.
• Bottom of the post, which detects where your content ends.
• After commenting.
• On scroll to the page percentage you choose.
• After purchasing, when the order was made with WooCommerce.
• After a period of inactivity.

If you enable several, Monarch uses only the one that happens first. It pays to start with bottom of post, comment or purchase, which arrive once the visitor has done something.

How often you were shared, and which post did it

Monarch also works the other direction: following, with more than 30 profiles and networks available. Those buttons go in a widget or, with a shortcode, inside posts and pages. Some networks, such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, support an API connection, set up one by one, to pull your follower number.

You can show the network name and the share or follow total, individual or combined. The minimum setting for displaying the count serves to hide it while it is still low.

The statistics panel gathers all-time totals of shares, likes and follows, with 7-day, 30-day and 12-month views, plus a list of most-shared posts and a stats box on each post or page.

Designing the buttons and getting them running

Choose from 3 button shapes, 5 hover effects for the sidebar and 4 for inline buttons. Icons can sit above or to the left of the count, in each network's colors or your own, in normal state and on hover.

1. Install Monarch in WordPress and add the networks your audience uses.
2. Enable a fixed place, such as the sidebar or the bottom row.
3. Add a pop-up or fly-in with a bottom-of-post trigger.
4. Set up the API for the networks whose count you want to show.
5. Check in the panel which content gets shared most and adjust.

Settings can be exported and imported, useful if you manage several sites. Scheduling posts to your profiles is not among its features: Monarch acts on the visitors to your site.

If you prefer less weight or more automation

When speed is your priority, Novashare is a lightweight plugin, with no jQuery dependency and with blocks for sharing, following and click-to-post in the block editor. To compare more button options, the catalog also includes Easy Social Share Buttons.

If what you want is to post to networks yourself on a schedule, your need is a different one: Blog2Social is geared to that task.

Each setting, sorted before you turn it on

Can I show the buttons on only some pages?

Yes. The override option on each post or page changes which places that content uses.

What happens if I enable several triggers?

Only the first one to occur is used.

Does the purchase trigger need WooCommerce?

Yes, it asks after a purchase made with WooCommerce.

Can I keep a low count from showing?

Yes, by setting a minimum from which the share count is displayed.