Yesterday, LinkedIn announced their new Share button. The share button allows you to share content you find on the web with members of your LinkedIn network. You can access the LinkedIn Share Button here.
If you add the LinkedIn Share Button to your website, you basically allow people to share one URL. If you want to share individual pages, you would need to create a new button for each page – either by using the wizard, modifying the generated code, or writing code to replace the “data-URL” attribute of the generated script.
If you have a WordPress based site, there is an easier way to allow others to share individual posts and pages from your site by using the ShareThis.com plugin. The ShareThis plugin doesn’t display the LinkedIn Share Button by default, but it is easy enough to add.
After you install the ShareThis plugin, go to the configuration options by clicking on the ShareThis link in the Settings area of your WordPress dashboard
Next, click on the link to change the order or modify the list of buttons:
This will bring up a box like the one below (click on the image to enlarge). In this example, I have added the “linkedin” option between the twitter and email buttons:
ShareThis supports a long list of services. To see the list, click on the (?) next to the link above the box.
Save your options and view your site. You should now see the LinkedIn Share button like you do on the bottom of this page.
Bill Brelsford Small Business Marketing Consultant
